Metal Performance Overlay

Performance overlay for iOS 16+

I noticed someone found some kind of setting to enable a (hidden?) performance overlay in certain apps running on iOS. You can find some useful information like FPS, GPU usage and memory usage. I will show you how to enable it here.

Prerequisites

• A Mac or PC with an active Internet connection

• Lightning cable for connecting the device to your computer (alternatively, use WiFi sync)

Installing libimobiledevice

A good tool to use for mounting developer disk images is libimobiledevice. It also comes with a lot of other useful stuff, but we're interested in one of them.

You can find the installation steps for other operating systems here, i will only list Windows and macOS here.

Windows

libimobiledevice is not officially compiled for Windows yet, so you'll either have to download an unofficial build or build it yourself.

You can find the build instructions here, or a download link below.

4MB

libimobiledevice.1.2.1-r1122-win-x64.zip

archive

Open

Libimobiledevice for Windows x64.

If you downloaded the archive, you'll have to extract it, and prepend all your commands with the path of the extracted folder. idevice_id -> C:\Users\username\Downloads\libimobiledevice\idevice_id

You can also append this path to your PATH or environment variables.

macOS

Mounting the developer disk image

As of writing this, the latest beta of iOS 16 is Developer Beta 3. You can find the developer disk image below. Please note that i have not verified that this is official, but it does work for my device.

8MB

16.0.zip

archive

Open

Developer Disk Image for iOS 16 Developer Beta.

Now, we'll use libimobiledevice to mount this image.

Plug your device in to your computer.

Extract the archive you downloaded to a place you'll remember, open a terminal or command prompt, and follow these commands:

1. idevice_id

Note down the string before (USB), you'll need this in the next command. This is called a UUID.

Enter the folder you extracted, and copy the path of DeveloperDiskImage.dmg. You'll also need this in the next command. You can make a text file or note containing this next command, since this is what you'll need to enter to mount the image again later.

2. ideviceimagemounter -u <UUID> <path_to_disk_image>

After executing this command, it should output Status: Complete. If it does not, make sure your device is on iOS 16, and restart it.

Enabling the Performance Overlay

1. On your iOS device, open Settings

2. Open "Developer"

3. Scroll down to the bottom and enable the toggle "Show Graphics HUD" under GRAPHICS_HUD. This name may be changed later.

Screenshot of the toggle you have to enable. "Show Graphics HUD"

Supported apps

Now that you have enabled this toggle, the overlay is enabled. I've only found some apps that utilize this feature.

• UTM

If you find any other apps that utilize this overlay, please contact me via email: [e-mail], or Discord: BluDood#0001