I spend a lot of time here on DevForums. Over the years I’ve read many posts, both good and bad. This page is my attempt at writing down what makes a good one. Hopefully some of you will find it useful. Before you read this, read the official Apple Developer > Support > Developer Forums page. If you have questions or feedback about any of the points raised here, start a new thread in the Developer Tools & Services > Developer Forums subtopic. Share and Enjoy — Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com" Quinn’s Top Ten DevForums Tips Here are my top ten DevForums tips: Is DevForums right for you? Search before you ask Keep your expectations realistic Topic, subtopic, and tags Craft a quality post Prefer text over images Include details with your questions Crash reports Cross posting courtesy Resize screenshots Include a Spinal Tap reference Close your threads Think about your title Post URLs in the clear Many of these boil down to one word: Empathy. Think about the person who’s reading your post. Can they read it? Will they understand it? Will it help them? 1. Is DevForums right for you? To quote Apple Developer > Support > Developer Forums, the Apple Developer Forums (aka DevForums) are: a great place to post questions, exchange knowledge, and connect with fellow developers and Apple engineers on a variety of development topics. DevForums is focused on developer issues. That includes the APIs in Apple’s platform SDKs, Apple tools, developer-oriented Apple services like App Store Connect, and accessory development. If you have a user-level question, you’ll have more luck over in Apple Support Communities, run by Apple Support. DevForums is focused on Apple technologies. If you’re using a third-party tool or library, feel free to ask questions about it here, but you’re more likely to find folks with relevant expertise in that technology’s dedicated support channel. If you want to file a bug report, do that using Feedback Assistant. If you want to discuss a bug you’ve already filed, DevForums is a great place for that. Make sure to include your bug number in your post. For more hints and tips on the bug reporting process, see Bug Reporting: How and Why?. 2. Search before you ask DevForums has a history stretching back to 2015. Many questions have been asked and answered here. Before you start a thread, search the forums for similar threads. For details about the search syntax, see Apple Developer > Support > Developer Forums. For a quick summary, click in the search field. Remember that DevForums is world readable and thus indexed by Internet search engines. 3. Keep your expectations realistic DevForums is an informal support channel; no one is being paid to answer DevForums questions full time. Keep that in mind when you post. Apple provides a number of formal support channels. To request formal support, go to the Apple Developer > Contact Us page. One of those support channels is the code-level support provided by Apple Developer Technical Support (DTS). For more information about DTS, see Apple Developer > Support > Requesting Technical Support. Asking about Apple’s unannounced plans is unlikely to yield useful results. Apple folks can’t discuss The Future™, and non-Apple folks can only speculate. Apple folks can’t discuss Apple’s internal business practices. For example, we can’t answer why question — “Why did Apple do this?” or “Why hasn’t Apple done that?” — unless there’s existing documentation that offers an explanation. If you think Apple should do something differently, file a bug that explains what you’d like to see change and the rationale for that. Not everyone works the same hours as you do. DevForums is a worldwide community, so there are time zones to consider, but there’s also just individual preferences. This is especially relevant around weekends, where your reply on Friday may not be seen by other folks until Monday. Different folks use DevForums in different ways. Some folks lean in to the notification system, whereas others allocate certain times of the day, or the week, to help out. 4. Topic, subtopic, and tags DevForums organises threads by two attributes: A high-level topic and subtopic A fine-grained set of tags Folks willing to offer help often monitor a specific set of subtopics or tags, and only see threads with those attributes. To increase the odds of getting a response, choose your subtopic and tags carefully. The list of subtopics is immediately visible on the top-level page. For a list of tags and their descriptions, go to Developer > Support > Forums Tags. That’s a lot of tags! When choosing a subtopic, choose the most specific one. For example, if you have a question about SwiftUI, choose UI Frameworks > SwiftUI rather than Programming Languages > Swift. The latter is primarily focused on the Swift language itself. When choosing a tag, read the description of that tag. With so many tags there are inevitably cases where a tag doesn’t mean what you think it means. For example, the Exception Handling tag is about the rarely used Exception Handling framework, not about exception handling in general, and the description makes that clear. 