Malachite

noun

1. a crystal with the properties of revealing hidden parts of yourself
2. the name of my app to take control of the macro lens on iPhone

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What is it?

Malachite is a work-in-progress app that gives you more control over the macro lens of (or connected to) your iPhone.

What do I need?¹

I recommend one of the following configurations...

• An iPhone or iPad with one of the following:
  • A built-in ultra-wide camera that supports Apple's macro mode:
    • iPhone 13 Pro or iPhone 13 Pro Max
    • iPhone 14 Pro or iPhone 14 Pro Max
    • iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max
    • iPhone 16 or later (excluding iPhone 16e)
  • A third-party lens attachment ...and iOS 15.0 or later.

What can I do with this?

• Enjoy a fully-native, no-external library Swift app
• Quickly open Malachite with a lock screen widget, Control Center, Action Button, or Camera Control
• Quickly access controls using Camera Control
• Basic camera view, with buttons that are out of the way
• Switch between the ultra-wide and wide cameras, with fallback support for devices with one camera
• Pinch-to-zoom gesture²
• Autofocus and autoexposure adjustments by tapping and holding the display
• Manual focus adjustments by adjusting a slider next to the other controls
• Photo capture support, even when library access is set to Limited
• JPEG and HEIC support³
• 48MP and high dynamic range support
• Watermarking support!
• More features, coming soon...

What's it look like?

I don't currently have images for it; I'll be adding some as I get closer to my first release.

How do I get it?

TestFlight

Malachite is on TestFlight, but only for my Patrons on the Friend tier and above.

Building from source

1. Clone this repo
2. Open Codesigning.example.xcconfig, make changes, and save it as Codesigning.xcconfig.
3. Open Malachite.xcodeproj
4. Build!

What started this one, Eva?

So, I live with my love: @ThatStella7922. She and I are both big nerds, and I caught her using her macro lens on an Xbox 360 motherboard to let her work with traces and pads while she was RGH'ing it. The idea for a magnifier app came from how much time it took for her to get into the right camera setting, turn the flashlight on, and still not have much control beyond autofocus and zooming. With Malachite, I strove to solve this problem - and then I ended up making it even greater for the people who love macro photography on their own iPhones.

Footnotes

1. Malachite is validated against iPhone SE (1st generation) with no lens attachment, iPhone 8 Plus with no working main camera, iPhone 11, iPhone 16 Pro Max, and iPad Pro (11-inch). Not all features are available across all devices, due to hardware and software limitations. iOS version support may change depending on the difficulty of targeting older iOS versions and/or other factors. ↩

2. Pinch-to-zoom will feature haptic feedback when reaching the minimum and maximum zoom levels in a future commit. ↩

3. Capturing images in RAW and ProRAW is being looked into. HEIC requires iPhone 7 or later, iPad (6th generation) or later, iPad Air (3rd generation) or later, iPad mini (5th generation) or later, iPad Pro (12.9-inch, 2nd generation) or later, iPad Pro (10.5-inch), iPad Pro (11-inch) or later, or iPod touch (7th generation) ↩