Apple had planned to acquire the company behind Halide last summer, the popular third-party camera app for iOS, new court documents reveal.
Halide, first released in 2017, gave smartphone photographers more granular, manual control over their images. Its setting, Project Zero, allowed users to skirt some of the iPhone’s automatic image processing, achieving more natural contrasts and shadows. Its most recent iteration, Halide Mark II, costs $19.99 per year for a subscription or $2.99 per month.
Though Apple ultimately did not acquire Lux Optics, the tech giant did poach cofounder and designer Sebastiaan de With to join its design team. He joined the team in January 2026.
A new lawsuit filed by Lux co-founder Ben Sandofsky, first covered by The Informationalleges that de With had taken confidential information, including source code, with him amid his move to Apple, and that he had been fired in December for using $150,000 in Lux company funds to pay for personal expenses since 2022. De With has so far denied these claims.
As per The Information, Apple had wished to acquire Lux to improve its built-in Camera app, saying this was the “top priority for the company right now.” Apple had planned for the iPhone 18 Pro to “match professional-grade cameras in terms of certain advanced features.” Apple itself was not named as a defendant in the case, just de With himself.
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The launch of the iPhone 18 Pro could bring some serious upgrades to the device’s camera. In February, Apple YouTuber Jon Prosser claimed that Apple would move the phone’s Dynamic Island to the top-left of the screen with the iPhone 18 Pro, and away from the center of the phone’s display. Prosser also predicted that Apple may replace the pill-shaped cutout used for its selfie camera and its Face ID sensors with a punch-hole camera and an under-display Face ID sensor.
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