I regularly get asked questions about local network privacy. This is my attempt to collect together the answers for the benefit of all. Before you delve into the details, familiarise yourself with the basics by watching WWDC 2020 Session 10110 Support local network privacy in your app.
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—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"
Local Network Privacy FAQ
With local network privacy, any app that wants to interact with devices on your network must ask for permission the first time that it attempts that access. Local network privacy is implemented on iOS, iPadOS, and the current visionOS beta. It’s not implemented on other platforms, including macOS and tvOS.
Some common questions about local network privacy are:
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FAQ-1 What is a local network?
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FAQ-5 I’ve been granted the multicast entitlement; how do I enable it?
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FAQ-7 How does local network privacy work with app extensions?
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FAQ-8 How do I explicitly trigger the local network privacy alert?
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FAQ-9 How do I tell whether I’ve been granted local network access?
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FAQ-11 Do I need a local network usage description property?
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FAQ-12 Can I test on the simulator?
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FAQ-14 How do I map my Multipeer Connectivity service type to an entry in the Bonjour services property?
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FAQ-17 Why does local network privacy get confused when I install two variants of my app?
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FAQ-18 Can my app trigger the local network privacy alert when the device is on WWAN?
Revision History
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2023-10-31 Fixed a bug in the top-level FAQ that mistakenly removed some recent changes. Added FAQ-18.
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2023-10-19 Added a preamble to clarify that local network privacy is only relevant on specific platforms.
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2023-09-14 Added FAQ-17.
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2023-08-29 Added FAQ-16.
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2023-03-13 Added connecting a UDP socket to FAQ-2.
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2022-10-04 Added screen shots to FAQ-11.
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2022-09-22 Fixed the pointer from FAQ-9 to FAQ-10.
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2022-09-19 Updated FAQ-3 to cover iOS 16 changes. Made other minor editorial changes.
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2020-11-12 Made a minor tweak to FAQ-9.
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2020-10-17 Added FAQ-15. Added a second suggestion to FAQ-13.
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2020-10-16 First posted.