Does your iPhone 18 Pro camera keep blinking or flickering when you are trying to record a video or take a photo? This problem seems to affect both rear and front cameras making it impossible to use the camera. This article provides some explanations as to why this may occur and steps to stop your camera from blinking and fix this annoying problem.
With this problem, the iPhone camera view blinks in both Photo and Video modes. When the device blinks, the iPhone focus keeps changing, creating a blinking effect. The blinking appears to stop briefly and then reoccur again. In Video mode, the iPhone even flickers faster. This is a different issue than the camera being blurry.
What is causing the flickering or blinking iPhone camera issue?
From the user reports, it seems there could be several different causes for this problem.
The newest iPhones have advanced camera capabilities. You can take photos or videos in different modes. Your iPhone 18 Pro has a macro mode so that you can take macro videos or photography. Macro mode will help you take the best shots in close up. For example, you can take photos or videos showing the tiniest details in great clarity. You can shoot in macro mode automatically on your iPhone. Your iPhone will do an automatic switch to the Ultra Wide camera when you move your camera towards objects. It appears that when your iPhone switches to macro, your camera viewfinder may blink or flicker. If you see that a yellow flower icon appears on the Camera screen, this means that your lenses are being switched automatically.
Another cause appears to be the lighting conditions. It seems that if you point your camera at a light, your camera may start blinking, causing distortions as you move your camera toward or away from the light.
It seems that this is a widespread problem affecting a lot of users. This means that the root of the problem may not be the specific user settings or preferences but instead may be a software issue. In other words, a bug may be affecting certain users. Thus, it is important to keep your iPhone updated. Go to Settings > General > Software Update to check. Then update your iPhone 18 Pro if there are updates available.
Turn off automatic macro switching
You can control the macro mode’s switching automatically action. When this is enabled, your iPhone’s camera will switch from Wide to Ultra Wide lenses. You can turn it off to see if that is causing the blinking problem. On your iPhone 18 Pro, open Camera and get close to your subject. When the Auto Macro On button appears on the screen, tap it to turn off automatic macro switching. After turning it off, test your camera. If your iPhone camera blinking continues to occur, you can turn it back on by tapping the Auto Macro Off button. To keep your choice the next time you open Camera, go to Settings > Camera > Preserve Settings and turn on Macro Control.
As I stated above, you will see a yellow flower icon in the bottom-left corner of the Camera screen when automatic macro switching is working.
If you turn off automatic macro switching, you can still take and record macro photos or videos by changing the lenses manually.
Restart iPhone
If you determine that automatic macro switching is not the cause, restart your iPhone 18 Pro. We received reports from users who had this problem that restarting the iPhone may fix this issue. Try this. Simultaneously press and hold the side button and either volume button until the sliders appear, then drag the Power Off slider. Wait for your iPhone to turn off. Then press and hold the Side button until the Apple logo appears.
