I am developing an Apple app that has to download 1000s of MP4 files between 5 and 150MB each at one time (can take an hour or more - is OK). I use Apple's file picker to select the files, and then it freezes and I cannot download anything. I had this working a few months ago but now I cannot get it to work. Can someone give me some advice please?

Hi all, I'm implementing Intune MAM to secure applications on iOS. However, I need my users to be able to save files (e.g. attachments in an email in the Outlook app) to iOS Files. To do so, I'm trying to put Files in exception of my Intune MAM policy and I need to obtain the Files "CFBundleURLSchemes" value from the info.plist file of the Files app. I'm not able to get that information. Are any of you able to get that somehow? Thanks!

This script from man hdiutil no longer works: devnode=$(hdiutil attach -nomount ram://102400) newfs_hfs “$devnode” mount -t hfs “$devnode” /path/to/ramdisk because $devnode contains spaces and tabs!! $ hdiutil attach -nomount ram://1 | xxd 00000000: 2f64 6576 2f64 6973 6b34 2020 2020 2020 /dev/disk4 00000010: 2020 2020 0920 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 . 00000020: 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 00000030: 2020 2020 090a # remember to clean up afterwards $ hdiutil detach /dev/disk4 Please properly quote your variables in CI test scripts to catch such regression. It could pass because unquoted expansion of $devnode undergoes word splitting after the variable is substituted, removing the trailing whitespaces. FB20303191

Seems like converting groups into folders looks like a great way to clear up the project file and reduce merge conflicts for large teams, started trying it today and it even lead us to find some untracked/unused files in the project. This structure also seems to be the default now after Xcode 16. The question is, are there any downsides to converting groups to folders, the one ones that come to mind is losing Xcode virtual file ordering, which is no biggie. If you have an "enterprise level app" would love to hear your experience if your team decided to convert to a folder structure.

I am developing an application on macOS in SwiftUI which exchanges files with other processes on a network. Some of these processes may be on Linux and write to a network drive. The files are refreshed at 10, 15 or 60 second intervals, and keep the same name. The software is supposed to run 24/7 and have persistent paths, so that on restart it does not need setting up. And it runs in the sandbox. I have got this working with macOS-only external processes by putting the exchange files in a fixed folder on the network storage and using security-scoped bookmarks to the file and or folder. But it doesn't work so well when one of the writing processes is a Linux process writing to its own storage. I can put a symlink in my fixed folder and if i select the folder and the symlink after each app restart, it works. but how can i make such a set-up persistent so it works after app restart without manual selection?

I have an app which uses ubiquitous containers and files in them to share data between devices. It's a bit unusual in that it indexes files in directories the user grants access to, which may or may not exist on a second device - those files are identified by SHA-1 hash. So a second device scanning before iCloud data has fully sync'd can create duplicate references which lead to an unpleasant user experience. To solve this, I store a small binary index in the root of the ubiquitous file container of the shared data, containing all of the known hashes, and as the user proceeds through the onboarding process, a background thread is attempting to "prime" the ubiquitous container by calling FileManager.default.startDownloadingUbiquitousItemAt() for each expected folder and file in a sane order. This likely creates a situation not anticipated by the iOS/iCloud integration's design, as it means my app has a sort of precognition of files it should not yet know about. In the common case, it works, but there is a corner case where iCloud sync has just begun, and very, very little metadata is available (the common case, however, in an emulator), in which two issues come up: I/O may hang indefinitely, trying to read a file as it is arriving. This one I can work around by running the I/O in a thread created with the POSIX pthread_create and using pthread_cancel to kill it after a timeout. Attempts to call FileManager.default.startDownloadingUbiquitousItemAt() fails with an error Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=257 "The file couldn’t be opened because you don’t have permission to view it.". The permissions aspect of it is nonsense, but I can believe there's no applicable "sort of exists, sort of doesn't" error code to use and someone punted. The problem is that this same error will be thrown on any attempt to access that file for the life of the application - a restart is required to make it usable. Clearly, the error or the hallucinated permission failure is cached somewhere in the bowels of iOS's FileManager. I was hoping startAccessingSecurityScopedResource() would allow me to bypass such a cache, as it does with URL.resourceValues() returning stale file sizes and last modified times. But it does not. Is there some way to clear this state without popping up a UI with an Exit button (not exactly the desired iOS user experience)?

I'm trying to construct a URL that, when tapped, would launch Files app and open the Downloads folder on the iPhone (not in iCloud Drive). I know the URL scheme is shareddocuments but I can't figure out the path. I have tried a few things including writing a simple iOS app and using Scriptable app. But I always get a sandboxed path such as /private/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/87CC2F48-AF1C-4C80-8D75-B6CC1FC642E3/Downloads/. But that wouldn't work across devices. Does anyone happen to know the path or a method to obtain the non-sandboxed path? Thanks. PS I already figured out the Downloads folder in iCloud Drive, which is shareddocuments:///private/var/mobile/Library/Mobile%20Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Downloads. But what I need is the one on the iPhone.

