The iPhone 17’s front camera with the new 18MP square sensor and iOS 26’s Center Stage feature can auto-rotate between portrait and landscape like the native iOS Camera app.
Is there a Swift or AVFoundation API that allows developers to manually control front camera orientation in the same way the native Camera app does? Or is this auto-rotation strictly handled by the system without public API access?
Photos & Camera
RSS for tagExplore technical aspects of capturing high-quality photos and videos, including exposure control, focus modes, and RAW capture options.
Selecting any option will automatically load the page
Post
Replies
Boosts
Views
Activity
The introduction of PHBackgroundResourceUploadExtension is a welcome addition in iOS 26.1. I wonder however, how to attach a debugger and actually get the system to call the process() method of the extension. I tried to run the extension both inside photos app (and also the main app for testing), but when I take a photo or add photos to the library (saving), the process() method does never get called. Any hints would be appreciated to debug the PHBackgroundResourceUploadExtension during development.
Hi,
I’m trying to implement the new PhotoKit PHBackgroundResourceUploadExtension. I created the extension, enabled full photo library access in the host app, and registered the extension point using the string: com.apple.photos.background-upload.
However, when I attempted to enable the extension with:
try library.setUploadJobExtensionEnabled(true)
I received the following error:
Error Domain=PHPhotosErrorDomain Code=-1 "(null)"
This happens when running the app on Xcode 26.1 and 26.2 Beta, using the iPhone 17 Pro Max simulator (iOS 26.1 and 26.2).
My question is: Is this extension supported on the simulator?
I’m asking because at the moment it’s difficult for me to test this on a physical device.
Also, What's the meaning of the error?
Thanks.
Hello, We are trying to use the new Background Upload Extension to improve uploads of assets (Photos, Live Photos, Videos) in the background in our application.
1-The assets have finished uploading, but I'm unable to retrieve successful records using PHAssetResourceUploadJob.fetchJobs(action: .acknowledge, options: nil). When will the successful records be returned?
2-How to retrieve the system's pending tasks ? We want to cancel tasks handed over to the system when returning to the main app to avoid duplicate resource uploads.
3-When we set UploadJobExtensionEnabled = true, will tasks handed over to the system still execute after returning to the main app? Do we need to set UploadJobExtensionEnabled = false upon returning to the main app? If we set UploadJobExtensionEnabled = false, will previously submitted upload tasks be cleared?
Topic:
Media Technologies
SubTopic:
Photos & Camera
Hello, We are trying to use the new Background Upload Extension to improve uploads of assets (Photos, Live Photos, Videos) in the background in our application.
1-The assets have finished uploading, but I'm unable to retrieve successful records using PHAssetResourceUploadJob.fetchJobs(action: .acknowledge, options: nil). When will the successful records be returned?
2-How to retrieve the system's pending tasks? We want to cancel tasks handed over to the system when returning to the main app to avoid duplicate resource uploads.
3-When we set UploadJobExtensionEnabled = true, will tasks handed over to the system still execute after returning to the main app? Do we need to set UploadJobExtensionEnabled = false upon returning to the main app? If we set UploadJobExtensionEnabled = false, will previously submitted upload tasks be cleared?
Topic:
Media Technologies
SubTopic:
Photos & Camera
I am developing an iOS camera app that can record video directly to external storage connected to an iPhone.
To detect whether an external USB storage device is connected and to obtain its URL, I am considering using AVExternalStorageDeviceDiscoverySession.
However, when checking support using AVExternalStorageDeviceDiscoverySession.isSupported, I observe that it returns true only on Pro model iPhones, and false on non-Pro models in my environment.
I have reviewed Apple’s official documentation, but I could not find any clear description of the supported devices or requirements (for example, whether this API is limited to Pro models or requires specific hardware capabilities).
I would appreciate any information regarding the following points:
●The actual requirements for AVExternalStorageDeviceDiscoverySession to be supported
Device limitations (Pro vs non-Pro models)
Hardware requirements (USB controller, external recording capability, etc.)
iOS version dependencies
●Whether support for non-Pro models is planned in the future
Tested environments
iPhone 16 Pro (iOS 18.7.1) → isSupported == true
iPhone 16e (iOS 26.2) → isSupported == false
iPhone 17 (iOS 26.2) → isSupported == false
iPhone Air (iOS 26.2) → isSupported == false
If anyone has observed similar behavior or has official information from Apple regarding this API, I would greatly appreciate your insights.
I am developing an iOS camera app that can record video directly to external storage connected to an iPhone.
To detect whether an external USB storage device is connected and to obtain its URL, I am considering using AVExternalStorageDeviceDiscoverySession.
However, when checking support using AVExternalStorageDeviceDiscoverySession.isSupported, I observe that it returns true only on Pro model iPhones, and false on non-Pro models in my environment.
I have reviewed Apple’s official documentation, but I could not find any clear description of the supported devices or requirements (for example, whether this API is limited to Pro models or requires specific hardware capabilities).
I would appreciate any information regarding the following points:
①The actual requirements for AVExternalStorageDeviceDiscoverySession to be supported
Device limitations (Pro vs non-Pro models)
Hardware requirements (USB controller, external recording capability, etc.)
iOS version dependencies
②Whether support for non-Pro models is planned in the future
Tested environments
iPhone 16 Pro (iOS 18.7.1) → isSupported == true
iPhone 16e (iOS 26.2) → isSupported == false
iPhone 17 (iOS 26.2) → isSupported == false
iPhone Air (iOS 26.2) → isSupported == false
If anyone has observed similar behavior or has official information from Apple regarding this API, I would greatly appreciate your insights.
Hi everyone,
I’m seeing recurring internal AVFoundation camera logs on iOS 26.2 and I’m trying to understand whether this is expected behavior or a regression in the capture pipeline.
These logs appear shortly after starting an AVCaptureSession, while video frames are being delivered, and also when the camera is stopped or the capture session is torn down.
<<<< FigXPCUtilities >>>> signalled err=-17281 at <>:302
<<<< FigCaptureSourceRemote >>>> Fig assert: "err == 0 " at bail (FigCaptureSourceRemote.m:569) - (err=-17281)
Even in this clean, minimal setup, the same logs appear on iOS 26.2
The exact same logic did not produce these logs on iOS 18.x.
To rule out issues caused by my own code, GPT created a minimal SwiftUI example from scratch.
My primary interest is to perform real-time processing on the video frames delivered by the camera (via AVCaptureVideoDataOutput), for tasks such as analysis, computer vision, or custom frame handling, while simultaneously displaying the live preview.
Thanks in advance for any insight.
Example Code