When using the heif10Representation and writeHEIF10Representation APIs of CIContext, the resulting image doesn’t contain an alpha channel. When using the heifRepresentation and writeHEIFRepresentation APIs, the alpha channel is properly preserved, i.e., the resulting HEIC will contain a urn:mpeg:hevc:2015:auxid:1 auxiliary image. This image is missing when exporting as HEIF10. Is this a bug or is this intentional? If I understand the spec correctly, HEIF10 should be able to support alpha via auxiliary image (like HEIF8).

Apple's new Journal app was introduced with the iOS 17.2 beta. In the release notes, the following is mentioned: If your app donates activities or interactions to SiriKit or CallKit or if someone authorizes your app to save data to HealthKit, some data might show up as part of Journaling Suggestions. Is there any documentation on how this works exactly? What kind of activities can be featured in Journal? How does the system decide what to feature? For instance, if I have an app that allows the user to create art images, can I somehow make those images appear in the Journaling Suggestions?

With iOS 18, TipKit got explicit support for syncing tip state via iCloud. However, before that, TipKit already did iCloud syncing implicitly, as far as I know. How does the new explicit syncing relate to the previous mechanism? Do we have to enable iCloud syncing manually now to retain the functionality in iOS 18? Is there a way to sync with the state that was already stored by TipKit in iCloud on iOS 17?

Our apps can currently be installed on Apple Silicon Macs via the iPad app on Mac feature (“Designed for iPad”). Now we are working on “proper” (universal) Catalyst-based Mac apps that will be available on the Mac App Store. How does the transition work for users that currently have the iPad version installed? Will they automatically update to the Mac Catalyst app once it’s available, or do they need to re-install the app from the Mac App Store?

One of our users reported a very strange bug where our app freezes and eventually crashes on some screen transitions. From different crash logs we could determine that the app freezes up when we call view.layoutIfNeeded() for animating constraint changes. It then gets killed by the watchdog 10 seconds later: Exception Type: EXC_CRASH (SIGKILL) Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000 Termination Reason: FRONTBOARD 2343432205 <RBSTerminateContext| domain:10 code:0x8BADF00D explanation:scene-update watchdog transgression: app<bundleID(2A01F261-3554-44C0-B5A9-EBEB446484AD)>:6921 exhausted real (wall clock) time allowance of 10.00 seconds ProcessVisibility: Background ProcessState: Running WatchdogEvent: scene-update WatchdogVisibility: Background WatchdogCPUStatistics: ( "Elapsed total CPU time (seconds): 24.320 (user 18.860, system 5.460), 29% CPU", "Elapsed application CPU time (seconds): 10.630, 12% CPU" ) reportType:CrashLog maxTerminationResistance:Interactive> The crash stack trace looks slightly different, depending on the UI transition that is happening. Here are the two we observed so far. Both are triggered by the layoutIfNeeded() call. Thread 0 name: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread Thread 0 Crashed: 0 CoreAutoLayout 0x1b09f90e4 -[NSISEngine valueForEngineVar:] + 8 1 UIKitCore 0x18f919478 -[_UIViewLayoutEngineRelativeAlignmentRectOriginCache origin] + 372 2 UIKitCore 0x18f918f18 -[UIView _nsis_center:bounds:inEngine:forLayoutGuide:] + 1372 3 UIKitCore 0x18f908e9c -[UIView(Geometry) _applyISEngineLayoutValuesToBoundsOnly:] + 248 4 UIKitCore 0x18f9089e0 -[UIView(Geometry) _resizeWithOldSuperviewSize:] + 148 5 CoreFoundation 0x18d0cd6a4 __NSARRAY_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_A_BLOCK__ + 24 6 CoreFoundation 0x18d0cd584 -[__NSArrayM enumerateObjectsWithOptions:usingBlock:] + 432 7 UIKitCore 0x18f8e62b0 -[UIView(Geometry) resizeSubviewsWithOldSize:] + 128 8 UIKitCore 0x18f977194 -[UIView(AdditionalLayoutSupport) _is_layout] + 124 9 UIKitCore 0x18f976c2c -[UIView _updateConstraintsAsNecessaryAndApplyLayoutFromEngine] + 800 10 UIKitCore 0x18f903944 -[UIView(CALayerDelegate) layoutSublayersOfLayer:] + 2728 11 QuartzCore 0x18ec15498 CA::Layer::layout_if_needed(CA::Transaction*) + 496 12 UIKitCore 0x18f940c10 -[UIView(Hierarchy) layoutBelowIfNeeded] + 312 Thread 0 name: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread Thread 0 Crashed: 0 QuartzCore 0x18ec2cfe0 -[CALayer animationForKey:] + 176 1 UIKitCore 0x18fa5b258 UniqueAnimationKeyForLayer + 192 2 UIKitCore 0x18fa5ab7c __67-[_UIViewAdditiveAnimationAction runActionForKey:object:arguments:]_block_invoke_2 + 468 3 UIKitCore 0x18fa5ba5c -[_UIViewAdditiveAnimationAction runActionForKey:object:arguments:] + 1968 4 QuartzCore 0x18eb9e938 CA::Layer::set_bounds(CA::Rect const&, bool) + 428 5 QuartzCore 0x18eb9e760 -[CALayer setBounds:] + 132 6 UIKitCore 0x18f941770 -[UIView _backing_setBounds:] + 64 7 UIKitCore 0x18f940404 -[UIView(Geometry) setBounds:] + 340 8 UIKitCore 0x18f908f84 -[UIView(Geometry) _applyISEngineLayoutValuesToBoundsOnly:] + 480 9 UIKitCore 0x18f9089e0 -[UIView(Geometry) _resizeWithOldSuperviewSize:] + 148 10 CoreFoundation 0x18d0cd6a4 __NSARRAY_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_A_BLOCK__ + 24 11 CoreFoundation 0x18d132488 -[__NSSingleObjectArrayI enumerateObjectsWithOptions:usingBlock:] + 92 12 UIKitCore 0x18f8e62b0 -[UIView(Geometry) resizeSubviewsWithOldSize:] + 128 13 UIKitCore 0x18f977194 -[UIView(AdditionalLayoutSupport) _is_layout] + 124 14 UIKitCore 0x18f976c2c -[UIView _updateConstraintsAsNecessaryAndApplyLayoutFromEngine] + 800 15 UIKitCore 0x18f916258 -[UIView(Hierarchy) layoutSubviews] + 204 16 UIKitCore 0x18f903814 -[UIView(CALayerDelegate) layoutSublayersOfLayer:] + 2424 17 QuartzCore 0x18ec15498 CA::Layer::layout_if_needed(CA::Transaction*) + 496 18 UIKitCore 0x18f940c10 -[UIView(Hierarchy) layoutBelowIfNeeded] + 312 So far, we only know of one iPad Air M1 where this is happening. But we don't know how many users experience this issue without reporting it. Does anyone know what could cause Auto Layout or Core Animation to block in those calls? We have no clue so far...

