Stage-2's present-on-arrival saturates CAMetalLayer's FIFO image queue whenever the stream rate runs at the panel's refresh (iOS always vsync-latches; the macOS 26 compositor latch-paces our out-of-band presents the same way): one early burst fills the queue to maximumDrawableCount and — arrivals then matching latches one-for-one — it never drains. That sticky depth is the measured 29-30 ms display stage on the 120 Hz ProMotion devices, and the full-queue regime is where host<->panel clock drift turns into the reported fixed-interval repeats/drops. The 240 Hz Studio never saturates, which is why it never showed either symptom. Stage-3 is the same pipeline with a PresentGate: at most ONE presented-but-undisplayed drawable in flight; the drawable's presented handler reopens the gate and re-signals the render thread, so the next present always takes the freshest newest-wins ring frame — the hidden queue latency becomes explicit, correct frame drops. A 100 ms stale fallback force-opens a gate whose handler never fires (the "presents aren't damage" hazard class) so a pathological system degrades visibly instead of freezing; the PUNKTFUNK_PRESENT_DEBUG `forced` counter exposes it (0 on healthy systems). Selection: the Settings > Display presenter picker now ships in release builds (stage 2 default / stage 3 experimental; the freeze-prone stage-1 diagnostic stays DEBUG-only), resolved per session with a PUNKTFUNK_PRESENTER=stage1|stage2|stage3 env override for CLI A/B. The pf-present debug line gains gated/forced/inflightMax — inflightMax is the direct image-queue-depth measurement for the A/B. Live-verified both ways against a real host at 1080p120: stage-3 holds 120/120 fps with inflightMax=1, forced=0, glass deltas p50 8.33 ms; stage-2 is behaviorally unchanged (120/120 fps, inflightMax=2 even on the wired 240 Hz setup — the saturation signal in miniature). Unit tests cover the gate (one-in-flight, stale force-open, idempotent release) and the presenter resolution (env override, release stage-1 gating); macOS tests green, iOS/tvOS xcodebuild clean. Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
punktfunk — Apple client (macOS · iOS · iPadOS · tvOS)
The native Apple app for streaming a punktfunk host to your Mac, iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV. A SwiftUI app that finds hosts on your network, pairs with a PIN, and streams at your display's own resolution and refresh rate — with VideoToolbox hardware decode and full controller support.
All the networking and protocol work — QUIC control plane, UDP data plane, GF(2¹⁶) FEC, AES-GCM,
Opus audio, cert pinning — lives in the shared Rust punktfunk-core (statically linked as
PunktfunkCore.xcframework). This package is the Swift shell: decode, present, input, and UI.
Features
- Hardware decode — VideoToolbox H.264/HEVC (plus AV1 on devices with an AV1 hardware
decoder — M3-class Macs, A17 Pro-class iPhones), with a low-latency stage-2 presenter
(
VTDecompressionSession→CAMetalLayer, presented off aCADisplayLink, ~11 ms p50) as the default and anAVSampleBufferDisplayLayerfallback. - HDR & 4:4:4 — PQ passthrough with a correct reference-white anchor, mid-session SDR↔HDR reconfiguration, and hardware-probed 4:4:4 support.
- Your display's native mode — the host builds a virtual output at exactly your WxH@Hz; mid-stream resize renegotiates without reconnecting.
- Audio both ways — Opus playback (CoreAudio, no bundled libopus) with a jitter ring, plus mic uplink; speaker/mic selectable in Settings.
- Full controller support — one selected controller forwarded as pad 0, including DualSense feedback (rumble → CoreHaptics, lightbar, player LEDs, adaptive triggers) and touchpad/motion. The virtual pad type auto-resolves from your physical controller.
- Mouse & keyboard —
GCMouse/GCKeyboardcapture with click-to-capture and a ⌃⌥⇧Q release (the cross-client Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Q; ⌘⎋ still works as the macOS/iPad toggle), plus iPad pointer lock and touch input. - Find hosts automatically — mDNS discovery (
NWBrowserover_punktfunk._udp); first connect does a one-time SPAKE2 PIN pairing (or TOFU on trusted LANs), then reconnects on a pinned, Keychain-stored identity. - Tune the stream — a fps / Mb·s / latency HUD (skew-corrected across machines), a bitrate control, a per-host network speed test with a recommended bitrate, and a host-compositor picker.
Runs from one shared codebase across macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS.
Get it
Install from the App Store / TestFlight, or build from source below. Per-device install steps and the pairing walkthrough: docs.punktfunk.unom.io/docs/install-client.
