8 ms·

If you care about security you might want to move the iPhone Camera app

260 points by jgrahamc 10mo ago

pirates 10mo ago
> if you hover your finger over the Camera app icon without actually opening the app, the camera starts operating iOS 18.3, cannot recreate this. If I long-press the icon then yeah obviously it triggers, but just “hovering” does nothing for me. In addition, if I put my finger on the camera app icon and then swipe pages it doesn’t trigger the dot either. Is this a new thing in 26.x? Edit: actually there is a timing sweet spot on the swiping that I can get to do it, but still nothing with just pure hovering
- myrandomcomment 10mo ago
  No issue making this happen on IOS 26. Camera was lower left icon exactly where I touch go swipe, holding phone in left hand.Put finger down and swiped, green light on. Moved it to the right side.
- arachnid92 10mo ago
  I couldn’t get it to trigger until I opened the camera app and made sure to switch to the front facing camera before exiting. After doing that I was able to consistently trigger the indicator when swiping across and long-pressing the icon. EDIT: it also only seems to happen if the camera icon is on one of your Home Screen pages. I haven’t been able to reproduce the behavior when swiping across the icon while in the App Library. Wonder why they decided to do it that way? Do most people keep a camera icon on their Home Screen? That would be baffling to me. Why clutter your Home Screen when you can so easily access the camera from the lock screen or by using the physical camera button on newer iPhones?
  - supermatt 10mo ago
    > Why clutter your Home Screen when you can so easily access the camera from the lock screen 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.
    - arachnid92 10mo ago
      Fair enough, but then I can think of an even better place to put the icon: the control center that is a single swipe away from any screen in the OS. This is all moot in newer iPhones tho, as the physical camera button in the lower right is the easiest and fastest way to get to the camera. 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.
      - supermatt 10mo ago
        Yeah, control centre also works, but that requires using 2 hands to do comfortably.
    - fnoff 10mo ago
      I swipe down to see the notifications/lock screen, then right to access the camera.
      - supermatt 10mo ago
        sure, but with typical one-handed operation you cant reach the top of the screen to swipe down.
  - BugsJustFindMe 10mo ago
    > Why clutter your Home Screen when you can so easily access the camera from the lock screen 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.
    - DHPersonal 10mo ago
      Do you also have the slow-motion bug where every second or so a frame or two gets dropped, resulting in stutters in the video?
      - BugsJustFindMe 10mo ago
        Hmm, I don't think so, but I do get the awful indoor lighting flicker when shooting slow-mo at 240fps that completely ruins indoor videos, and it really seems like Apple could just fix that if they cared at all.
        snailmailman 9mo ago
        I’m pretty sure that’s because the lights are actually flickering. The lights are the issue not the camera. 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.
        swiftcoder 9mo ago
        > I’m pretty sure that’s because the lights are actually flickering 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.
  - kgen 9mo ago
    Because it's on the homescreen in the default layout and a large number of people don't change their defaults?
  - snorbleck 9mo ago
    > Do most people keep a camera icon on their Home Screen? That would be baffling to me. 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.
- crazygringo 9mo ago
  "Hover" doesn't exist on touchscreen devices, in the physical sense of holding your finger above the screen without touching. It only exists with a pointer, when you're using some kind of mouse or trackpad. So it's ambiguous and confusing language. They should have said "when you hold your finger down on".
ashleyn 10mo ago
Wait, iphones now support detection of finger hover? I remember hearing about iOS introducing software support for this, presumably for when the hardware can catch up. But never heard of it actually being implemented.
- concinds 10mo ago
  Of course not. Only tapping. But the camera hardware gets booted up as soon as you tap the icon, without waiting to see if the tap is a swipe, and without waiting for you to lift your finger (which is when other apps would open).
  - gyomu 9mo ago
    > Of course not 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.
    - lofaszvanitt 9mo ago
      Samsung phones excel in this.
- nozzlegear 10mo ago
  There's an API in iOS/iPadOS named UIHoverGestureRecognizer, but it only detects hover from cursors and from the Apple Pencil. The Apple Pencil hover is neat and actual "hover" detection in the way you're thinking; it can be detected up to 12mm away from the screen. But right now there's no actual detection for finger hover, even though Apple patented a technique for it almost 10 years ago.
- stefan_ 10mo ago
  I think this is more of an Apple specific hack to get latency down; boot the cameras up as early as possible.
  - varun_ch 10mo ago
GranPC 10mo ago
Beyond hover detection causing the app to preload (TIL that's apparently a thing? Can anyone confirm?), another case I've seen is trying to slide up to unlock but accidentally triggering the lock screen camera for a millisecond or two, which also causes the indicator to linger for a few seconds. 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"?
bar000n 10mo ago