We use File Provider Extension in our main app, and it is working fine. We always call "NSFileProviderManager.add(_:completionHandler:)" function to start the extension, and "NSFileProviderManager.disconnect(reason:options:completionHandler:)" to temporarily quit the extension with the reason which will be shown in the Finder at the top of the FP domain folder. But sometimes, when the main app calls the above functions, the following issue cases occur, and the extension does not start/stop: The completionHandler function doesn't get called (As we noticed, we waited for 2 minutes. Then, we restarted the main app.) One of the following errors returned: i) "The application cannot be used right now", ii) "Couldn't communicate with the helper application", iii) "No valid file provider found with identifier" Here, the important thing is that restarting the main app once or twice clears the issue, and the extension starts. But it is frustrating to restart the app each time we get this issue. We want to know the following things: Why and when do the above issues occur? Why do they occur only sometimes, and how does the app restart clear the issue? How do we resolve them without restarting the main app? This has become a critical issue, so a detailed explanation would be greatly appreciated. TIA.

Does FSKit support the ability to get the process information, such as the pid, when a process accesses a resource? Being able have the process context is important for implementing certain access patterns and security logging in some contexts. For instance, we have a system that utilizes (pre-FSKit) a FUSE mount that, depending on the process has different "views" and "access" based on the process id.

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!

As of 2025-05-03, when a macOS user enables iCloud Drive synchronization for Desktop & Documents in US region, does iCloud filter xattrs upon upload or later when downloading back to another macOS host? Or is it the case that iCloud has no filtering of third-party xattrs? Where can I find the technical document outlining exactly what iCloud does with xattrs set on macOS host files and folders synchronized with iCloud Drive?

what is that makes the TLS be the TLS/SErver ?

I'm experiencing an issue where the App Group shared container appears to be recreated (with a new creation date) during an app update, resulting in complete loss of locally stored data. Background My app uses UserDefaults, Realm, Core Data, and CloudKit, with all local data stored in the App Group container (FileManager.containerURL(forSecurityApplicationGroupIdentifier:)). The app has been available since 2016 and has a stable user base. Starting last year, I began receiving occasional reports from users saying all their data in the app had disappeared. To investigate, I added diagnostic logging that detects when an existing user's data appears to have been reset — specifically by checking the App Group container's file system creation date, and the existence and values of expected files. What the diagnostics revealed When the issue occurs, I observe the following: The App Group container has a recent creation date, far newer than the user's first launch date The Core Data store file's creation date is also immediately after the App Group container's recreation date I write the same values to both standard UserDefaults and the App Group version (UserDefaults(suiteName:)). Only the App Group version is reset — the standard side retains historical data The standard side still holds firstLaunchDate, initialVersion, and launchCount, confirming this is not a fresh install Here is a sample diagnostic log from an affected user: appGroupContainerCreationDate: 2026-03-30T18:44:10Z firstLaunchDate: 2025/01/05 4:00 initialVersion: 10.8.0 currentAppVersion: 10.14.14 previousVersion: 10.10.0 launchCount: 44 availableStorageMB: 46646 The container creation date (2026-03-30) is clearly inconsistent with the user's first launch date (2025-01-05) and launch count (44). The container creation date is obtained with the following code: let appGroupURL = FileManager.default.containerURL( forSecurityApplicationGroupIdentifier: "group.xxx.xxx" )! let attributes = try? FileManager.default.attributesOfItem(atPath: appGroupURL.path) let containerCreationDate = attributes?[.creationDate] as? Date Scale and pattern Reports began increasing in late November last year Over 85% of affected cases are on iOS 26 Most affected devices have plenty of available storage (46GB+ in the example above) This is likely occurring during a normal app update (not a fresh install or device restore) Ruled-out hypotheses Not a fresh install — firstLaunchDate, initialVersion, and launchCount are preserved in standard UserDefaults Not a storage issue — affected users typically have tens of GBs of free space, making it unlikely that iOS purged the data due to low storage Not an app-side code change — the App Group identifier and entitlements have not been changed Not triggered by silent notifications, background tasks, or widget activity — these processes do write to the App Group container, but the recreation does not appear to occur immediately after any of these operations Questions Has anyone else observed App Group containers being recreated (new creation date, empty contents) during a standard app update? Is there a known iOS behavior or bug that could cause this, particularly on iOS 26? Are there any recommended mitigations? Any insight would be greatly appreciated. This is a data loss issue affecting real users, and I'd like to understand whether this is an iOS-level problem or something I should be handling differently on my end.

