photokit

Safe Rust bindings for Apple's Photos framework on macOS.

Status: v0.1.0 covers practical PHPhotoLibrary, PHAsset, PHFetchResult, PHAssetCollection, PHFetchOptions, PHImageManager, PHCachingImageManager, PHAssetResource, change observers, and cancellable image/data requests.

Quick start

use photokit::prelude::*;

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    let library = PHPhotoLibrary::shared()?;
    println!("status: {:?}", PHPhotoLibrary::authorization_status());

    let collections = library.fetch_asset_collections(&PHFetchOptions::default())?;
    println!("collections: {}", collections.len());

    let assets = PHPhotoLibrary::fetch_assets(&PHFetchOptions::default())?;
    if let Some(asset) = assets.first() {
        let manager = PHImageManager::shared()?;
        let request = manager.request_image(
            asset,
            PHImageRequest::new(320.0, 240.0, PHImageContentMode::AspectFit),
        )?;
        let image = request.wait(5_000)?;
        println!("image bytes: {}", image.tiff_data().len());
    }

    Ok(())
}

Highlights

PHPhotoLibrary::authorization_status, request_authorization, register_change_observer
PHFetchOptions with predicate, sort descriptors, and fetch limits
PHAsset snapshots for dates, size, location, media type/subtypes, duration, and favorite state
PHImageManager / PHCachingImageManager with cancellable request handles for image, image-data, and basic live-photo lookups
PHAssetResource::for_asset for original filename / resource metadata
PHFetchResult<T> convenience wrapper with len, iter, and first

Authorization

The smoke example never prompts for Photos access. It reports the current authorization state and only performs non-interactive library queries.

Smoke example

Run the framework smoke test with:

cargo run --all-features --example 01_photokit_smoke

Expected success footer:

✅ photokit OK

License