Every major software update tends to arrive with its fair share of headaches, and iOS 27 is proving to be no exception. While some issues — like the Apple Intelligence storage problem that mysteriously eats up around 15GB even for users who never touch AI features — at least have temporary workarounds, others leave users with no real options. That's exactly the situation with a frustrating glitch affecting HDMI output.
A growing number of iPhone owners on Reddit are complaining that video streaming to an external display over HDMI cuts out the moment the phone is locked. Previously, you could hook your iPhone up to a monitor or TV, switch the screen off, and keep watching without interruption. After updating to iOS 27, that behavior has changed.
Curiously, the problem doesn't affect every app. In our own office testing, VLC handled locked-screen playback without any issues, while YouTube and Netflix both stopped working as soon as the device was locked. User reports suggest several other apps suffer from the same behavior.
After some investigation, we discovered the likely cause: with iOS 27, Apple now requires apps to explicitly register their external display video sessions. In earlier versions, this permission was granted automatically, with no action needed from developers.
For now, the only workaround — if you can even call it that — is to leave your iPhone unlocked for the duration of playback, perhaps dimming the screen to save battery. That's far from ideal, especially if you're using AR glasses such as the XREAL Air 2, where accidentally touching the display is almost unavoidable.
The problem has been documented since iOS 27 first launched in September, yet the recently released iOS 27.2 update does nothing to resolve it. That said, calling it a "bug" may not be entirely accurate — Apple appears to have deliberately changed the way permissions work for external display playback, which would explain why VLC continues to function normally. If that's the case, the responsibility now falls on app developers to update their software to comply with iOS 27's new requirements.
