Workaround bug in macOS 14.4.1 and later where encoding HEIC fails

[kyleerhabor]

Closes #66 and #68.

[kyleerhabor]

CC: @rlxone

[CasualDeveloper]

Whoops, didn't mean to do that. Sorry!

Meant to ask Kyle, do you have a test build with your fix?

[rlxone]

Hi, thanks for the fix, do we know what versions were affected? Is it still an issue?

[rlxone]

Can't reproduce on my M1 Mac Mini (macOS 14.6.1 (23G93)) using images from #66. Do you use macs with intel processors?

[rlxone]

Hey @dreampiggy, sorry for bothering you, but seems like you investigated this issue a lot. What is the current state of the issue? Have we reported this bug to Apple? Can't find any info...

[dreampiggy]

No. I didn't fired radar for this.

The HEVC encoding seems fails on macOS 15.0 beta, whatever compression quality is used. So it's not the same issue.

Actually, I faced 2 issue about HEVC encoding.

1. Using VM (Github Action environment or anything use Virtualization framework) will cause HEVC encoding failed, on macOS 14.4.x-14.5.x (seems fixed on some OS upgrade)
2. Using macOS 15 Beta 1-5 will cause HEVC encoding failed, seems fixed on Beta 6

And actually, some Mac hardware may not support HEVC encoding. You should use API to test (do not assume all Mac supports HEVC encoding).

Use public API like CGImageDestinationCopyTypeIdentifiers to check public.heic

Or use https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50956097/determine-if-ios-device-can-support-hevc-encoding to have a try

[dreampiggy]

Actually, if Apple's framework is not trustable, you can provide a fallback workaround

Since HEVC/HEIF is standard, there are also open-source encode/decode lib, like https://github.com/strukturag/libheif

The C lib I have a Xcode/SPM port: https://github.com/SDWebImage/libheif-Xcode

---

If you don't like the C API, just use my wrapper API for encoding https://github.com/SDWebImage/SDWebImageHEIFCoder. But this lib don't support HEIF image collection/image sequences (which means, something like dynamic wallpaper you need).😂

[kyleerhabor]

Hello,

@CasualDeveloper here is a build with the relevant changes included.

@rlxone this continues to be a relevant issue. If you're not experiencing this on your M1 Mac Mini, then the issue may be Intel-specific, as my 2019 MacBook Pro running macOS Sonoma 14.6.1 (23G93) exhibits the bug. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of the exact affected version range except for 14.4.1 being a start.

[zgosalvez]

I tried @kyleerhabor’s build and I can confirm that it works successfully on my Intel-based Mac (Sonoma 14.6.1). ✅

Hello,

@CasualDeveloper here is a build with the relevant changes included.

@rlxone this continues to be a relevant issue. If you're not experiencing this on your M1 Mac Mini, then the issue may be Intel-specific, as my 2019 MacBook Pro running macOS Sonoma 14.6.1 (23G93) exhibits the bug. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of the exact affected version range except for 14.4.1 being a start.

[CasualDeveloper]

@rlxone @kyleerhabor

I can also confirm that Kyle's build works on my MacBook Pro (2019, Intel i9) running latest macOS Sonoma 14.6.1

(btw @zgosalvez that fix was Kyle's not mine, so all credit to them 🙂)

[CasualDeveloper]

FYI I've filed a radar in Feedback Assistant on this issue, and also a copy of it on OpenRadar.

[CasualDeveloper]

Hey y'all, good news! 😊

The bug doesn't seem to occur on my MacBook Pro (2019, Intel i9) running macOS Sequoia 15.0 Beta (24A5331b) – tested with Equinox v3.0 from App Store.

Operation of creating an Appearance-type wallpaper with two images completes successfully (I'm assuming with 1.0 quality, since the files sizes seem bigger compared to using 0.9999999 quality)

[kyleerhabor]

That's great. I wouldn't mind amending this pull request with checks for the earliest resolved version (either Sequoia 15 or a later version of Sonoma) and an Intel device.

[rlxone]

Thank you all for helping with this! @kyleerhabor feel free to go ahead, i can merge it as soon as you ready with the new additions.

[kyleerhabor]

@rlxone I've added the additions.

[rlxone]

@kyleerhabor sweet, i'll review tomorrow

[rlxone]

@kyleerhabor looks good to me, i'll release a new app store build in a couple of days. Thanks everyone for helping with this again!