5. Craft a quality post When replying, use a reply rather than a comment. Comments are best reserved for short messages, like “Thanks!” or “See this other thread.” IMPORTANT If you reply in the comments, other folks on the thread may not be notified of your reply. DevForums supports Markdown formatting, similar to that used on GitHub and by DocC. The editor UI has buttons for the most common things, like Bold and Italic, but don’t feel the need to limit yourself to that. Correct formatting is particularly important for preformatted text: Use the Inline Code button, which inserts single backquote delimiters (`), for inline text in code style: identifiers and so on. Use the Code Block button, which inserts triple backquote delimiters (```), for blocks of text in code style: code snippets, logs, and so on. After submitting your post, look it over to make sure that it reads well. If not, you have a short window where you can edit the post to fix things. 6. Prefer text over images Don’t use screenshots for data that’s essentially textual, like code snippets and logs. For example, if you want to post a log message, include that as text rather than adding a screenshot. That makes it much easier for your readers to work with the text. Use the Code Block button, which inserts triple backquote delimiters (```), to format blocks of text in code style. Reserve screenshots for situations where the issue is visual, for example: When discussing view layout problems When posting instructions to achieve some task in a GUI app, like Xcode 7. Include details with your questions When starting a thread, try to include all the relevant details in your post. If you skimp on these details, folks will have to reply asking for them, and that slows things down. Specifically, anticipate the following questions: What platform are you targeting? And what version of that platform? What version of Xcode are you using? What version of the OS are you testing on? What specific API are you using? What are the exact steps you took? If something failed, what are the symptoms of that failure? If an API returned an error, what was that error? If nothing failed, what results did you see? And what were you expecting? If you filed a bug, what was the bug number? Have you tried reproducing the issue in a small test project? What else have you tried? For more thoughts on this, see Tips on writing forums posts. Oh, and if you’re having a build problem, consider attaching a full build log. 8. Crash reports If you’re trying to get help with a crash, include a crash report. For advice on how to do that, see Posting a Crash Report. 9. Cross posting courtesy Don’t start multiple threads for the same issue. That just wastes everyones time. Sometimes this happens by accident. If that’s the case, add a comment to one of the threads redirecting folks to the other one. If you find a bunch of old threads that might be related to your issue, don’t post full replies to all of them. Pick a lead thread and post your full reply there, then reply on the other threads with a link to the lead thread. Alternatively, start a new thread and reply on all the old threads with a link to that. That’ll help focus the discussion on your specific issue. If you post your question to another support channel, provide a link to that in your DevForums question, and vice versa. That avoids folks working on a question that’s already been answered elsewhere. 10. Resize screenshots If your post includes an image, make sure it renders well. Screenshots from Retina displays are often ridiculously large. Use Preview to crop the screenshot and, if necessary, downsample it by 50% (using Tools > Adjust Size). 11. Include a Spinal Tap reference To be clear, this is a joke. While the occasional Spinal Tap reference is allowed, please don’t add one to all your posts (-: 12. Close your threads If someone replies with the answer you need, mark that as correct. That gives them some credit and helps other folks with similar questions find that answer. If you find the answer by yourself, please post a short summary of what you did. Feel free to mark that correct. If you accidentally post two copies of the same question, choose one as the primary and, in the other one, add a comment that links to it. 13. Think about your title When creating a thread, think carefully about your title. Your title is your thread’s ‘marketing statement’, a way to entice folks to read your post. Try to summarise your issue in 15 words or less. Adding tags to your title makes it harder to read. Instead, add your tags with the tagging UI. See tip 4 for more on tags. 14. Post URLs in the clear DevForums has a list of websites you can link to at will. For example, it places no restrictions on links to Swift Forums. To link to a site that’s not on the allowlist, skip the Markdown link syntax and post your link in the clear. So, this won’t work: Apple is based in [Cupertino](https://www.cupertino.org). but this will: Apple is based in Cupertino. https://www.cupertino.org Revision History 2025-06-19 Made minor editorial changes. 2024-08-29 Added a link to Creating a test project. 2024-08-07 Add more hints to tip 7. 2024-05-27 Reworked tip 4 to account for the new topic and subtopic model. Made other minor editorial changes. 2023-11-16 Added a link to [Public and Private Tags][refPaPT]. 2023-02-22 Expanded tip 3. 2023-02-10 Added a note about why questions to tip 3 (another great suggestion from Scott). Added a link to Bug Reporting: How and Why?. 2023-01-09 Added a note about tags to tip 13. 2022-12-09 Expanded tip 12. 2022-08-22 Expanded tip 5 to explain why you shouldn’t reply in the comments. 2022-08-11 Expanded tip 9. 2022-06-17 Added tip 14. Updated the preamble to include a link to the main DevForums page. 2022-06-04 Added a discussion of unannounced plans to tip 3 (thanks to Scott). 2022-06-03 Added tip 13. 2022-05-24 Added tips suggested by Claude31 and Scott. 2022-05-23 First posted.

