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Comment by wincy | Hacker News Reader

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wincy·

I remember reading that the Japanese iOS makes a loud shutter noise when you take a picture that can’t be silenced.

It’s actually apparently a Japanese law.

https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-turn-the-camera-shutter-sound...

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I believe this was also a feature on us versions of iOS years ago. Some developers worked around it in “stealth camera” apps by playing the inverse of the camera shutter soundwave to silence it.

Although it's illegal, that's a brilliant hack. It's also a good reminder that even the simplest systems, which are vetted by dozens of professionals, could be easily defeated...

It's a law there because upskirting is a huge problem. I think OP was referring to an LED indicator so the phone owner/user could tell if the camera is in use by an app though.

Dedicated cameras, whatever their sizes (e.g. gopro), don’t have a mandatory shutter sound. Actual upskirting has little to do with it, phone makers/carriers decided to add the sound to preemptively deflect any issue that could slow the camera adoption when it went live.

(also not a law)

Technically there is no law requiring there to be a shutter sound, but rather a standard practice that all Japanese mobile phones implement.

Here’s a StackOverflow answer [0] from years ago, that came up with a workaround that could mute the camera shutter sound. Pretty clever!

0: https://stackoverflow.com/a/23758876

This is true. Many people use “live” pictures because that triggers the less obnoxious video chimes.

Same when using Nintendo 3DS cameras.

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