I am developing a background application that acts as a metadata server under MacOS written in Swift. Sandboxed clients prompt the user to select URLs which are passed to the server as security scoped bookmarks via an App Group and the metadata will be passed back. I don't want the I/O overhead of passing the complete image file data to the server. All the variations I have tried of creating security scoped bookmarks in the client and reading them from the server fail with error messages such as "The file couldn’t be opened because it isn’t in the correct format." Can anyone guide me in the right direction or is this just not possible?

I'm working on a build system similar to Bazel where each build action runs in a sandbox. The sandbox contains only the files that the user defined as input to ensure that the build action doesn't have any implicit dependencies. Bazel achieves this by creating a "symlink forest" to the original source files. This works, but I have observed fseventsd using significant CPU during a Bazel build, presumably because of all the symlinks that get created. Is there a way to disable file events for a directory or a volume? The "File System Events Programming Guide" in the Documentation Archive mentions placing an empty file named no_log in the .fseventsd directory at the root of the volume, but when testing on macOS 15.5 with APFS that appears to no longer work. Related, is a "symlink forest" the best way to create a sandbox like this? Or is there a different method one can use to provide a view of a subset of the files in a directory tree? I read up on the App Sandbox but that seems too coarse grained. Something like Linux's overlayfs would work well, and maybe one can achieve a similar functionality with firmlinks? Curious about folks thoughts here. Thanks in advance!

First, I do not publish my application to the AppStore, but I need to customize a sandbox environment. It seems that sandbox-exec cannot configure entitlements, so I have used some other APIs, such as sandbox_compile_entitlements and sandbox_apply_container. When encountering the entitlement "com.apple.security.files.user-selected.read-only", I am unsure how to correctly write sandbox profile to implement this. Can anyone help me?

So I just updated Xcode to 16.3 and updated a project to its recommended build settings which includes "Register App Groups". So I have an outside Mac App Store app that uses app groups. Here we have an action extension. I can't debug it, can't get it to run. Nothing useful in Xcode is displayed when I try... but it looks like a code signing issue when I run and have Console open. So I try to make a provisioning profile manually and set it...didn't work. I noticed now though in signing & capabilities the group id is in red...like it's invalid, or something? This was a "macOS styled" group without the "group." prefix. So am I supposed to switch it to have the group. prefix? It makes the red text go away (no warnings or anything about app groups here, just red text). So if I change it to group. prefix..does that make an entire new container?What happens on app update for installs that don't have group. prefix? Does the system transparently migrate the group? Or Am I supposed to migrate the entire group container to the identifier with group. prefix? Also how does this affect running on older version of macOS? If I go with the "group." prefix to make the red text go away,.. what happens on macOS 11.0? Got a little more than I bargained for here after midnight.

Our app needs to read server settings that are configured in the app's settings. In iPadOS 17.7.7 specifically (iPadOS 17.7.6, iPadOS 18.5, and other versions works fine) one can't retrieve any setting from the settings bundle using: if ([[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] objectForKey:@"setting_hostname"] != nil) serverHostname = [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] objectForKey:@"setting_hostname"]; Also, when writing a custom value in NSUserDefaults like: [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] setObject:@"Test" forKey:@"test"]; [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] synchronize]; NSString* test = [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] objectForKey:@"test"]; NSLog(@"%@", test); Shows an error in the console: Couldn't write values for keys ( test ) in CFPrefsPlistSource<0x3017ecc60> (Domain: <redacted_bundle_id>, User: kCFPreferencesCurrentUser, ByHost: No, Container: (null), Contents Need Refresh: No): setting these preferences requires user-preference-write or file-write-data sandbox access When closing the app and reopening it, and then reading the value of [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] objectForKey:@"test"]; returns null

Recently, while developing a network extension on macOS, I encountered a very interesting issue. When the App Sandbox entitlement is included, the NE (Network Extension) can be called and run normally. However, when the App Sandbox is removed, with everything else remaining unchanged, an error occurs. The logs are as follows: Failed to find an app extension with identifier app.acmeVpnM.extension and extension point com.apple.networkextension.packet-tunnel: (null) Found 0 registrations for app.acmeVpnM.extension (com.apple.networkextension.packet-tunnel) If you add app sandbox, it will run normally. this is my container app entitlement this is my NE extension (without App SandBox) I want to know the reason for this. App sandbox shouldn't be mandatory. How can I make my NE run in an environment without app sandbox?

How do I gain access to the Documents folder? Under targets, "signing and capabilities", App Sandbox, I can see the Music folder, Desktop... but not Documents.

I am building a Mac app that launch a GUI helper app and use XPC to communicate between them. Main app start a XPC Listener using NSXPCListener(machServiceName: "group.com.mycompany.myapp.xpc") Launch the helper app Helper app connect to the XPC service and listen command from main app. What I observe is the app seems can start XPC listener while I run it via Xcode. If I run the app using TestFlight build, or via the compiled debug binary (same one that I use on Xcode), it cannot start the XPC service. Here is what I see in the Console: [0x600000ef7570] activating connection: mach=true listener=true peer=false name=group.com.mycompany.myapp.xpc [0x600000ef7570] listener failed to activate: xpc_error=[1: Operation not permitted] Both main app and helper app are sandboxed and in the same App Group - if they were not, I cannot connect the helper app to main app. I can confirm the entitlement profiles did contain the app group. If I start the main app via xcode, and then launch the helper app manually via Finder, the helper app can connect to the XPC and everything work. It is not related to Release configuration, as the same binary work while I am debugging, but not when I open the binary manually. For context, the main app is a Catalyst app, and helper app is an AppKit app. To start a XPC listener on Catalyst, I had do it in a AppKit bridge via bundle. Given the app worked on Xcode, I believe this approach can work. I just cannot figure out why it only work while I am debugging. Any pointer to debug this issue is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Is it theoretically possible to: Build an app with Mac Catalyst without the App Sandbox entitlement and Distribute it outside the Mac App Store (w/ notarization)? Thank you!

Until a few days ago, I had a bit of code that could download a file from elsewhere to my home drive, "Users/eric". Today, the code downloads the file to "locat", but the following no longer works let _ = try fileManager.copyItem(atPath: locat, toPath: "/Users/eric/file.txt" ) After a careful search, I've changed the network to allow Network connections, and set User Selected and Downloads Folder to Read/Write without any luck. I am using Catalina and SwiftUI on a recent Mac (2023). As well, it was working just a few days ago. Any ideas or pointers?

I'm trying to launch a command line app from my objective C application (sandboxed) using NSTask and I keep getting "launch path not accessible" Here is the path: [task setLaunchPath:@"/usr/local/bin/codeview"]; I have set the appropriate attributes for codeview and it is working perfectly when I use it from the command line and /usr/local/bin IS in the $PATH I know I have NSTask configured correctly because this WILL work: [task setLaunchPath:@"/usr/bin/hexdump"]; With the exception being that I'm using a command already in /usr/bin. But I can't copy codeview into /usr/bin due to SIPS. I've tried moving codeview to various other non-SIPS protected locations all to no avail. Must all NSTask commands come from /usr/bin? Where might I put codeview so that it can be launched. Today I'm going to use an older computer and disable SIPS to put my command in /usr/bin and see if that works. If it does. I will do it on my main machine.