When i think about it, I would be absolutely terrified by smartphone cameras. Think laptop accessories that cover the webcam - haven't seen any of those for smartphones. Yet we trust a green dot with all our heart nowadays. Back in the day when cameras started showing up on mobile phones there were even versions of popular business feature phones that lacked the camera (Nokia E51 if i recall correctly), probably triggered by requirements of clients with strict information security standards. It seems we all learned to stop worrying and love the cameras.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 10mo ago
  Phone camera covers have been available for years.
- dghlsakjg 10mo ago
  Some industries still require camera-less phones, and there are companies who make them, or more interestingly, modify existing iphones! Here's one vendor https://noncam.com/ https://noncam.com/
  - raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
    And yet if you have your phone on you, you can still record everything that was said…
    - brewdad 10mo ago
      My wife worked in a facility that didn't allow phone cameras. You had to check it in anytime you went into one of the secure areas or prove you had one of their phones that had the camera disabled if you were important enough to require being contactable. While I'm sure one or more of the thousands of employees managed to leak some valuable info through conversations, pictures would have been worth 1000x as much if not more.
  - amelius 9mo ago
    Can't they just sell a case that can be locked and covers the camera holes?
treetalker 10mo ago
Trying to decide whether I'm taken aback more at the green dot when touching the camera icon during a swipe, or at my own failure to notice it before …
pjot 10mo ago
“Hover” seems to be causing some confusion. It’s more of a “shallow” press. Like the opposite of “pressing into” when 3D Touch was a thing
- jgrahamc 10mo ago
  Yes, maybe hover wasn't the best word.
  - ryandrake 9mo ago
    Wild how a single poor word choice can derail so much of HN's comments into the kind of nit-picking we're seeing here. Thanks for correcting! We'll probably have much better comments here because of it.
    - jgrahamc 9mo ago
      Sure, but I didn't express myself clearly enough and HN was a great editor :-)
- tosh 10mo ago
  touch + swipe away to cancel app opening
solarkraft 10mo ago
I think it’s so smart of them to do this to improve UX, which I really care about. You can just tell they had a creative workshop around optimizing camera startup time (which is super important to optimize and one of the many reasons I own an iPhone!). I’m happy to see them being so open about it in the privacy report. It shows that it’s a real priority for them: It would’ve been easier to hide this as an implementation detail and not have people wonder about it. Another big reason to own an iPhone. However, it is yet another example of them making full use of owning the platform in ways I assume other players can’t. The Apple camera app will always start faster than others, which is a loss for customization and competition.
- Footprint0521 9mo ago
  Yeah but also if they did make that an API imagine apps abusing it… instagram posts abusing HDR is bad enough as it is lol
iknowstuff 10mo ago
Hovering does not do anything. They mean pressing and dragging your finger away from the icon.
- csomar 9mo ago
  If you very gently and shortly press the button, it'll not open the camera app. Confusing to be honest.
Havoc 10mo ago
>Because hovering a finger on the Camera app icon is enough, 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)
- jgrahamc 10mo ago
  I wasn't clear about what I meant by hovering: you touch the icon but then you move your finger somewhere else so the app never gets opened. I've edited the post to make this clearer.
- sxg 9mo ago
  I think you're missing the point of the post, which I actually also initially missed based on the misleading title. The author isn't saying that the camera app activating the camera and green light is a problem. The author is saying that he's unknowingly activating the camera app by simply touching the app icon, which in turn activates the green light and makes him think something nefarious is going on. However, this is a false positive that can contribute to alert fatigue and cause users to entirely ignore the green light.
  - firesteelrain 9mo ago
    I didn’t even realize there was a green dot until now.
    - sxg 9mo ago
      There's also an orange light for the microphone.
      - firesteelrain 9mo ago
        TIL
NotPractical 10mo ago
Non-preloaded apps can't access your camera feed unless they are open in the foreground (zero days aside, but you're probably not interesting enough to burn one on).
Gerald_Malloy 10mo ago
[dead]
sehugg 9mo ago
More annoying is that it's really difficult for me to unlock the phone with the side button without activating Siri. Seems like there's often a lag when waking the phone that causes a long press to be detected even with a short press.
mabedan 9mo ago
Quite sure it's done in order to speed up the camera app performance and reduce the time to first photo time. The camera module requires some tenths of a second to boot up and it makes sense to start that process at the earliest indication of user's interaction. In this case, a touch-down is a good indication, even if user ends up swiping instead of touch-up. The same thing happens in the lock screen, if you hold your finger on the lock screen and move 1 pixel to the left, the camera module starts up even if you don't finish your swipe to camera gesture.
- jgrahamc 9mo ago
  Yeah, makes total sense why they'd do it, but in my case it was increasing "alert fatigue" (why is my camera on?) and so I moved it.
- bongripper 9mo ago
  [dead]
- dfgfddfg 9mo ago
  I bet this is in the new version 26. That version is so garbage and I regret updating. 95% of the time, when I open the phone, it doesnt unlock my phone with face and I have to enter PIN. Sometimes I cant take photos also. In the browser, when I touch the address field nothing happens and I can go on and on and on. Just leave the shit as is, people. Its like if I have a screwdriver in my workshot and every other month, when I come back to use it, you change some bullshit, so I have to operate it slightly different. Fuck that