The new VNGeneratePersonSegmentationRequest is a stateful request, i.e. it keeps state and improves the segmentation mask generation for subsequent frames. There is also the new CIPersonSegmentationFilter as a convenient way for using the API with Core Image. But since the Vision request is stateful, I was wondering how this is handled by the Core Image filter. Does the filter also keep state between subsequent calls? How is the "The request requires the use of CMSampleBuffers with timestamps as input" requirement of VNStatefulRequest ensured?

Our account holder got the message that we can now use Xcode Cloud via the beta. However, the developers in our organization are not able to access any Xcode Cloud features. Creating a workflow fails with the message This operation couldn’t be completed. Is there any additional setup required to get Xcode Cloud running on a developer machine?

We have a Filters framework that contains many image processing filters (written in Swift and Metal) and the resources they require (like ML models and static images). But not every app we have uses all the filters in Filters. Rather we want to only build and bundle the required filters and resources that are needed by the app. The only way we can think of to achieve that is to create different framework targets in Xcode, one for each app. But that would require that the Filters framework project “knows” all of its consumers (apps) and we would rather like to avoid that. Especially since the filters are in a separate repository. Is there a way to, for instance, pass some kind of configuration file to the framework that is used at build time to decide which files to build and bundle?

A few of our users reported that images saved with our apps disappear from their library in Photos after a few seconds. All of them own a Mac with an old version of macOS, and all of them have iCloud syncing enabled for Photos. Our apps use Core Image to process images. Core Image will transfer most of the input's metadata to the output. While we thought this was generally a good idea, this seems to be causing the issue: The old version of Photos (or even iPhoto?) that is running on the Mac seems to think that the output image of our app is a duplicate of the original image that was loaded into our app. As soon as the iCloud sync happens, the Mac removes the image from the library, even when it's in sleep mode. When the Mac is turned off or disconnected from the internet, the images stay in the library—until the Mac comes back online. This seems to be caused by the output's metadata, but we couldn't figure out what fields are causing the old Photos to detect the new image as duplicate. It's also very hard to reproduce without installing an old macOS on some machine. Does anyone know what metadata field we need to change to not be considered a duplicate?

