Depth Support

Something not where you expected it? Here are quick fixes and the most common questions.

Talk to the developer

Bug, idea or a question. Every email gets read.

Troubleshooting

A photo failed to process

Select its page and click Retry, or right-click it in the sidebar and choose Retry. If it fails again, try the photo as a JPEG or PNG.

The keys don't move the camera

Click once in the 3D view so it has the keyboard, then use W A S D to move, Q and E for up and down, and the arrow keys to turn.

I lost my view

Press R in the 3D view and the camera glides back to where it started.

Pressing play doesn't move the camera

The timeline starts with a keyframe at the start and its grey loop keyframe at the end, both on the same view. Drag the playhead, move the camera, then click + to add a keyframe there.

Export PNG and Export PLY are greyed out

They export the page you're looking at, so select a page that has finished processing (a green checkmark in the sidebar).

How do I open a saved project?

Double-click the .depth file, drop it on an empty Depth window, or choose File → Open Project (⌘O).

Frequently asked questions

What does Depth actually do?

It turns a single photo into a 3D scene, a Gaussian splat, using Apple's SHARP model on your Mac. You can then look around in it, animate a camera with keyframes, and export a still image or the 3D scene itself.

What's a Gaussian splat?

A 3D scene made of about 1.2 million soft, coloured blobs, each with its own position, size, rotation and opacity. Seen from the front they add up to your photo; move the camera and the foreground slides past the background.

What is SHARP?

A machine-learning model from Apple's research team that predicts a 3D Gaussian scene from one image, published as “Sharp Monocular View Synthesis in Less Than a Second”. Depth runs it with Core ML on your Mac's Neural Engine, GPU and CPU.

Can I use Depth for commercial work?

No. Depth runs Apple's SHARP model, which Apple released for non-commercial research only, so Depth is for research and experiments, not for commercial projects or products.

Which photos work best?

Pictures with a clear foreground and background show the most depth: an alley, a person on a street, a window with a view. Night shots and paintings work too. The model only knows what the picture shows, so the further you move off to the side, the more you see the scene's frayed edges.

Can I process several photos at once?

Yes. Drop as many as you like. Each becomes a page in the sidebar, and Depth works through them one after the other while you look at the finished ones.

What does Create 360 do?

It turns the scene in ten steps of 36°, renders each view, runs it through SHARP again and merges the results into one splat, so more of the scene is filled in around you.

Can I use the 3D scene in other apps?

Export PLY saves the splat in the standard 3D Gaussian splatting PLY format, which splat viewers and editors open. Export PNG saves the current view as an image, and Save Project keeps every page and its timeline in a .depth file.

Does Depth upload my photos?

No. The model is inside the app and everything runs on your Mac. Depth doesn't go online at all.

Requirements

A Mac with macOS 15 or later.