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Metal debug log in Swift Package
My goal is to print a debug message from a shader. I follow the guide that orders to set -fmetal-enable-logging metal compiler flag and following environment variables: MTL_LOG_LEVEL=MTLLogLevelDebug MTL_LOG_BUFFER_SIZE=2048 MTL_LOG_TO_STDERR=1 However there's an issue with the guide, it's only covers Xcode project setup, however I'm working on a Swift Package. It has a Metal-only target that's included into main target like this: targets: [ // A separate target for shaders. .target( name: "MetalShaders", resources: [ .process("Metal") ], plugins: [ // https://github.com/schwa/MetalCompilerPlugin .plugin(name: "MetalCompilerPlugin", package: "MetalCompilerPlugin") ] ), // Main target .target( name: "MegApp", dependencies: ["MetalShaders"] ), .testTarget( name: "MegAppTests", dependencies: [ "MegApp", "MetalShaders", ] ] So to apply compiler flag I use MetalCompilerPlugin which emits debug.metallib, it also allows to define DEBUG macro for shaders. This code compiles: #ifdef DEBUG logger.log_error("Hello There!"); os_log_default.log_debug("Hello thread: %d", gid); // this proves that code exectutes result.flag = true; #endif Environment is set via .xctestplan and valideted to work with ProcessInfo. However, nothing is printed to Xcode console nor to Console app. In attempt to fix it I'm trying to setup a MTLLogState, however the makeLogState(descriptor:) fails with error: if #available(iOS 18.0, *) { let logDescriptor = MTLLogStateDescriptor() logDescriptor.level = .debug logDescriptor.bufferSize = 2048 // Error Domain=MTLLogStateErrorDomain Code=2 "Cannot create residency set for MTLLogState: (null)" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Cannot create residency set for MTLLogState: (null)} let logState = try! device.makeLogState(descriptor: logDescriptor) commandBufferDescriptor.logState = logState } Some LLMs suggested that this is connected with Simulator, and truly, I run the tests on simulator. However tests don't want to run on iPhone... I found solution running them on My Mac (Mac Catalyst). Surprisingly descriptor log works there, even without MTLLogState. But the Simulator behaviour seems like a bug...
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669
Jan ’26
GestureComponent does not support DragGesture
The following code using the new GestureComponent demonstrates inconsistency. The tap gesture prints output, but the drag gesture does not. I already checked this post, which points to this seemingly outdated sample code I assume that example is deprecated in favour of the now built in version of GestureComponent. Nonetheless, there are no compiler warnings or errors, it just fails silently. TapGesture, LongPressGesture, MagnifyGesture, RotateGesture all work, so this feels like an oversight. RealityView { content in let testEntity = ModelEntity(mesh: .generateBox(size: .init(x: 1, y: 1, z: 1))) testEntity.position = SIMD3<Float>(0,0,-1) testEntity.components.set(InputTargetComponent()) testEntity.components.set(CollisionComponent( shapes: [.generateBox(size: .init(x: 1, y: 1, z: 1))] )) let testGesture = TapGesture() .onEnded { value in print("Tapped") } testEntity.components.set(GestureComponent(testGesture)) let dragGesture = DragGesture() .onEnded { value in print("Dragged") } testEntity.components.set(GestureComponent(dragGesture)) content.add(testEntity) }
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434
Jul ’25
Roblox freezing on MacOS 26.1 Beta
After updating to MacOS 26.1 I encountered an issue that Roblox tends to freeze quite often for 10 - 60 seconds at most, this is really annoying that it is doing this as i play the game a lot. My theory is that it is like a driver issue with metal or something, I have reinstalled MacOS, reinstalled the game and lowed the performance manually but nothing is working. Wondering if you could help, when it will be fixed and if others are having the same issue. Many thanks, William.
