Video iOS SDK Release Notes

Added

• This version adds a new API that allows publishers to explicitly set the target scalability mode, giving developers fine-grained control over the number of spatial (resolution) and temporal (frame rate) layers used during encoding. This enables applications to better balance video quality, adaptability, and resource usage based on their specific needs. For more information, see this documentation. This is a beta feature.

• This version of the SDK now uses WebRTC M145, a recent milestone from Google's WebRTC library. The upgrade brings improvements in performance, stability, and security across all supported native platforms. It includes bug fixes and performance enhancements to audio and video media codecs, better network adaptation, and improved compatibility with modern platform environments. This update ensures the SDK remains aligned with the current WebRTC specification and maintains a strong foundation for future feature development. As a result of this upgrade, version 2.35.1+ of the SDK only supports iOS 17 or higher.

• Added a new Installation section to the iOS SDK overview documentation covering:

  • Swift Package Manager (SPM) as the recommended installation method (available since v2.25.1).
  • CocoaPods (VonageClientSDKVideo pod) as a maintained but deprecated alternative.
  • A migration guide for projects moving from CocoaPods (VonageClientSDKVideo) to SPM.

• The [OTVideoFrame setMetadata:data error:error] method and OTVideoFrame metadata property, deprecated in 2.33.0, have been removed in this version.

Known issues

• Setting a non-default target scalability mode may affect the behaviour of setPreferredResolution() and setPreferredFrameRate() for subscribers. For more information, see the Interaction with subscriber preferred resolution and frame rate note.

Fixed

• Fixed an issue where a publisher's video stream was lost after an Adaptive Media Routing (AMR) transition to a routed topology, following a specific sequence of mute/unmute operations and subscriber joins.

Added

• This version adds new network condition metrics to the client observability feature, providing detailed visibility into network performance and quality indicators. These metrics complement the publisher and subscriber statistics introduced in 2.33.0 and help developers proactively monitor network conditions affecting video quality, diagnose connectivity issues, and make informed decisions about potential adjustments. For more information, see this documentation.

• This version adds support for Live Captions Translation, which provides real-time subtitle translation during video calls. Each participant can independently select their preferred translation language. This feature supports the full AWS Translate language set. This is a Private Beta feature—to enable Live Captions Translation for your project, contact us. For more information about Live Captions, see this documentation.

Fixed

• This version fixes an issue where custom video capturers incorrectly mirrored video from the back camera.

Reactions for iOS

The iOS Reactions feature can result in clients sending unintended animations in published videos based on user gestures.

With iOS and iPadOS 17.4 a developer can disable the Camera Reactions by setting the key NSCameraReactionEffectGesturesEnabledDefault to false in the plist file of the app.

Known issues

Screen sharing limitation on macOS

Full desktop screen capture is not supported when running the iOS SDK on macOS (Apple Silicon Macs).

When using screen sharing features (such as ReplayKit-based implementations) on macOS:

• Only the app's own window can be captured, not the full desktop
• ReplayKit's sandboxing restrictions prevent capturing content outside the application
• ScreenCaptureKit (macOS native screen capture API) is not available in iOS app targets, even when running on Apple Silicon Macs
• The SDK’s xcframeworks do not include Mac Catalyst support, which would otherwise allow access to ScreenCaptureKit

If your application requires full desktop screen sharing on macOS, consider using the JavaScript SDK with Electron instead.

• This version adds new publisher and subscriber statistics including: video layer metrics for simulcast/SVC and transport statistics for publishers; video freeze/pause tracking and decoding metrics for subscribers; and video quality changed events for both publishers and subscribers. For more information, see this documentation.

• This version adds full support for network statistics of senders for subscribers in video sessions (which was previously in beta). For more information, see this documentation.

• This version adds publisher degradation preference settings to control how video quality adapts when bandwidth or CPU resources are limited. For more information, see this documentation.

• This version adds support for Apple silicon Macs running macOS 14 or later. For more information about platform-specific considerations and limitations, see this documentation.

• In this version we are deprecating the [OTVideoFrame setMetadata:data error:error] method and OTVideoFrame metadata property. These will be removed in future minor releases.

• Fixed a crash during automatic session migrations that could occur only in limited timing scenarios.