  - reddalo 9mo ago
    No, I confirm that this camera behavior also happens on iOS 16. But I agree that iOS and macOS 26 are the worst thing Apple made in a long time.
  - t0mas88 9mo ago
    Also happens on iOS 18
- 9mo ago
TacticalCoder 9mo ago
The absolute best phone-camera-wise was the SNAFU in the past where every access to the camera would turn the green light on... Except for one obscure company that happened to have a free pass. I don't remember the details and won't bother to check but it went a bit like this: "Jack's Petrolhead Garage is the only company in the world that can turn the phone's camera on WITHOUT the green light turning on". Some people eventually found out about this and it made headlines. 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.
- adastra22 9mo ago
  You got a source? Because th green light isn’t controlled by software. The LED is directly wired to the camera power. You cannot use the camera without the little green light turning on.
  - saagarjha 9mo ago
    There’s no LED on iPhone
    - lostlogin 9mo ago
      Are saying it isn’t an LED or that there isn’t a light? My 16 has a light for camera and anther for mic. No idea if it’s an LED.
      - saagarjha 9mo ago
        It's a dot on the screen
  - krisoft 9mo ago
    > Because th green light isn’t controlled by software. The LED is directly wired to the camera power. You got a source for that? Or a clarification about which iphone version you are talking about? Because on my iphone 15 the green indicator light next to the camera is not an LED but 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.
samlosodesign 9mo ago
You saved me from wiping my phone this morning - thanks. I kept seeing the dot when but the privacy report only said "camera". This gives me a lot of reassurance.
pjs_ 9mo ago
Anyone else find that the iPhone camera app crashes about half the time these days? It's killing me...
- loloquwowndueo 9mo ago
  Mine works fine.
- danielscrubs 9mo ago
  Same
clcaev 9mo ago
I inadvertently trigger the camera all the time, perhaps due to sweaty hands. Thank you.
gcr 9mo ago
I was under the impression that sophisticated iOS malware like Pegasus can access the camera without turning on the dot. This is certainly possible on MacOS.
- tyre 9mo ago
  Are you sure about this for Macs? My understanding of recentish models is that the power for the camera passes through the light, so it’s impossible to turn on the camera without the light.
- saagarjha 9mo ago
  It would require a pretty advanced exploit for this.
  - dgellow 9mo ago
    Which is what Pegasus is/was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
    - saagarjha 9mo ago
      Not really
- kmeisthax 9mo ago
  That may have been possible and even easy on older hardware but modern Apple hardware makes this way more of a pain in the ass. They have a whole separate hypervisor (SPTM), kernel, and userland running in a higher set of guarded privilege levels from the standard ARM exception levels. 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.
ceroxylon 9mo ago
I put all of my apps into category folders at the top row, so I can see my background photo that I really enjoy. Once you do this for long enough, it is jarring to see the chaotic placement of app icons all over the screen on most people's devices. Also I never use the camera app icon, I swipe left from the lock screen 99% of the time, and the remaining 1% is from things like auth apps opening it to scan QR codes for new accounts, etc.
- NetMageSCW 9mo ago
  Launching apps with one tap instead of two is a lot more important to me then the background picture.
saagarjha 9mo ago
I think iOS 26 is also just broken when it comes to the indicator, sometimes I’ve quit the Camera app and I’ve noticed the indicator will stay in use whenever I’m on Springboard. Not sure what they did this year to break it :/
- csomar 9mo ago
  If it's not a bug, then that's an information for you that the Camera is being used by whatever process is going on out there. Maybe if someone chimes in if they have knowledge about the green dot? Is it part of the OS as an app/process or does it have a parallel system independent of apps running?
  - walterbell 9mo ago
    On iPhone 16+, it uses Secure Exclave, https://9to5mac.com/2024/06/03/m4-ipad-pro-security-feature-apple-hasnt-told-anyone-about/ https://9to5mac.com/2024/06/03/m4-ipad-pro-security-feature-...
    - isodev 9mo ago
      When I dismiss the camera app, I still see green dot for a bit, then it switches to orange (microphone?) before it disappears completely. The little enclave is cute but *OS 26 has been so full of bugs that can you really say all this is working safely and as intended?
      - walterbell 9mo ago
        Apple’s new Secure Indicator Light (SIL) mechanism. When using the microphone or camera, the corresponding indicator dot is effectively rendered in hardware, making it a lot less likely that any malware or user space app would be able to access those sensors without the user’s knowledge. If this mechanism isn't working as intended, Apple pays $100,000 to $2,000,000 bounty for bugs that breach security boundaries which protect sensitive user data or sandboxes. https://security.apple.com/bounty/categories/ https://security.apple.com/bounty/categories/
halapro 9mo ago
This is such ridiculous scaremongering. 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.
csomar 9mo ago
I have noticed it but I am bit split on this: I'd rather have this indicator on every time the camera is activated in anyway rather than Apple making it more "efficient" by hiding whatever activity is happening with the camera. 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.