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973
Oct ’25
Xcode Metal Trace
Code is download from apple official metal4 sample [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/metal/drawing-a-triangle-with-metal-4?language=objc] enable metal gpu trace in macOS schema and trace a frame in Xcode. Xcode may show segment fault on App from some 'GTTrace' function when click trace button. When replay a .gputrace file, Xcode may crash , throw an internal error or a XPC error. The example code using old metal-renderer can trace without any problem and everything works fine. Test Environment: Xcode Version 26.2 (17C52) macOS 26.2 (25C56) M1 Pro 16GB A2442
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505
Jan ’26
Multiply exr lightmap in Reality Composer Pro Shader Graph
I’m trying to use EXR lightmaps to overlay baked lighting on top of a base texture in the RCP Shader Graph. When I multiply an EXR image set to Image(float) with an 8-bit base texture, the output becomes Image(float). I can’t connect that to the BaseColor input on the UnlitSurface node, since it only accepts Color3f. I expected to be able to use a Convert node between the Multiply node and the BaseColor input, but when I do that, the result becomes black and white instead of the expected outcome: the EXR multiplied with the base texture using a baseline value of 1, where values below 1 in the EXR would darken the base texture and values above 1 would brighten it. Is there any documentation on how to properly overlay a 32-bit EXR lightmap in the RCP Shader Graph, or is the black-and-white output from the Convert node a bug?
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1.1k
Jan ’26
Metal 4: When is it ok to dealloc a MTLBuffer's memory
I have something like this drawing in an MTKView (see at bottom). I am finding it difficult to figure out when can the Swift-land resources used in making the MTLBuffer(s) be released? Below, for example, is it ok if args goes out of scope (or is otherwise deallocated) at point 1, 2, or 3? Or perhaps even earlier, as soon as argsBuffer has been created? I have been reading through various articles such as Setting resource storage modes Choosing a resource storage mode for Apple GPUs Copying data to a private resource but it's a lot to absorb and I haven't been really able to find an authoritative description of the required lifetime of the resources in CPU land. I should mention that this is Metal 4 code. In previous versions of Metal, the MTLCommandBuffer had the ability to add a completion handler to be called by the GPU after it has finished running the commands in the buffer but in Metal 4 there is no such thing (it it were even needed for the purpose I am interested in). Any advice and/or pointers to the definitive literature will be appreciated. guard let argsBuffer = device.makeBuffer(bytes: &args,... argumentTable.setAddress(argsBuffer.gpuAddress, ... encoder.setArgumentTable(argumentTable, stages: .vertex) // encode drawing renderEncoder.draw... ... encoder.endEncoding() // 1 commandBuffer.endCommandBuffer() // 2 commandQueue.waitForDrawable(drawable) commandQueue.commit([commandBuffer]) // 3 commandQueue.signalDrawable(drawable) drawable.present()
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236
Jan ’26
Apple Unity plugin issue
I use unity 2020.3.48f1 to develop a game; trying to implement Apple Services integration I use Apple unity plugins(https://github.com/apple/unityplugins) Using latest version of unity plugins I getting error in Unity project after plugin import It say "Not allowed platform VisionOS" When I tryed to use older version of the plugins I getting error on runtime when calling "var fetchItemsResponse = await GKLocalPlayer.Local.FetchItems();" in line 42 it drop EXC_BAD_ACCESS(code=257, address=0x0000...) error I tryed to use different commits from official repositorys and even custom branches of apple unity plugins like (https://github.com/muZZkat/unityplugins/tree/muzzkat/fix-fetch-items) but it did not help There is whole my script which trying to use apple unuity plugins using System.Threading.Tasks; using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; using System; using Apple.GameKit; using UnityEngine.UI; public class TheScript : MonoBehaviour { [SerializeField] InputField otp; string Signature; string TeamPlayerID; string Salt; string PublicKeyUrl; string Timestamp; void Start() { StartCoroutine(Call()); } private IEnumerator Call() { yield return new WaitForSeconds(5); Login(); } public async Task Login() { otp.text += $"Loginig... "; if (!Apple.GameKit.GKLocalPlayer.Local.IsAuthenticated) { try { var player = await GKLocalPlayer.Authenticate(); var localPlayer = GKLocalPlayer.Local; TeamPlayerID = localPlayer.TeamPlayerId; var fetchItemsResponse = await GKLocalPlayer.Local.FetchItems(); Signature = Convert.ToBase64String(fetchItemsResponse.GetSignature()); PublicKeyUrl = fetchItemsResponse.PublicKeyUrl; otp.text += $"Team Player ID: {TeamPlayerID} "; otp.text += $"PublicKeyUrl: {PublicKeyUrl} "; } catch(Exception e) { otp.text += $"Error: " + e.Message; } } else { Debug.Log("AppleGameCenter player already logged in."); } } async Task SignInWithAppleGameCenterAsync(string signature, string teamPlayerId, string publicKeyURL, string salt, ulong timestamp) { } }
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211
May ’25
Race conditions when changing CAMetalLayer.drawableSize?
