Five iPhone 18 Pro camera features appear to be leaking in code

Apple is working on a broader set of improvements to the Camera app in iOS 27, it announced, according to an in-depth new study from Woozad member of the “pdfu” forum.

iOS 27‌ beta code apparently indicates five features that could arrive alongside new iPhone models this week or in a future software update:

• Exposure ranges: The Camera app can display a waveform or histogram to help you judge exposure while shooting. A histogram shows the extent to which the image is too dark, too light, or somewhere in between, while a waveform displays similar information but keeps it aligned with where those areas are in the frame.
• Focusing and highlighting warnings: The new code overlays useful information just above the camera preview. Focus highlights the edges of anything in focus using a colored outline, while a separate overlay warns when part of the image is overexposed, using a solid color, pulsed color, diagonal stripes or a checkerboard pattern.
• Repeat shots with self-timer: Apple adds the ability to take multiple timed photos in a row rather than just one. After each shot, the countdown starts again immediately instead of waiting for the photo to finish recording, so that photos can be taken one after the other.
• Manual focus: A control for manually setting and locking focus, rather than relying on autofocus, also appeared in testing, similar to what’s already available in Apple’s Final Cut Camera app. A version of it existed in iOS 26 with a focus slider, but that slider was removed in ‌iOS 27‌ beta 1. The underlying focus lock code is still there, but Apple has limited it to devices shipping with ‌iOS 27‌ or later, so it won’t work on any current iPhones.
• Aperture-based image correction: A change in how photos are processed could be linked to a future iPhone with a variable aperture, a lens opening that can widen or narrow rather than remaining fixed. ‌iOS 27‌ can adjust lens corrections based on aperture setting, blending up to four reference points to smooth the results.

While the hidden features may be made available to other iPhone models, the presence of aperture-based image correction when the iPhone 18 Pro is widely expected to offer a variable aperture main camera suggests that at least some of the capabilities could be arriving with the new models.

None of the five features are available to users in the current beta versions, and Apple could still withhold some or all of them from the September release. The findings follow pdfu’s recent code discoveries covering unreleased game controllers, a four-speaker HomePod surround system, and new details about the Apple Watch.