jmward01 9mo ago
I'm at the point where I want a pop-up for every time my phone wants to use location/camera/mic/contacts. Or at least more options to require this for individual system services/apps. 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.
- gyomu 9mo ago
  > why can't I disable network access entirely for some apps 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.
  - lostlogin 9mo ago
    > 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.
    - luplex 9mo ago
      you're missing the fact that OS developers like ads, because they want the OS to be a platform where devs can make money.
      - lostlogin 9mo ago
        I avoid ad supported apps, so if those devs move to companies that I support, it might actually help me? 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.
c16 9mo ago
While we're talking about silly(?) iOS design decisions, the one I can't get over is allowing users to change lock screen timeout without pin/faceid via Settings > Display & Brightness > Auto-lock. This should really be under Face ID & Passcode or Privacy & Security. From a phone getting taken from your hand perspective, this is the first thing they will change.
mikaelsouza 9mo ago
Thank you for sharing this. 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.
- queuep 9mo ago
  When the phone is locked, and you swipe from the bottom and upwards, you have the camera on the bottom right on the lock screen. Putting your finger there while swiping up triggers the camera. So for me I get this green dot every time I unlock my phone which is very annoying and feels like a privacy issue.
  - mikaelsouza 9mo ago
    Oh... You're totally right. I was just able to reproduce this. 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.
martini333 9mo ago
Or just go to Control Center and see that only the Camera App was using the camera...?
reorder9695 9mo ago
I would love it is my phone and laptop had hardware switches that were on the power or data lines for the camera and microphone, it's all well and good the software telling me the things aren't on but unless it's open source I can't verify that. With hardware switches someone could at least disassemble the device to ensure they were actually effective, and a software bug couldn't get around the fact that the microphone doesn't have power if the switch is open.
- jdiez17 9mo ago
  Being open source is technically not required to verify this. It’s possible to prove or disprove security claims by reverse engineering, and iOS specifically is already a popular target for professional/academic RE. Of course, a hardware switch is always more secure.
ChrisMarshallNY 9mo ago
I don’t have the app visible at all. I just use the side button or the pulldown screen.
Argonaut998 9mo ago
Also affects the camera icon on the Lock Screen (bottom right). It also affects a partial left swipe gesture too which is very easy to do when the screen is touched
juancn 9mo ago
That explains a mystery green dot I saw the other day. 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-app-launch-sequence https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/about-the-ap...
Beestie 9mo ago
A while ago, I moved everything on my iPhone home screen to screen 2 (and everything on screen 2 to screen 3, etc.) and emptied the quick access bar at the bottom (no phone app, msg app - just an empty box). There are zero icons (literally nothing) on my home screen except the wallpaper. One of the best things I've ever done on my iPhone.
- mosselman 9mo ago
  What was your reason to do this and how is it one of the best things you've done on your iPhone? I am very intrigued by the concept.
  - Beestie 9mo ago
    I felt like as soon as I opened my phone, everything on the home screen was clamoring for my attention: new text messages, new emails, new calls, new reminders, alerts, alerts alerts. Now, when I open my phone, I get a peaceful empty screen. If I scroll right, I can see the ocean of alerts (if that's what I'm ready to tackle) or I can swipe left to a screen with a few shortcuts for phone or browser (Orion). In short, I put the chaos in a box that I only open when I want to. Might sound trite but it's made a big difference. I also turned off the thing that opens the phone as soon as I pick it up. Now, half the time I pick it up, I look at, decide I can live without all the chaos and put it back in my pocket. I guess my orig post triggered because with a blank home screen, I can't accidentally activate the phone camera.
    - snowwrestler 9mo ago
      An alternate strategy is to turn off most of those alerts. When I open my home screen I see a bunch of icons, but only two of them are allowed to show the little red circle with a number in it: Phone and Messages. I picked those since I am habitually up to date on them. So the number is usually quite low, usually below 5. I also do not allow most apps to put banners on the screen (locked or unlocked), or beep, or buzz the phone. Almost all my apps have notifications turned off completely. If I want to know the status of my email, I open the email app. If I want to see what's new in Instagram, I open Instagram. Etc. But the point is, those checks happen on my schedule, not when I'm prompted.
snowwrestler 9mo ago
I hid the Camera app icon entirely and instead I get to the camera from the quick-access menu I get by swiping down from the top-right corner. (I think Apple calls this the Control Center.) I did this so that using the Camera only takes one swipe (down) no matter what screen I'm on. I just confirmed that the Control Center icon also lights up the green dot at first touch. However, incidental touches are probably more rare and unlikely in this menu.
tekno45 9mo ago
Are there any other examples of this UX pattern? Pre-loading at an precursor to user interaction.

