Pressing Escape mid-stream on an iPad leaves the capture in a state it could never leave: iPadOS releases the pointer lock by itself, a bare Escape deliberately never clears `captured` (it is a game key), and the re-lock burst added with the Escape-drop fix is the only thing that ever asks for the lock back. That burst fires in the 0.6 s immediately after the platform's own "let me out" gesture — precisely when it is least likely to be granted — and once its budget is spent nothing re-asks: `setCaptured` is the only other requester, and `captured` never went false. The capture then spends the rest of its life on the absolute pointer path, which is why the field report reads the way it does — clicks still land exactly where you aim, because absolute positions keep forwarding, but the game receives no relative deltas and camera look is dead for the rest of the session. Make the click the second stage of the recovery. A click into the video while captured-but-unlocked now re-anchors the lock chain and re-asks, which is the request the platform actually wants: a genuine user gesture rather than an app grabbing the pointer straight back. Asked on the button UP, so the click has fully forwarded on one transport first — asking on the DOWN can flip `gcMouseForwarding` mid-click and strand the release on the GCMouse path. Gated on `pointerLockWasEngaged`, exactly as the drop path is, so a scene that never qualifies (Stage Manager, Split View) is never bursted at, and on no burst already being in flight, since a pending burst mutes absolute motion and re-arming one per click would freeze the cursor between clicks of a menu the user is still aiming around. Worst case is now today's behaviour rather than a permanent one: a refused burst settles, and the next click tries again. Typechecked for arm64-apple-ios17.0 (PunktfunkKit builds clean). NOT yet verified on glass — the premise that a click-driven re-request is honoured is exactly what the previous fix got wrong.
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 the internal planning repo (punktfunk-planning:
apple-stage2-presenter.md).
Related
- Documentation — quick start, pairing, troubleshooting
- Project README — the host, the other clients, and how it all fits together