Camera buttons

What the camera's buttons do beyond the shutter on screen: the volume buttons take the shot (and turn a clip's sound on in the viewer), the flash works for clips too, and the lens buttons pick between the phone's real lenses.

The volume buttons are a shutter

While the Camera tab is showing, press either volume button and let go. It does what a tap on the shutter does:

• Photo: takes a photo.
• Clip: the first press starts a clip, the next one stops it. The clip still stops by itself at the time limit.

It is the same as the shutter on screen in every way: the same shutter sound and haptics, the same count off the roll, and when you are out of film, the same warning buzz and no shot. Holding a button down takes one shot, not a burst: the press counts when you let go.

Since build 15, a press or a tap while a photo is still being taken does nothing, so a volume button and a tap together take one photo. Before, both fired, and on the last frame the server turned the second one away: it waited on the couldn't upload card in the Darkroom.

Since build 18, Photo and Clip don't switch (by the labels or a sideways swipe) until the photos you've taken are written. Switching swaps the camera's output, and a photo still being written was lost with "Couldn't take the photo" (seen on a Galaxy S25 in build 18 testing).

Since build 18, a clip from an iPhone keeps its sound the whole way. Before, the start sound finishing switched off the phone's audio for the app a moment later, the microphone with it, and the clip was silent after its first half second (found in build 18 testing). The clip also starts a quarter of a second after the start sound, so the sound isn't in it.

While the camera is showing, the buttons don't change the volume and the phone shows no volume panel. Everywhere else in Durpin, including the Camera tab with the roll menu or the film sheet open over it, they change the volume as usual. So they do when Durpin is in the background.

• Android: both volume buttons.
• iPhone: both volume buttons, since build 10, on iOS 17.2 or later (a tester's iPhone 16 Pro on iOS 26.6 took photos with them). The Camera Control on phones that have one should work the same way; it hasn't been tried yet.

The native side is a small module in modules/volume-shutter. On Android it takes the volume keys in the app's activity while the camera has it on (hooks/useVolumeShutter.ts turns it on only while the camera is showing with the app in front, and off again when you leave). On iOS it uses Apple's AVCaptureEventInteraction, the way camera apps get these buttons, on VolumeShutterView: the view the camera tab draws its preview in, on only under the same conditions. Builds 8 and 9 put it on the app's window instead, and it never fired on a tester's iPhone.

Since the iPhone part can't be tried in the simulator (no volume buttons, no camera), builds 10 to 15 sent a few notes to the error reports, once each time the app ran: whether the camera turned the buttons on, whether the view started listening, and whether a press arrived. They carried no account and nothing from your shots. Build 16 stopped sending them: the buttons work on testers' iPhones, and the notes had become most of what the error reports received.

Volume up turns a clip's sound on

In the viewer, a clip without sound gets it with a press of volume up, as the sound button would (build 16). The volume goes up too, like in any other app, and sound stays on for clips from then on, until you turn it off with the button. Volume down does nothing new, and a clip with its sound already on just gets louder.

• Android: the volume key is heard on its way to the phone, which then changes the volume as usual.
• iPhone: Durpin hears the phone's volume going up, which iOS tells it while a clip plays. At full volume a press changes nothing, so it doesn't turn the sound on; use the sound button then.

Sound on plays even with the iPhone on silent, as with the button (build 15).

Lens buttons

Above Photo and Clip, a small pill has a button for each real lens facing that way, with the phone's own number on it. There's no zoom between them, no pinch and no digital stand-in.

• Back: the ultra-wide, 1x and each telephoto, since build 14 (.6, 1, 3 and 5 on a Galaxy S25 Ultra; .5, 1 and 5 on an iPhone 16 Pro). Since build 15, a crop of one lens isn't offered as another: a Pixel 9 Pro shows .5, 1 and 5, not .5, 1, 2, 5 and 9.
• Front, since build 15: some phones list their one selfie camera twice, a wider view and a closer one, the way their own camera offers a wide selfie. Both get a button: the closer view is 1 and the wider one its number (about .8 on a Galaxy S25 Ultra). The front opens on the same view it did before. Phones with a single front view, and iPhones, show no buttons on the front, as before. This hasn't been tried on a real phone yet.

Leaving the app or the Camera tab and coming back keeps the lens you chose; until build 15 an Android phone came back showing 1x while the button still said 5. The pill shows only where there's more than one lens. The front and back each remember their own choice, so the ultra-wide on the back doesn't make selfies open wide.

Flash in Photo and Clip

The flash button at the top left keeps a setting for each mode:

• Photo: Off, On or Auto. The flash fires with the shot.
• Clip: Off or On. With it on, the phone's light (the torch) comes on when the clip starts and goes off when it ends: a tap or a volume press to stop, the time limit, or an error. There is no Auto for clips, since the camera gives no reading of how dark it is.

Both are remembered on the phone. The light is also off whenever the camera isn't showing: leave the tab in the middle of a clip and the light goes off while the clip records on; put Durpin in the background and it goes off too.

A camera without a flash, or without a light for clips (most front cameras), shows the button dimmed. A tap on it says "No flash on this camera." and changes nothing.