260 points by jgrahamc 10mo ago

> if you hover your finger over the Camera app icon without actually opening the app, the camera starts operating iOS 18.3, cannot recreate this. If I long-press the icon then yeah obviously it triggers, but just “hovering” does nothing for me. In addition, if I put my finger on the camera app icon and then swipe pages it doesn’t trigger the dot either. Is this a new thing in 26.x? Edit: actually there is a timing sweet spot on the swiping that I can get to do it, but still nothing with just pure hovering

myrandomcomment 10mo ago
No issue making this happen on IOS 26. Camera was lower left icon exactly where I touch go swipe, holding phone in left hand.Put finger down and swiped, green light on. Moved it to the right side.
arachnid92 10mo ago
I couldn’t get it to trigger until I opened the camera app and made sure to switch to the front facing camera before exiting. After doing that I was able to consistently trigger the indicator when swiping across and long-pressing the icon. EDIT: it also only seems to happen if the camera icon is on one of your Home Screen pages. I haven’t been able to reproduce the behavior when swiping across the icon while in the App Library. Wonder why they decided to do it that way? Do most people keep a camera icon on their Home Screen? That would be baffling to me. Why clutter your Home Screen when you can so easily access the camera from the lock screen or by using the physical camera button on newer iPhones?
- supermatt 10mo ago
  > Why clutter your Home Screen when you can so easily access the camera from the lock screen 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.
  - arachnid92 10mo ago
    Fair enough, but then I can think of an even better place to put the icon: the control center that is a single swipe away from any screen in the OS. This is all moot in newer iPhones tho, as the physical camera button in the lower right is the easiest and fastest way to get to the camera. 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.
    - supermatt 10mo ago
      Yeah, control centre also works, but that requires using 2 hands to do comfortably.
  - fnoff 10mo ago
    I swipe down to see the notifications/lock screen, then right to access the camera.
    - supermatt 10mo ago
      sure, but with typical one-handed operation you cant reach the top of the screen to swipe down.
- BugsJustFindMe 10mo ago
  > Why clutter your Home Screen when you can so easily access the camera from the lock screen 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.
  - DHPersonal 10mo ago
    Do you also have the slow-motion bug where every second or so a frame or two gets dropped, resulting in stutters in the video?
    - BugsJustFindMe 10mo ago
      Hmm, I don't think so, but I do get the awful indoor lighting flicker when shooting slow-mo at 240fps that completely ruins indoor videos, and it really seems like Apple could just fix that if they cared at all.
      - snailmailman 9mo ago
        I’m pretty sure that’s because the lights are actually flickering. The lights are the issue not the camera. 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.
        swiftcoder 9mo ago
        > I’m pretty sure that’s because the lights are actually flickering 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.
- kgen 9mo ago
  Because it's on the homescreen in the default layout and a large number of people don't change their defaults?
- snorbleck 9mo ago
  > Do most people keep a camera icon on their Home Screen? That would be baffling to me. 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.
crazygringo 9mo ago
"Hover" doesn't exist on touchscreen devices, in the physical sense of holding your finger above the screen without touching. It only exists with a pointer, when you're using some kind of mouse or trackpad. So it's ambiguous and confusing language. They should have said "when you hold your finger down on".

ashleyn 10mo ago

Wait, iphones now support detection of finger hover? I remember hearing about iOS introducing software support for this, presumably for when the hardware can catch up. But never heard of it actually being implemented.

concinds 10mo ago
Of course not. Only tapping. But the camera hardware gets booted up as soon as you tap the icon, without waiting to see if the tap is a swipe, and without waiting for you to lift your finger (which is when other apps would open).
- gyomu 9mo ago
  > Of course not 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.
  - lofaszvanitt 9mo ago
    Samsung phones excel in this.
nozzlegear 10mo ago
There's an API in iOS/iPadOS named UIHoverGestureRecognizer, but it only detects hover from cursors and from the Apple Pencil. The Apple Pencil hover is neat and actual "hover" detection in the way you're thinking; it can be detected up to 12mm away from the screen. But right now there's no actual detection for finger hover, even though Apple patented a technique for it almost 10 years ago.
stefan_ 10mo ago
I think this is more of an Apple specific hack to get latency down; boot the cameras up as early as possible.
- varun_ch 10mo ago

GranPC 10mo ago

Beyond hover detection causing the app to preload (TIL that's apparently a thing? Can anyone confirm?), another case I've seen is trying to slide up to unlock but accidentally triggering the lock screen camera for a millisecond or two, which also causes the indicator to linger for a few seconds. 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"?

bar000n 10mo ago

When i think about it, I would be absolutely terrified by smartphone cameras. Think laptop accessories that cover the webcam - haven't seen any of those for smartphones. Yet we trust a green dot with all our heart nowadays. Back in the day when cameras started showing up on mobile phones there were even versions of popular business feature phones that lacked the camera (Nokia E51 if i recall correctly), probably triggered by requirements of clients with strict information security standards. It seems we all learned to stop worrying and love the cameras.

