If You Care About Security You Might Want to Move the Iphone Camera App
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iOS 18.3, cannot recreate this. If I long-press the icon then yeah obviously it triggers, but just “hovering” does nothing for me. Is this a new thing in 26.x?
Because if using the phone then you need to access the lock screen to use the camera?
That means hitting the power button twice (slowly so you don’t trigger the wallet) and then a long press on the camera.
Alternatively it’s just a swipe and a tap if it’s on the home screen.
Anyhow, this is all just personal preference, of course. Anyone is free to put a camera icon anywhere they please. I just personally can’t stand clutter in my home or lock screens, so I tend to keep the number of apps there to a minimum and access everything else either via Spotlight or Control Center widgets.
Half the time since updating to iOS 26 on my 13 mini, if I try to activate the camera from the lock screen the app opens but the camera fails to start and the view just stays black, and then I have to exit and try again. It's quite annoying. This does not happen with the camera app after unlocking the phone.
Rooms with these lights give me migraines. I can always tell when lights in a room are like that, and I use the 240hz slow motion on my phone to double check or figure out which specific lights are the issue.
I hate these lights and I don’t understand why places use them.
They are, but the camera stack should be detecting and compensating for that - it's pretty easy to detect, since it should be a fixed 50/60Hz depending on geographic location. You typically have to implement this filtering on all manner of light sensors.
This is easier when your lights are all in phase and also in a single frequency, but you might also have bulbs that are at different frequencies (120 vs 60) or electric hookups that go out of phase.
It’s a very tricky problem to solve and to the best of my knowledge, nobody truly has. Film lights do clever and expensive tricks to match phase but that’s not feasible in a domestic setup.
I didn't say it wasn't. I said I bet that Apple, the company that can zero-shot flat photos into high resolution 3D views, could make the flicker not show in the video if they tried.
I keep opening my phone "favorites" section and it erroneously reports no favorites. They either eventually load after seconds+ or I have to force close to get them to show.
probably. it is a TikTok world after all. or, pretty sure it's on the home screen by default and no one probably bothers to move it.
Actually of course yes, every capacitive touchscreen has basic hover capabilities in some form, it’s just a fairly narrow range (a few mm at most) and not exposed as a public API.
It seems we all learned to stop worrying and love the cameras.
Here's one vendor https://noncam.com/
But the sticker seem generic, so i bet someone can prepare it before hand if they really want.
It’s also hilarious how many people worry about covering up their camera on the laptop not thinking that the microphone can pick up much more information in the surrounding area - again worrying about the wrong thing.
Also see, not using biometric security because in the US, police can’t legally make you give up your password - even though police are not above rubber hose decryption, judges hold people in contempt indefinitely and iPhone and Android phones are laughable insecure after first unlock after rebooting your phone.
https://youtu.be/Mb8krWbv1CI?t=62
Or they worry about the right thing, its just not what you worry about.
On laptops, the LED is not powered with the camera, but controlled by it. And on smartphones, if it's a green dot on the display it can obviously be bypassed in different ways given the right vulnerabilities.
Also, aside from that, your condescending attitude is frustrating.
Same concern of many I have with laptops and theoretical webcam recording. Theres far worse things they could be stealthily doing.
Many phone cases do. Under the idea that you're protecting the camera, but it blocks it none the less.
I also think it’s quite smart of them to do this to improve UX, which I really care about.
It’s also yet another small example of them making full use of owning the platform in ways I am assuming other players can’t (which might irk you depending on your beliefs around platform economics).
Like others I can't get this replicated either.
And even if I did not sure I'd care. My iphone has so much information on me already an extra 500ms of camera on seems pretty immaterial compared to other risks (like tracker in your pocket 24/7, constantly leaking info to god knows what app's servers etc)
i.e. I think it's sending my message to the server continuously, and updating the GPU state with each token (chunk of text) that comes in.
Or maybe their set up is just that good and doesn't actually need any tricks or optimizations? Either way that's very impressive.
Then of course the damage control started --and those always turning a blind eye to the state's wrongdoings are surely going to still damage control this--: "oh but Jack is the nephew of the cousin of that engineer at this company and historically they helped us write one of the first app using the camera".