Hi, I'm having trouble implementing iCloud Drive in my app. I've already taken the obvious steps, including enabling iCloud Documents in Xcode and selecting a container. This container is correctly specified in my code, and in theory, everything should work. The data generated by my app should be saved to iCloud Drive in addition to local storage. The data does get stored in the Files app, but the automatic syncing to iCloud Drive doesn’t work as expected. I’ve also considered updating my .entitlements file. Since I’m at a loss, I’m reaching out for help maybe I’ve overlooked something important that's causing it not to work. If anyone has an idea, please let me know. Thanks in advance!

Dear Apple Support, I would like to raise a concern regarding the behavior of the “Desktop & Documents Folders” feature in iCloud Drive. From a business and development standpoint, the fact that folders may be automatically moved or created without clear and explicit user awareness is quite concerning. File system behavior is something users generally expect to remain predictable and fully under their control. In particular, when working in development environments, even small and unintended changes to folder structures can lead to issues such as broken file paths, build errors, or inconsistencies in project setups. The possibility that such changes may occur automatically introduces an element of uncertainty that is difficult to manage in professional workflows. Additionally, there are security considerations. For example, if sensitive files such as configuration data or API keys are temporarily stored on the Desktop, the possibility that they could be unintentionally synced to the cloud raises valid concerns. Even if safeguards exist, the lack of clear visibility and explicit confirmation makes it difficult to confidently assess and manage risk. Overall, the current behavior gives the impression that folder operations may occur without sufficient transparency. From a business perspective, this impacts trust, predictability, and operational reliability. I would appreciate consideration of the following improvements: Clear and explicit communication before any folder movement or creation occurs A strictly opt-in model with unambiguous user consent Greater visibility into when and how synchronization affects local files Options to ensure fully local control over specific directories Thank you for your attention to this matter. I hope this feedback will contribute to improving the reliability and transparency of the feature. Sincerely,

NSApplicationDelegate.application(_:open:) gets the files it needs to read from the file URLs given. There are similar older functions that use a String to identify the file. What format are those strings expecting? A path name? An URL?

I. am working on an app that uses automounted files using nfsv4 where the server has zfs filesystems. As a test I've created a very simple example and the directory in question seems to automount correctly, but when I try to access it, I get strange behavior. The directory is mounted on is /System/Volumes/Data/mnt/subdir and I can change to that directory just fine. However I get the following: 63 rrsum@Anywhere:subdata% pwd /System/Volumes/Data/mnt/subdata 64 rrsum@Anywhere:subdata% ls -la total 3 drwxr-xr-x 3 nobody nobody 4 Jan 10 13:03 . dr-xr-xr-x 3 root wheel 2 Jan 8 17:27 .. drwxr-xr-x 2 nobody nobody 3 Jan 9 11:20 dir -rw-r--r-- 1 nobody nobody 12 Jan 10 13:09 file.txt 65 rrsum@Anywhere:subdata% cd dir cd: string not in pwd: ls The directory appears in the 'ls -la' properly, but I cannot cd to it.

Dear Apple: We are developing a file management-related app, and I would like to retrieve the list of files from the "Recents" section under "Favorites" in the Mac sidebar, then display this information in the app's interface for users. Is there an API available to obtain this information?

Question: What is the standard, most reliable way to manage temporary files associated with a URLSessionDownloadTask that has been terminated abnormally due to a network error or other issues? Details Hello, I'm currently developing a feature to download multiple files concurrently on iOS using URLSessionDownloadTask, and I have a question regarding the lifecycle of the temporary files created during this process. As I understand it, URLSessionDownloadTask stores incoming data in a temporary file within the tmp directory, typically with a name like CFNetworkDownload_*.tmp. In my testing, temporary files are managed correctly in the normal scenario. For instance, when I call the cancel() method on an active downloadTask and then release all references to it, the corresponding temporary file is automatically cleaned up from the tmp directory shortly after. However, the problem occurs when a download is interrupted abnormally due to external factors, such as a lost network connection. In this situation, the urlSession(_:task:didCompleteWithError:) delegate method is called, but the associated temporary file is not deleted and remains in the tmp directory. I've observed a particularly interesting behavior related to this. Immediately after the error occurs, if I check my app's storage usage in the iOS Settings app, the data size appears to have decreased momentarily. However, the tmp file has not actually been deleted, and after a short while, the storage usage is recalculated to include the size of this orphaned temporary file. Since my app does not support resuming interrupted downloads, these leftover files become orphaned and unnecessarily consume storage. Therefore, I want to ensure they are all reliably deleted. With this context, I'd like to ask the community: What is the standard, most reliable way to manage temporary files associated with a URLSessionDownloadTask that has been terminated abnormally due to a network error or other issues? I am wondering if there is an official guide or a framework-level API to handle these orphaned files. I would appreciate any advice from those with experience in this area. Thank you.

How do I get the FileManager in SwiftUI to read information about the apps in the Applications folder. Lots of apps do it, Alfred, Raycast. It's not something that is unheard of, and yet I cannot for the life of me, using every kind of guide on the internet figure out how to achieve this. Please somebody help, this is legitimately affecting my mental health.