[HN Gopher] If you care about security you might want to move th...
___________________________________________________________________
If you care about security you might want to move the iPhone Camera
app
Author : jgrahamc
Score : 140 points
Date : 2025-12-28 18:28 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.jgc.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.jgc.org)
| pirates wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Yeah, control centre also works, but that requires using
| 2 hands to do comfortably.
| fnoff wrote:
| I swipe down to see the notifications/lock screen, then
| right to access the camera.
| supermatt wrote:
| sure, but with typical one-handed operation you cant
| reach the top of the screen to swipe down.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Um. 240 is a multiple of 60.
| kgen wrote:
| Because it's on the homescreen in the default layout and a
| large number of people don't change their defaults?
| ashleyn wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| 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_ wrote:
| I think this is more of an Apple specific hack to get latency
| down; boot the cameras up as early as possible.
| varun_ch wrote:
| Can third party apps use this to speed up their use of camera
| hardware too?
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| I doubt it - Apple has a bad habit of putting in specific
| behaviors for certain home screen icons in Springboard
| (consider the clock and calendar icons) which are tied to
| the app identity but executed by Springboard.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I think capacitive touchscreens always did? It was never
| reliable enough or something. The panels generate scanned
| strength maps for the whole displays. Values for locations that
| aren't being touched aren't zeroes.
| gyomu wrote:
| Yes, but it's a couple mm at most and not exposed as a public
| API.
| GranPC wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Phone camera covers have been available for years.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| 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/
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| And yet if you have your phone on you, you can still record
| everything that was said...
| brewdad wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Can't they just sell a case that can be locked and covers the
| camera holes?
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| There are so many things that would have to go wrong for a
| third party app to surreptitiously activate your camera and
| pick up images in the background on iOS, this is tin foil hat
| level concern.
|
| 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.
| brewdad wrote:
| You ever see The Accountant? That scene where he goes home
| and ups the stimulation to 13/10? I live my life in that
| world. Good luck getting any useful intel from my phone's
| microphone.
|
| https://youtu.be/Mb8krWbv1CI?t=62
| fastasucan wrote:
| >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.
|
| Or they worry about the right thing, its just not what you
| worry about.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| You trust the green dot with your heart simply because they
| wired it in series with the camera. Can't be bypassed unless
| you opened the device and bypassed the green light. This is why
| people with webcam covers on macbooks are fools: they fear and
| yet they do not care to understand what it is they fear to see
| if it is actually worth fearing.
| arm32 wrote:
| The "hack" baddies do is to only activate it for 30ms or so,
| so there's a chance you'll miss the green light.
| felurx wrote:
| The problem is that apparently, often enough that is just not
| the case.
|
| 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.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| So anyways, here's a _somewhat memorable_ incident of people
| doing the thing you claim is impossible:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISeeYou
| chuckadams wrote:
| ISeeYou went well beyond turning off the light, it also
| came with arbitrary code execution: https://www.usenix.org/
| conference/usenixsecurity14/technical...
| miladyincontrol wrote:
| I'd be far more worried about an ability for 3rd parties to
| record audio at any moment than for them to be able to record
| video of what's likely my pocket or desk surface at any given
| moment.
|
| Same concern of many I have with laptops and theoretical webcam
| recording. Theres far worse things they could be stealthily
| doing.
| duxup wrote:
| >haven't seen any of those for smartphones
|
| Many phone cases do. Under the idea that you're protecting the
| camera, but it blocks it none the less.
| treetalker wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| Yes, maybe hover wasn't the best word.
| tosh wrote:
| touch + swipe away to cancel app opening
| solarkraft wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Hovering does not do anything. They mean pressing and dragging
| your finger away from the icon.
| Havoc wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| NotPractical wrote:
| 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).
| sehugg wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| 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.
| samlosodesign wrote:
| 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_ wrote:
| Anyone else find that the iPhone camera app crashes about half
| the time these days? It's killing me...
| clcaev wrote:
| I inadvertently trigger the camera all the time, perhaps due to
| sweaty hands. Thank you.
| gcr wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| ceroxylon wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Launching apps with one tap instead of two is a lot more
| important to me then the background picture.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-01-01 23:00 UTC)