Or whatever bullshit nonsense explanation they came up with.
If you ask me: Jack's Petrolhead Garage (name I made up) was a NSA front and you can shove your excuses where the light doesn't shine.
My 16 has a light for camera and anther for mic. No idea if it’s an LED.
You got a source for that? Or a clarification about which iphone version you are talkng about? Because on my iphone 15 the green indicator light next to the camera is not an LED but a a UI element on the screen. Source: I put my phone under a microscope just now and can see the individual pixels in this supposed "LED". Happy to provide the image if interested.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
Compromising the camera dot on modern iOS requires compromising SPTM, which is equivalent to a full jailbreak. Most modern iOS spyware doesn't actually go as far as that, it just does enough exploitation to get the data they want.
None of this applies to macOS, which doesn't use SPTM, because the whole point of SPTM is to enforce iOS code signing and lockdown rules.
Also, while we are at it, why can't I disable network access entirely for some apps? If I have a game that doesn't need the internet then it doesn't need the internet and I don't want it to have access to the internet, ever. I have been putting my phone in airplane mode just to use some of the apps and not have them phone home. This is a clearly missing (intentionally not added?) privacy feature.
Agreed, the only reason we don’t have a streamlined version of Little Snitch (very flexible network monitor) built in to the OS is that it’d destroy billions of revenue for the advertising industry.
Excellent.
What hidden consequences am I missing? I don’t see a downside.
I spent too much time fortifying devices and blocking their shit from getting in.
If it damages the the OS, that’s a problem for me on a Mac/ios but not so much with Ubuntu.
It’s not that long ago that I was paying for OS updates (that seems wild, I had to go and check). If it went back to that and I had no ads, it would be a straight win.
You don't, Apple does :)
I've heard that native apps are more secure than webapps, but in my experience Firefox is a more reliable steward of security, and App permissions are too obscure to really understand: it is harder to make a malicious webapp than it is to make a malicious native app. Is that a fair statement?
This is possible in GrapheneOS and is super nice. I use a keyboard app that I like but disable network access to ensure that it doesn't send private data anywhere.
But it's not very useful in practice: if an application doesn't need networking for its core functionality, then there usually is an open-source equivalent that does not use the network in the first place. The few applications that lack a good open-source equivalent (public transportation, proprietary messaging protocols, banking) don't do anything useful without network access.
Apple kind of do this in China. Each app on Chinese iPhone needs to ask for permission when they access WiFi for the first time. Combine with cellular blocking, you can effectively block internet access for an app.
I’m in the EU on holiday. It’s amazing how quickly you get used to the damn cookie popup that appears on every single site. Having it for apps wouldn’t seem likely to be more intrusive.
I don't have the camera app in my app grid, but sometimes I see the green dot and have no idea what is triggering it. I even disabled the camera permission for all apps and started to turn it on from scratch only for apps I find necessary, but didn't know what was triggering it.
I am not why this logging thingy isn't enabled by default, but I am very happy it's possible to turn it on.
Putting your finger there while swiping up triggers the camera.
So for me I get this green dot every time I unlock my camera which is very annoying and feels like a privacy issue.
Maybe that's the reason I sometimes get a green dot when I am unlocking my phone.
Tyvm for sharing this. IIRC, it's possible to change the camera icon in the lock screen to something else. Since I never use this button (I am one of those weirdos that use the camera control button instead), I think I'll change to something else.
Of course, a hardware switch is always more secure.
It's a signal that I eventually got used to and the fact that it makes me alert for even a couple of seconds, I consider that a plus.
That's looks like pre-warming being used to speed up camera launch.
It has been available since iOS 15 if you're curious.
- https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/about-the-ap...
edit: Is this actual "hover without touching screen", which is what I was shocked about, or is this more like "finger passes over the icon while swiping between pages"?
From a phone getting taken from your hand perspective, this is the first thing they will change.
If you use your phone and take photos with it, then what difference does it make that it uses the camera when you unlock it? If your phone is compromised, you're already cooked.
I just use the side button or the pulldown screen.