A new software feature available across the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air lineup is Dual Capture, which allows you to record from the front and rear camera at the same time.
This mode is available through a button in the Apple Camera app running on an iPhone 17. The dual video recording capability was first demoed by Apple back in 2019 as a feature of the iPhone 11 Pro, but required a third-party app to use …
You can see Apple unveil multi-cam recording at this point in the 2019 iPhone keynote, using a new version of Filmic Pro as the demo’d app. Many Android phone makers added dual-cam recording into their device’s camera apps soon after, whereas Apple left it open as an API for the App Store ecosystem of third-party video apps to adopt.
Five years on since they originally demoed it on stage, Apple is finally building a basic version of this capability directly into the system stock Camera app.
When in the iPhone 17’s Video mode, a button in the viewfinder lets the user quickly add a picture-in-picture thumbnail of the front camera. The end result is a single video that contains a composition of the main rear camera with the front camera overlaid in the corner.
This allows you to record an event, like at a concert, and capture your reaction using the selfie camera, simultaneously.
Unfortunately, despite all iPhones having the necessary hardware support for dual-cam recording since 2019, Apple hasn’t indicated that it will add Dual Capture mode to older iPhones running iOS 26. At least right now, it’s an iPhone 17 and iPhone Air exclusive feature.