0cf8612b2e1e 10mo ago
Phone camera covers have been available for years.
dghlsakjg 10mo ago
Some industries still require camera-less phones, and there are companies who make them, or more interestingly, modify existing iphones! Here's one vendor https://noncam.com/ https://noncam.com/
- raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
  And yet if you have your phone on you, you can still record everything that was said…
  - brewdad 10mo ago
    My wife worked in a facility that didn't allow phone cameras. You had to check it in anytime you went into one of the secure areas or prove you had one of their phones that had the camera disabled if you were important enough to require being contactable. While I'm sure one or more of the thousands of employees managed to leak some valuable info through conversations, pictures would have been worth 1000x as much if not more.
- amelius 9mo ago
  Can't they just sell a case that can be locked and covers the camera holes?

treetalker 10mo ago

Trying to decide whether I'm taken aback more at the green dot when touching the camera icon during a swipe, or at my own failure to notice it before …

pjot 10mo ago

“Hover” seems to be causing some confusion. It’s more of a “shallow” press. Like the opposite of “pressing into” when 3D Touch was a thing

jgrahamc 10mo ago
Yes, maybe hover wasn't the best word.
- ryandrake 9mo ago
  Wild how a single poor word choice can derail so much of HN's comments into the kind of nit-picking we're seeing here. Thanks for correcting! We'll probably have much better comments here because of it.
  - jgrahamc 9mo ago
    Sure, but I didn't express myself clearly enough and HN was a great editor :-)
tosh 10mo ago
touch + swipe away to cancel app opening

solarkraft 10mo ago

I think it’s so smart of them to do this to improve UX, which I really care about. You can just tell they had a creative workshop around optimizing camera startup time (which is super important to optimize and one of the many reasons I own an iPhone!). I’m happy to see them being so open about it in the privacy report. It shows that it’s a real priority for them: It would’ve been easier to hide this as an implementation detail and not have people wonder about it. Another big reason to own an iPhone. However, it is yet another example of them making full use of owning the platform in ways I assume other players can’t. The Apple camera app will always start faster than others, which is a loss for customization and competition.

Footprint0521 9mo ago
Yeah but also if they did make that an API imagine apps abusing it… instagram posts abusing HDR is bad enough as it is lol

iknowstuff 10mo ago

Hovering does not do anything. They mean pressing and dragging your finger away from the icon.

csomar 9mo ago
If you very gently and shortly press the button, it'll not open the camera app. Confusing to be honest.

Havoc 10mo ago

>Because hovering a finger on the Camera app icon is enough, 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)

jgrahamc 10mo ago
I wasn't clear about what I meant by hovering: you touch the icon but then you move your finger somewhere else so the app never gets opened. I've edited the post to make this clearer.
sxg 9mo ago
I think you're missing the point of the post, which I actually also initially missed based on the misleading title. The author isn't saying that the camera app activating the camera and green light is a problem. The author is saying that he's unknowingly activating the camera app by simply touching the app icon, which in turn activates the green light and makes him think something nefarious is going on. However, this is a false positive that can contribute to alert fatigue and cause users to entirely ignore the green light.
- firesteelrain 9mo ago
  I didn’t even realize there was a green dot until now.
  - sxg 9mo ago
    There's also an orange light for the microphone.
    - firesteelrain 9mo ago
      TIL

NotPractical 10mo ago

Non-preloaded apps can't access your camera feed unless they are open in the foreground (zero days aside, but you're probably not interesting enough to burn one on).

Gerald_Malloy 10mo ago

[dead]

sehugg 9mo ago

More annoying is that it's really difficult for me to unlock the phone with the side button without activating Siri. Seems like there's often a lag when waking the phone that causes a long press to be detected even with a short press.

mabedan 9mo ago

Quite sure it's done in order to speed up the camera app performance and reduce the time to first photo time. The camera module requires some tenths of a second to boot up and it makes sense to start that process at the earliest indication of user's interaction. In this case, a touch-down is a good indication, even if user ends up swiping instead of touch-up. The same thing happens in the lock screen, if you hold your finger on the lock screen and move 1 pixel to the left, the camera module starts up even if you don't finish your swipe to camera gesture.

jgrahamc 9mo ago
Yeah, makes total sense why they'd do it, but in my case it was increasing "alert fatigue" (why is my camera on?) and so I moved it.
bongripper 9mo ago
[dead]
dfgfddfg 9mo ago
I bet this is in the new version 26. That version is so garbage and I regret updating. 95% of the time, when I open the phone, it doesnt unlock my phone with face and I have to enter PIN. Sometimes I cant take photos also. In the browser, when I touch the address field nothing happens and I can go on and on and on. Just leave the shit as is, people. Its like if I have a screwdriver in my workshot and every other month, when I come back to use it, you change some bullshit, so I have to operate it slightly different. Fuck that
- reddalo 9mo ago
  No, I confirm that this camera behavior also happens on iOS 16. But I agree that iOS and macOS 26 are the worst thing Apple made in a long time.
- t0mas88 9mo ago
  Also happens on iOS 18
9mo ago