Is it possible to get the camera intrinsic matrix for a captured single photo on iOS? I know that one can get the cameraCalibrationData from a AVCapturePhoto, which also contains the intrinsicMatrix. However, this is only provided when using a constituent (i.e. multi-camera) capture device and setting virtualDeviceConstituentPhotoDeliveryEnabledDevices to multiple devices (or enabling isDualCameraDualPhotoDeliveryEnabled on older iOS versions). Then photoOutput(_:didFinishProcessingPhoto:) is called multiple times, delivering one photo for each camera specified. Those then contain the calibration data. As far as I know, there is no way to get the calibration data for a normal, single-camera photo capture. I also found that one can set isCameraIntrinsicMatrixDeliveryEnabled on a capture connection that leads to a AVCaptureVideoDataOutput. The buffers that arrive at the delegate of that output then contain the intrinsic matrix via the kCMSampleBufferAttachmentKey_CameraIntrinsicMatrix metadata. However, this requires adding another output to the capture session, which feels quite wasteful just for getting this piece of metadata. Also, I would somehow need to figure out which buffer was temporarily closest to when the actual photo was taken. Is there a better, simpler way for getting the camera intrinsic matrix for a single photo capture? If not, is there a way to calculate the matrix based on the image's metadata?

The new .photos AssistantSchema for intents allow integrating App Intents for Photos-related actions with Apple Intelligence. I was wondering if it would be possible to create intents that do not require full library access. Our app supports loading image from Photos via the PHPicker, which doesn't require any user permission. Now we want to support the .photos.openAsset schema in an app intent to allow interactions like "Open this image in BeCasso and apply preset X". Would that be possible without full library access?

We are processing videos with Core Image filters in our apps, using an AVMutableVideoComposition (for playback/preview and export). For older devices, we want to limit the resolution at which the video frames are processed for performance and memory reasons. Ideally, we would tell AVFoundation to give us video frames with a defined maximum size into our composition. We thought setting the renderSize property of the composition to the desired size would do that. However, this only changes the size of output frames, not the size of the source frames that come into the composition's handler block. For example: let composition = AVMutableVideoComposition(asset: asset, applyingCIFiltersWithHandler: { request in let input = request.sourceImage // <- this still has the video's original size // ... }) composition.renderSize = CGSize(width: 1280, heigth: 720) // for example So if the user selects a 4K video, our filter chain gets 4K input frames. Sure, we can scale them down inside our pipeline, but this costs resources and especially a lot of memory. It would be way better if AVFoundation could decode the video frames in the desired size already before passing it into the composition handler. Is there a way to tell AVFoundation to load smaller video frames?

There seems to be an issue in iOS 18 / macOS 15 related to image thumbnail generation and/or HEIC. We are transcoding JPEG images to HEIC when they are loaded into our app (HEIC has a much lower memory footprint when loaded by Core Image, for some reason). We use Image I/O for that: guard let source = CGImageSourceCreateWithURL(inputURL, nil), let destination = CGImageDestinationCreateWithURL(outputURL, UTType.heic.identifier as CFString, 1, nil) else { throw <error> } let primaryImageIndex = CGImageSourceGetPrimaryImageIndex(source) CGImageDestinationAddImageFromSource(destination, source, primaryImageIndex, nil) When we use CGImageDestinationAddImageFromSource, we get the following warnings on the console: createImage:1445: *** ERROR: bad image size (0 x 0) rb: 0 CGImageSourceCreateThumbnailAtIndex:5195: *** ERROR: CGImageSourceCreateThumbnailAtIndex[0] - 'HJPG' - failed to create thumbnail [-67] {alw:-1, abs: 1 tra:-1 max:4620} writeImageAtIndex:1025: ⭕️ ERROR: '<app>' is trying to save an opaque image (4620x3466) with 'AlphaPremulLast'. This would unnecessarily increase the file size and will double (!!!) the required memory when decoding the image --> ignoring alpha. It seems that CGImageDestinationAddImageFromSource is trying to extract/create a thumbnail, which fails somehow. I re-wrote the last part like this: guard let primaryImage = CGImageSourceCreateImageAtIndex(source, primaryImageIndex, nil), let properties = CGImageSourceCopyPropertiesAtIndex(source, primaryImageIndex, nil) else { throw <error> } CGImageDestinationAddImage(destination, primaryImage, properties) This doesn't cause any warnings. An issue that might be related has been reported here. I've also heard from others having issues with CGImageSourceCreateThumbnailAtIndex.