Suppose I want to draw a red rectangle onto my render target using a compute shader. id<MTLComputeCommandEncoder> encoder = [commandBuffer computeCommandEncoder]; [encoder setComputePipelineState:pipelineState]; simd_ushort2 position = simd_make_ushort2(100, 100); simd_ushort2 size = simd_make_ushort2(50, 50); [encoder setBytes:&position length:sizeof(position) atIndex:0]; [encoder setTexture:drawable.texture atIndex:0]; [encoder dispatchThreads:MTLSizeMake(size.x, size.y, 1) threadsPerThreadgroup:MTLSizeMake(32, 32, 1)]; [encoder endEncoding]; #include <metal_stdlib> using namespace metal; kernel void Compute(ushort2 position_in_grid [[thread_position_in_grid]], constant ushort2 &position, texture2d<half, access::write> texture) { texture.write(half4(1, 0, 0, 1), position_in_grid + position); } This works just fine: Now, say for whatever reason I want to start using imageblocks in my compute kernel. First, I set the imageblock size on the CPU side: id<MTLComputeCommandEncoder> encoder = [commandBuffer computeCommandEncoder]; [encoder setComputePipelineState:pipelineState]; MTLSize threadgroupSize = MTLSizeMake(32, 32, 1); [encoder setImageblockWidth:threadgroupSize.width height:threadgroupSize.height]; simd_ushort2 position = simd_make_ushort2(100, 100); simd_ushort2 size = simd_make_ushort2(50, 50); [encoder setBytes:&position length:sizeof(position) atIndex:0]; [encoder setTexture:drawable.texture atIndex:0]; MTLSize gridSize = MTLSizeMake(size.x, size.y, 1); [encoder dispatchThreads:gridSize threadsPerThreadgroup:threadgroupSize]; And then I update the compute kernel to simply declare the imageblock – note I never actually read from or write to it: #include <metal_stdlib> using namespace metal; struct Foo { int foo; }; kernel void Compute(ushort2 position_in_grid [[thread_position_in_grid]], constant ushort2 &position, texture2d<half, access::write> texture, imageblock<Foo> imageblock) { texture.write(half4(1, 0, 0, 1), position_in_grid + position); } And now out of nowhere Metal’s shader validation starts complaining about mismatched texture usage flags: 2024-06-22 00:57:15.663132+1000 TextureUsage[80558:4539093] [GPUDebug] Texture usage flags mismatch executing kernel function "Compute" encoder: "1", dispatch: 0 2024-06-22 00:57:15.672004+1000 TextureUsage[80558:4539093] [GPUDebug] Texture usage flags mismatch executing kernel function "Compute" encoder: "1", dispatch: 0 2024-06-22 00:57:15.682422+1000 TextureUsage[80558:4539093] [GPUDebug] Texture usage flags mismatch executing kernel function "Compute" encoder: "1", dispatch: 0 2024-06-22 00:57:15.687587+1000 TextureUsage[80558:4539093] [GPUDebug] Texture usage flags mismatch executing kernel function "Compute" encoder: "1", dispatch: 0 2024-06-22 00:57:15.698106+1000 TextureUsage[80558:4539093] [GPUDebug] Texture usage flags mismatch executing kernel function "Compute" encoder: "1", dispatch: 0 The texture I’m writing to comes from a CAMetalDrawable whose associated CAMetalLayer has framebufferOnly set to NO. What am I missing?