TacticalCoder 9mo ago

The absolute best phone-camera-wise was the SNAFU in the past where every access to the camera would turn the green light on... Except for one obscure company that happened to have a free pass. I don't remember the details and won't bother to check but it went a bit like this: "Jack's Petrolhead Garage is the only company in the world that can turn the phone's camera on WITHOUT the green light turning on". Some people eventually found out about this and it made headlines. 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.

adastra22 9mo ago
You got a source? Because th green light isn’t controlled by software. The LED is directly wired to the camera power. You cannot use the camera without the little green light turning on.
- saagarjha 9mo ago
  There’s no LED on iPhone
  - lostlogin 9mo ago
    Are saying it isn’t an LED or that there isn’t a light? My 16 has a light for camera and anther for mic. No idea if it’s an LED.
    - saagarjha 9mo ago
      It's a dot on the screen
- krisoft 9mo ago
  > Because th green light isn’t controlled by software. The LED is directly wired to the camera power. You got a source for that? Or a clarification about which iphone version you are talking about? Because on my iphone 15 the green indicator light next to the camera is not an LED but 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.

samlosodesign 9mo ago

You saved me from wiping my phone this morning - thanks. I kept seeing the dot when but the privacy report only said "camera". This gives me a lot of reassurance.

pjs_ 9mo ago

Anyone else find that the iPhone camera app crashes about half the time these days? It's killing me...

loloquwowndueo 9mo ago
Mine works fine.
danielscrubs 9mo ago
Same

clcaev 9mo ago

I inadvertently trigger the camera all the time, perhaps due to sweaty hands. Thank you.

gcr 9mo ago

I was under the impression that sophisticated iOS malware like Pegasus can access the camera without turning on the dot. This is certainly possible on MacOS.

tyre 9mo ago
Are you sure about this for Macs? My understanding of recentish models is that the power for the camera passes through the light, so it’s impossible to turn on the camera without the light.
saagarjha 9mo ago
It would require a pretty advanced exploit for this.
- dgellow 9mo ago
  Which is what Pegasus is/was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
  - saagarjha 9mo ago
    Not really
kmeisthax 9mo ago
That may have been possible and even easy on older hardware but modern Apple hardware makes this way more of a pain in the ass. They have a whole separate hypervisor (SPTM), kernel, and userland running in a higher set of guarded privilege levels from the standard ARM exception levels. 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.

ceroxylon 9mo ago

I put all of my apps into category folders at the top row, so I can see my background photo that I really enjoy. Once you do this for long enough, it is jarring to see the chaotic placement of app icons all over the screen on most people's devices. Also I never use the camera app icon, I swipe left from the lock screen 99% of the time, and the remaining 1% is from things like auth apps opening it to scan QR codes for new accounts, etc.

NetMageSCW 9mo ago
Launching apps with one tap instead of two is a lot more important to me then the background picture.

saagarjha 9mo ago

I think iOS 26 is also just broken when it comes to the indicator, sometimes I’ve quit the Camera app and I’ve noticed the indicator will stay in use whenever I’m on Springboard. Not sure what they did this year to break it :/

csomar 9mo ago
If it's not a bug, then that's an information for you that the Camera is being used by whatever process is going on out there. Maybe if someone chimes in if they have knowledge about the green dot? Is it part of the OS as an app/process or does it have a parallel system independent of apps running?
- walterbell 9mo ago
  On iPhone 16+, it uses Secure Exclave, https://9to5mac.com/2024/06/03/m4-ipad-pro-security-feature-apple-hasnt-told-anyone-about/ https://9to5mac.com/2024/06/03/m4-ipad-pro-security-feature-...
  - isodev 9mo ago
    When I dismiss the camera app, I still see green dot for a bit, then it switches to orange (microphone?) before it disappears completely. The little enclave is cute but *OS 26 has been so full of bugs that can you really say all this is working safely and as intended?
    - walterbell 9mo ago
      Apple’s new Secure Indicator Light (SIL) mechanism. When using the microphone or camera, the corresponding indicator dot is effectively rendered in hardware, making it a lot less likely that any malware or user space app would be able to access those sensors without the user’s knowledge. If this mechanism isn't working as intended, Apple pays $100,000 to $2,000,000 bounty for bugs that breach security boundaries which protect sensitive user data or sandboxes. https://security.apple.com/bounty/categories/ https://security.apple.com/bounty/categories/

halapro 9mo ago

This is such ridiculous scaremongering. 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.