Is the pseudocode below thread-safe? Imagine that the Main thread sets the CAMetalLayer's drawableSize to a new size meanwhile the rendering thread is in the middle of rendering into an existing MTLDrawable which does still have the old size. Is the change of metalLayer.drawableSize thread-safe in the sense that I can present an old MTLDrawable which has a different resolution than the current value of metalLayer.drawableSize? I assume that setting the drawableSize property informs Metal that the next MTLDrawable offered by the CAMetalLayer should have the new size, right? Is it valid to assume that "metalLayer.drawableSize = newSize" and "metalLayer.nextDrawable()" are internally synchronized, so it cannot happen that metalLayer.nextDrawable() would produce e.g. a MTLDrawable with the old width but with the new height (or a completely invalid resolution due to potential race conditions)? func onWindowResized(newSize: CGSize) { // Called on the Main thread metalLayer.drawableSize = newSize } func onVsync(drawable: MTLDrawable) { // Called on a background rendering thread renderer.renderInto(drawable: drawable) }
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530
Dec ’25
RealityKit animation with bindTarget: .opacity doesn't work
I want to fade objects in and out, and while setting an entity's OpacityComponent works, animating it doesn't seem to do anything. In the following code the second sphere should fade out, but it keeps its initial opacity. On the other hand, the animation that changes its transform works. What am I doing wrong? class ViewController: NSViewController { override func loadView() { let arView = ARView(frame: NSScreen.main!.frame) let anchor = AnchorEntity(.world(transform: matrix_identity_float4x4)) arView.scene.addAnchor(anchor) let sphere = ModelEntity(mesh: .generateSphere(radius: 0.5)) anchor.addChild(sphere) sphere.components.set(OpacityComponent(opacity: 0.1)) let sphere2 = ModelEntity(mesh: .generateSphere(radius: 0.5)) sphere2.position = .init(x: 0.2, y: 0, z: 0) anchor.addChild(sphere2) sphere2.components.set(OpacityComponent(opacity: 0.1)) sphere.playAnimation(try! AnimationResource.makeActionAnimation(for: FromToByAction(to: 0, timing: .linear), duration: 1, bindTarget: .opacity)) sphere.playAnimation(try! AnimationResource.makeActionAnimation(for: FromToByAction(to: Transform(translation: SIMD3(x: 0.1, y: 0, z: 0)), timing: .linear), duration: 1, bindTarget: .transform)) view = arView } }
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1w
You cannot debug in simulator
I can't create any breakpoint in my Xcode after I upgraded to macOS 15.4 macOS: Version 15.4 (24E248) visionOS Simulator: 2.3 Xcode: Version 16.2 (16C5032a) My app works well without any breakpoints. But if I create any breakpoint it shows me this: Couldn't find the Objective-C runtime library in loaded images. Message from debugger: The LLDB RPC server has crashed. You may need to manually terminate your process. The crash log is located in ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports and has a prefix 'lldb-rpc-server'. Please file a bug and attach the most recent crash log.
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Apr ’25
How to Apple Unity Plugins
When running my game in the Unity Editor on Windows platform I get an error: DllNotFoundException: GameKitWrapper assembly:<unknown assembly> type:<unknown type> member:(null) Apple.GameKit.DefaultNSErrorHandler.Init () (at ./Library/PackageCache/com.apple.unityplugin.gamekit@0abcad546f73/Source/DefaultHandlers.cs:35) This is because GameKitWrapper dynamically linked library is not available under Windows platform. Besides, "Apple Build Settings" are declared under UNITY_EDITOR_OSX and also not available under Windows platform. Does anyone managed to solve this?
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573
Jul ’25
Game Center Access Point does not appear on iOS 26 (Simulator)
Attempting to bring up the access point yields the following error log: [GameCenterOverlayService] Failed to create GameOverlayUI Dashboard Remote Proxy [GameCenterOverlayService] Could not create endpoint for service name: com.apple.GameOverlayUI.dashboard-service [GameCenterOverlayService] Failed to create GameOverlayUI Dashboard Remote Proxy [GameCenterOverlayService] Could not create endpoint for service name: com.apple.GameOverlayUI.dashboard-service [GameCenterOverlayService] Failed to create GameOverlayUI Dashboard Remote Proxy [GameCenterOverlayService] Failed to create GameOverlayUI Dashboard Remote Proxy The same code (which is a single line setting 'active' to true) works on physical devices and on the simulator in iOS 18.6 I haven't been able to find any mention of this issue online. Any suggestions or help greatly appreciated.
