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.
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.
> 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
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?
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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 …
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"?
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.
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.
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/
And yet if you have your phone on you, you can still record everything that was said…
Phone camera covers have been available for years.
> 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
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?
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.
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.
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).
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.
I think this is more of an Apple specific hack to get latency down; boot the cameras up as early as possible.
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.
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 …
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"?
Hovering does not do anything. They mean pressing and dragging your finger away from the icon.
“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