Just wanted to come in here and report that I do have the same the same camera issue. It started with iOS 26.0 and has continued through the current update to iOS 26.2. Every time it has triggered for me, I have been in a third-party app. Either the Walmart app utilizing a QR code scanner, a grocery store app utilizing a barcode scanner. But I have also noticed this within Apple messages app. When I press the + button to open the Camera app within Messages to take a picture. Once this event happens, all camera utilizing apps are black screen. It does not matter if I close all the apps and reopen them. It does not matter if it’s a first party or third-party app. Just a black screen. The only resolution is to reboot the phone. Then it will work for five or six days and then eventually fail again.
I’m starting to suspect this issue is coming from a memory‑management bug in the iOS camera subsystem. The analytics logs show that the small camera extensions used by apps like Walmart Pay, Messages, and other QR/scan utilities are repeatedly getting killed for exceeding their ~170 MB memory limit, even though they’re only doing lightweight camera tasks. That pattern suggests the underlying camera service is slowly leaking or over‑allocating memory over several days of uptime, pushing these extensions over their cap. After enough of those crashes build up, the main camera daemon itself becomes unstable, which lines up with the Camera app freezing or refusing to open. Everything in the logs points to a software‑level issue rather than hardware.
Based on the analytics and the repeatable pattern, this doesn’t behave like a hardware issue. Hardware failures don’t fix themselves for five or six days after a reboot, and they don’t selectively break only after lightweight camera extensions have been repeatedly terminated for hitting a memory cap. A hardware problem would show immediate, persistent symptoms, not a slow buildup over several days of uptime. Resetting settings also wouldn’t stop a memory‑allocation issue inside the camera subsystem, which is why people report that it doesn’t help. The behavior lines up far more closely with a software regression introduced in iOS 26.x that affects the camera service over time.
Although I obviously can’t confirm this on my own, the pattern I’m seeing makes me think this may only affect a subset of users rather than everyone on iOS 26.x. The fact that it takes several days of uptime to trigger, combined with how quietly the memory leak builds, could explain why many people never notice it or assume it’s an isolated hardware failure. It also wouldn’t surprise me if this ends up being device‑specific or tied to certain usage patterns, since the analytics show a very particular failure chain that not every user would hit. I’m sharing this in case others with similar symptoms can compare notes.
my setup, iPhone 16 plus , ios26. Issue only occurs inside third‑party camera extensions (QR scanners, barcode scanners, Messages inline camera), never in the primary Camera app until after the bug triggers
i’ll post later if I find out more. But at this point. I’m waiting on Apple engineers to fix this with the firmware update. But based on the last couple updates, and this problem persisting, I won’t keep my fingers crossed.