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807
Feb ’26
Custom GCController subclass for new hardware?
Hi all, Wondering how I would go about creating a plugin/class to support a new (physical/hardware) device with the game controller framework? Between GCVirtualController on iOS and the "KeyboardAndMouseSupport.bundle" I see inside GameController.framework on my Mac, it looks like the framework must be designed to support this but I can't find any documentation. Thanks!
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947
Jan ’26
Help Request! How to Render Models with SubMeshes Using Metal 4?
Hi, I'm Beginner with Metal 4 and Model I/O 🥺. I can render simple models with just one mesh, but when I try to render models with SubMeshes, nothing shows up on screen. Can anyone help me figure out how to properly render models with multiple submeshes? I think I'm not iterating through them correctly or maybe missing some buffers setup. Here's what I have so far: https://www.icloud.com.cn/iclouddrive/0a6x_NLwlWy-herPocExZ8g3Q#LoadModel
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298
Nov ’25
Request to restore full ICC profile support (LUT-based display profiles) in macOS ColorSync
Dear Apple Color Management Team, I’m a professional visual creator working on color-critical photo and graphic projects using macOS (currently 26.1 Tahoe). In recent macOS releases, LUT-based ICC display profiles (such as XYZ LUT + Matrix types generated by DisplayCAL or professional spectrophotometers) can no longer be installed or activated via ColorSync. This limitation significantly affects professional workflows in photography, graphic design, prepress, and video color grading — fields that rely on precise display profiling. The current workaround (converting LUT profiles to simple shaper/matrix ICC v2) results in less accurate tone response and color reproduction, particularly in the dark range and wide-gamut displays. I kindly request Apple to restore or re-enable the ability to install and use ICC v2/v4 LUT-based display profiles under ColorSync, as was possible on macOS Monterey and Ventura. This would allow professionals to continue using trusted calibration tools such as DisplayCAL, X-Rite i1Profiler, and Calibrite Profiler to achieve accurate color management. macOS is widely used in professional creative industries, and restoring this feature would be a huge help for countless photographers, designers, and colorists. Thank you for your attention and commitment to professional users. Best regards, Richárd Deutsch Professional Photographer https://riccio.hu/ MacBook Pro (M4 Pro, macOS 26.1)
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1.6k
Dec ’25
Float64 (Double Precision) Support on MPS with PyTorch on Apple Silicon?
Hi everyone, This project uses PyTorch on an Apple Silicon Mac (M1/M2/etc.), and the goal is to use the MPS backend for GPU acceleration, notes Apple Developer. However, the workflow depends on Float64 (double-precision) floating-point numbers for certain computations, notes PyTorch Forums. The error "Cannot convert a MPS Tensor to float64 dtype as the MPS framework doesn't support float64. Please use float32 instead" has been encountered, notes GitHub. It seems that the MPS backend doesn't currently support Float64 for direct GPU computation. Questions for the community: Are there any known workarounds or best practices for handling Float64-dependent operations when using the MPS backend with PyTorch? For those working with high-precision tasks on Apple Silicon, what strategies are being used to balance performance with the need for Float64? Offloading to the CPU is an option, and it's of interest to know if there are any specific techniques or libraries within the Apple ecosystem that could streamline this process while aiming for optimal performance. Any insights, tips, or experiences would be appreciated. Thanks in advance, Jonaid MacBook Pro M3 Max
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475
Oct ’25
The delay issue of 4G TCP connection for iPhone 17 in China's mobile network
Reproduce Same SIM card with 4G, same testing location, connected to the same server, xcode debugging game applications, network/profile retrotransmitted, Avg round trip to view data iPhone17, Turn off 4G and turn on WiFi. All the above indicators are acceptable iPhone17, Turn on 4G, turn off WiFi, retry with retransmission and very high Avg round trip iPhone14-16, Turn on 4G and turn off WiFi. All the above indicators are acceptable App Unity3d project .netframe4.0 C# Socket Other Many developers in Chinese forums have provided feedback on this issue
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792
Oct ’25