Build / run / test (on a Mac)
Requires Xcode 26.5 / Swift 6.3. First build the Rust core into an xcframework, then build the app:
rustup target add aarch64-apple-darwin x86_64-apple-darwin
bash scripts/build-xcframework.sh # → clients/apple/PunktfunkCore.xcframework
# BUILD_IOS=1 also builds the iOS slices (add the ios rustup targets)
# BUILD_TVOS=1 also builds tvOS (tier-3 targets, built from source — see below)
cd clients/apple
open Punktfunk.xcodeproj # the real app: ⌘R builds + runs Punktfunk.app
swift run PunktfunkClient # or the unbundled dev shell (CLI)
swift build && swift test # unit + loopback/remote tests (self-skip w/o a host)
tvOS slices are tier-3 Rust targets, built from source:
rustup toolchain install nightly && rustup component add rust-src --toolchain nightly.
Test against a host
# full loopback proof — builds punktfunk-host (synthetic source, runs on macOS) and streams
# byte-verified frames into the Swift client, incl. the PIN pairing ceremony:
bash test-loopback.sh
# against a real Linux host on the LAN (see the repo README "Running on this box"):
PUNKTFUNK_REMOTE_HOST=<box-ip> swift test --filter RemoteFirstLightTests # headless
PUNKTFUNK_AUTOCONNECT=<box-ip> PUNKTFUNK_MODE=1280x720x60 swift run PunktfunkClient # on glass
Project layout
PunktfunkKit(library) — the reusable pieces:PunktfunkConnection— the wrapper over the C ABI (thread-safeclose(), per-plane locks, pinning + TOFU).AnnexB/StreamView/VideoDecoder/MetalVideoPresenter— format handling, the stage-1 (AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer) and stage-2 (VTDecompressionSession→CAMetalLayer) presenters.InputCapture—GCMouse/GCKeyboard→ host VK/mouse, with fractional-delta accumulation.GamepadManager/GamepadCapture/GamepadFeedback/DualSenseTriggerEffect— controller discovery + selection, capture (buttons/axes/touchpad/motion), and host-feedback rendering.HostDiscovery—NWBrowserover_punktfunk._udp.
PunktfunkClient(the app) — hosts grid with an On this network section, add-host sheet, the two trust flows (TOFU prompt + SPAKE2PairSheet), the stream view with the HUD, a tabbed Settings pane (General / Display / Audio / Controllers / Advanced), and the network speed test. A Scene-level Stream menu carries the cross-client shortcut set: Release Mouse (⌃⌥⇧Q), Disconnect (⌃⌥⇧D) and the HUD toggle (⌃⌥⇧S) — the same Ctrl+Alt+Shift combos the Windows and Linux clients reserve, also shown on a 6-second banner at stream start. On iOS/iPadOS and macOS a connected controller swaps the whole home for the gamepad UI (Home/Gamepad*,Settings/GamepadSettingsView): a console-style host carousel (A connect · Y library · X settings), a controller-navigable settings screen, an add-host flow with an on-screen controller keyboard (no touch required anywhere), and the coverflow library browser — all driven by the sharedGamepadMenuInputpoller +GamepadCarousel/GamepadMenuListfocus machinery, with dual-channel haptics (device Taptic + controllerMenuHaptics), over an animated "aurora" backdrop (GamepadScreenBackground— TimelineView-driven drifting color blobs; deliberately pure SwiftUI, since a .metal library only reliably bundles in one of the two build systems these sources compile under). macOS presents the settings/add-host screens as sheets (nofullScreenCoverthere);PUNKTFUNK_FORCE_GAMEPAD_UI=1forces the mode without a physical pad (dev/screenshots).- Tests (
swift test) — Annex-B units, a real-codec VideoToolbox round trip, DualSense trigger-effect and gamepad-wire conversions, loopback integration against real local hosts, and the remote first-light test.
Notes for contributors
- Xcode project (
Punktfunk.xcodeproj) wraps the same sources as theswift runshell (a synchronized folder — no duplication). The macOS target is App-Sandboxed (needsnetwork.server— the raw-UDP plane and quinn bothbind()); iOS/tvOS use the shared entitlements file (keepapp-sandboxout of it). Verify withcodesign -d --entitlements :- <built .app>. - Decode flow: the host opens every stream with an IDR carrying VPS/SPS/PPS in-band, and recovery keyframes re-send them — refresh the format description on every IDR; there is no out-of-band extradata, ever.
- ABI threading: one video pump thread per connection, one optional audio drain thread, and one
optional feedback drain thread (rumble + HID-output).
send()is enqueue-only and safe alongside all of them. The wrapper's per-plane locks makeclose()safe from anywhere. - DualSense motion scale (
GamepadWire) is derived from hid-playstation's math, not yet live-verified — if gyro/accel feel wrong in a game, correct sign/scale there andevtestthe host's virtual pad. - App Store screenshots are automated —
tools/screenshots.sh allrenders the real UI at the required pixel sizes via a DEBUG-only shot mode; theappleCI workflow captures the iOS sizes on every main push. See the script header for details. - Deeper design notes live in
design/apple-stage2-presenter.md.
Related
- Documentation — quick start, pairing, troubleshooting
- Project README — the host, the other clients, and how it all fits together