DevForums has the concept of public and private tags: Public tags are available to everyone, per the rules outlined in Developer > Support > Developer Forums. Private tags are limited to a specific set of developers. The canonical example of a private tag is Universal App Quick Start, which is only available to folks who had an Apple silicon DTK. If you have access to any private tags, the New Post form has an extra field, Post Visibility. Its default value is Private but you can switch it to Public. The Tags field adjusts accordingly. So, if you select Private you only see a limited set of private tags. Use these if your post is about one of those private topics. OTOH, if your post is about a public topic, change Post Visibility to Public and apply the appropriate public tags. Share and Enjoy — Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

How to remove answered mark

How can I delete a question I've asked here in the forum?

Hello, I notice the link on top of this site is incorrect: https://developer.apple.com/forums/tags/sign-in-with-apple-rest-api Its target (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sign_in_with_apple/sign_in_with_apple_rest_api) does not exist. It should probably be https://developer.apple.com/documentation/signinwithapplerestapi

Hi, Developer Support answered my original question by email telling me that I should ask my question here, because I have reached the wrong Support team... Here is my question: I have asked for some help in the forum about SF Symbols, but at last the solution I have found by myself was much more general than the original title of my post suggested. Now, In order to better share my foundings and better help the community about the subject, I think that a more general title would be appropriate. It's about using Affinity Designer to create custom SF Symbols, where my original title only mentions my difficulties about creating such symbols. https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/788403 Can I modify the title of my post by myself (if yes, how?) or should a Forum admin do that for me? Thank you in advance for your help, Marc

Issue solved. Retracting question.

I would like to delete this post, but I can't. Please add this fundamental feature.

I wish to see ELGATO Capture 4K APP come to APPLE TV in the feature of 2025 https://help.elgato.com/hc/en-us/requests/new ?

I think from January 2025 I'm trying to become a developer for apple. The process was an adventure. First time I used the website to become a registered developer. All good until i wasn't able to make any inputs in a disabled required field that was required but empty. I said ok, I'll try to use their support to guide me. After couple of mails I've understood that those answers were like: "sorry for inconvenience but try again maybe you didn't do something as expected". I've restarted the process many times and did tried, nothing worked. So... go back to email with support (note, there is no quick reply, sometimes it takes near a week or so to respond: and the response is "try again, sorry to hear that, let us know if we can help you") After a month or so i got an email that told me to use the application to enroll. So I decided to use it. So I've canceled my active enroll and moved to the device. My iPad Pro didn't worked, so I moved to MacBook Pro and tried from there with the Developer App. Didn't work.... Go back to email support. After a while they told me that is an issue with my card and they can't get my money from it, (is the same that I'm using on their store to buy app and it works without any issue). After another months spent on emails (copule because of their response timing, maximum 2 reply each week) and after I said I'll do my best to find someone from their management to let them know the nightmare that I'm forced to live with the support team, they said let me call you. They called me and their tool for remote view desktop didn't worked so it was like, do this, do that, I did, I did, I tried...ok let's try one more time and don't touch anything after. I did what they said and they told me that I'll be contacted soon. 2-3 days I waited for the call and...nothing... I did sent reply email support to understand the status of enrollment. I got this: " Thanks for your message. I will be happy to provide a status update. Your orders have not been successful. I am trying once again today. Since it is Friday, it will take a little longer to process. I will check on it again on Monday, when we are back in the office. Kind regards, " And today is Tuesday and nothing... I did asked also if you can't take my money just let me know the error that you receive so I'll be able to contact card issuer and ask to verify if that is an issue with it. I did asked and they told me they don't see any issue. Now I'm stuck,,,, Do I need to contact Tim just to open a developer account? I think he's busy with more important stuff. @support

I tried to post a reply to a thread. It seems to be posted, but does not appear in the thread once sent…

Hello. I paid 1012 Turkish Liras from Turkey a month ago, maybe more than a month ago, through my Apple Developer Account, and my order number is as follows: W1340824368 The fee has been reduced but I have not received any notification or email! All documents are available. Please guide and help me, thank you.

Nothing ever shows in my "Watching" tab. I've tried toggling the watch (bell) button on & off for threads I'm trying to watch, but this doesn't help. The setting sticks per thread, meaning that if I start watching a thread and reload the page, the icon shows as filled. These threads just never show up in the "Watching" tab for me. The only thread I saw mentioning this is from 2021 (https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/681641). Starting a new thread since that was was marked as answered.

The "Save" or "Update" button text does not load properly. https://developer.apple.com/profile/finish

I posted a question 7 days ago and now it looks like I can't edit or delete it.

I'm fed up with this. I write a detailed message and press Submit, and I get that. I press back, and my composition is gone. I think it happens most often when I've logged in only recently, i.e. I've read a few posts, decide to reply to one and log in. At that point, if I close everything and start again and find the thread I want to reply to then it works. But if I don't do that then I run the risk of being told I'm "unauthorized" and losing whatever I've written. This isn't rocket science! Why do we put up with it?

since updating from 18.3 to 18.4, both on cellular and WiFi Networks I can’t connect to the internet. Since the phone wont connect to the internet I’m not able to turn off “find my iPhone“ to restore my iPhone to iOS 18.3 this way my iPhone is useless any ideas / thoughts about this?

It's so bad seeing this light mode... Can I ask Apple to give me an access to their frontend, so I can contribute to their repo with a dark mode feature? Not asking Apple to make the dark theme, but rather asking them let me do it.

Until recently, it was possible to view the profiles of every user who posted in the forums. The profile page would then have links to posts/replies and other pages so that one could "follow" the recent comments by those users. However, it appears that it no longer is possible to view a profile of individual "DTS Engineer". What I mean is I can no longer view their profile page and as a result the recent posts/replies that a specific "DTS Engineer" makes. It's especially a loss because posts made by such engineers are very helpful and valuable and not being able to easily follow such posts on a single page makes the forum software less useful. Is there a way the previous feature can be brought back?

We found that Iphone16 will have a purple screen when using the native wallpaper when the screen is turned off or locked, and there is no abnormality in other functions. Has this problem been improved so far?