csomar 9mo ago

I have noticed it but I am bit split on this: I'd rather have this indicator on every time the camera is activated in anyway rather than Apple making it more "efficient" by hiding whatever activity is happening with the camera. 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.

jmward01 9mo ago

I'm at the point where I want a pop-up for every time my phone wants to use location/camera/mic/contacts. Or at least more options to require this for individual system services/apps. 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.

gyomu 9mo ago
> why can't I disable network access entirely for some apps 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.
- lostlogin 9mo ago
  > 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.
  - luplex 9mo ago
    you're missing the fact that OS developers like ads, because they want the OS to be a platform where devs can make money.
    - lostlogin 9mo ago
      I avoid ad supported apps, so if those devs move to companies that I support, it might actually help me? 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.

c16 9mo ago

While we're talking about silly(?) iOS design decisions, the one I can't get over is allowing users to change lock screen timeout without pin/faceid via Settings > Display & Brightness > Auto-lock. This should really be under Face ID & Passcode or Privacy & Security. From a phone getting taken from your hand perspective, this is the first thing they will change.

mikaelsouza 9mo ago

Thank you for sharing this. 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.

queuep 9mo ago
When the phone is locked, and you swipe from the bottom and upwards, you have the camera on the bottom right on the lock screen. Putting your finger there while swiping up triggers the camera. So for me I get this green dot every time I unlock my phone which is very annoying and feels like a privacy issue.
- mikaelsouza 9mo ago
  Oh... You're totally right. I was just able to reproduce this. 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.

martini333 9mo ago

Or just go to Control Center and see that only the Camera App was using the camera...?

reorder9695 9mo ago

I would love it is my phone and laptop had hardware switches that were on the power or data lines for the camera and microphone, it's all well and good the software telling me the things aren't on but unless it's open source I can't verify that. With hardware switches someone could at least disassemble the device to ensure they were actually effective, and a software bug couldn't get around the fact that the microphone doesn't have power if the switch is open.

jdiez17 9mo ago
Being open source is technically not required to verify this. It’s possible to prove or disprove security claims by reverse engineering, and iOS specifically is already a popular target for professional/academic RE. Of course, a hardware switch is always more secure.

ChrisMarshallNY 9mo ago

I don’t have the app visible at all. I just use the side button or the pulldown screen.

Argonaut998 9mo ago

Also affects the camera icon on the Lock Screen (bottom right). It also affects a partial left swipe gesture too which is very easy to do when the screen is touched

juancn 9mo ago

That explains a mystery green dot I saw the other day. 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-app-launch-sequence https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/about-the-ap...

Beestie 9mo ago

A while ago, I moved everything on my iPhone home screen to screen 2 (and everything on screen 2 to screen 3, etc.) and emptied the quick access bar at the bottom (no phone app, msg app - just an empty box). There are zero icons (literally nothing) on my home screen except the wallpaper. One of the best things I've ever done on my iPhone.

mosselman 9mo ago
What was your reason to do this and how is it one of the best things you've done on your iPhone? I am very intrigued by the concept.
- Beestie 9mo ago
  I felt like as soon as I opened my phone, everything on the home screen was clamoring for my attention: new text messages, new emails, new calls, new reminders, alerts, alerts alerts. Now, when I open my phone, I get a peaceful empty screen. If I scroll right, I can see the ocean of alerts (if that's what I'm ready to tackle) or I can swipe left to a screen with a few shortcuts for phone or browser (Orion). In short, I put the chaos in a box that I only open when I want to. Might sound trite but it's made a big difference. I also turned off the thing that opens the phone as soon as I pick it up. Now, half the time I pick it up, I look at, decide I can live without all the chaos and put it back in my pocket. I guess my orig post triggered because with a blank home screen, I can't accidentally activate the phone camera.
  - snowwrestler 9mo ago
    An alternate strategy is to turn off most of those alerts. When I open my home screen I see a bunch of icons, but only two of them are allowed to show the little red circle with a number in it: Phone and Messages. I picked those since I am habitually up to date on them. So the number is usually quite low, usually below 5. I also do not allow most apps to put banners on the screen (locked or unlocked), or beep, or buzz the phone. Almost all my apps have notifications turned off completely. If I want to know the status of my email, I open the email app. If I want to see what's new in Instagram, I open Instagram. Etc. But the point is, those checks happen on my schedule, not when I'm prompted.

snowwrestler 9mo ago

I hid the Camera app icon entirely and instead I get to the camera from the quick-access menu I get by swiping down from the top-right corner. (I think Apple calls this the Control Center.) I did this so that using the Camera only takes one swipe (down) no matter what screen I'm on. I just confirmed that the Control Center icon also lights up the green dot at first touch. However, incidental touches are probably more rare and unlikely in this menu.

tekno45 9mo ago

Are there any other examples of this UX pattern? Pre-loading at an precursor to user interaction.