Debugging updateAppShortcutParameters not adding shortcuts to Shortcuts App

Question

Created Aug ’25

Replies 4

Boosts 0

Participants 2

So I'm developing an ios application which should be showing shortcuts, but its not. I'm not sure how to debug why the functionality isnt working.

Believe I'm correctly calling AppShortcutsProvider's updateAppShortcutParameters, but I dont see any errors in the console showing me a problem.

And in fact, I made a simplified just swift version that works before I tried to integrate it into a more complex project.

But now I'm at a loss as to what is going wrong or what debug tools I can use to figure it out. Any help would be appreciated.

When building my project I see:

025-08-18 14:07:49.371 appintentsmetadataprocessor[57506:35387547] Starting appintentsmetadataprocessor export 2025-08-18 14:07:49.414 appintentsmetadataprocessor[57506:35387547] Writing Metadata.appintents 2025-08-18 14:07:49.414 appintentsmetadataprocessor[57506:35387547] Metadata root: /Users/jpetersen/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/Unity-iPhone-dtnhxevagfkzsjdavesziaqrwisr/Build/Products/ReleaseForRunning-iphoneos/UnityFramework.framework/Metadata.appintents

AppIntentsSSUTraining (in target 'UnityFramework' from project 'Unity-iPhone') cd /Users/jpetersen/no_doc_repos/payments_ios_investigation/SpotlightSearch/client/Build /Applications/Xcode_16.1.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/appintentsnltrainingprocessor --infoplist-path /Users/jpetersen/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/Unity-iPhone-dtnhxevagfkzsjdavesziaqrwisr/Build/Products/ReleaseForRunning-iphoneos/UnityFramework.framework/Info.plist --temp-dir-path /Users/jpetersen/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/Unity-iPhone-dtnhxevagfkzsjdavesziaqrwisr/Build/Intermediates.noindex/Unity-iPhone.build/ReleaseForRunning-iphoneos/UnityFramework.build/ssu --bundle-id com.unity3d.framework --product-path /Users/jpetersen/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/Unity-iPhone-dtnhxevagfkzsjdavesziaqrwisr/Build/Products/ReleaseForRunning-iphoneos/UnityFramework.framework --extracted-metadata-path /Users/jpetersen/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/Unity-iPhone-dtnhxevagfkzsjdavesziaqrwisr/Build/Products/ReleaseForRunning-iphoneos/UnityFramework.framework/Metadata.appintents --archive-ssu-assets

2025-08-18 14:07:49.436 appintentsnltrainingprocessor[57507:35387550] Parsing options for appintentsnltrainingprocessor 2025-08-18 14:07:49.437 appintentsnltrainingprocessor[57507:35387550] Starting AppIntents SSU YAML Generation 2025-08-18 14:07:49.444 appintentsnltrainingprocessor[57507:35387550] Training 'Start ${+applicationName}' for English 2025-08-18 14:07:49.444 appintentsnltrainingprocessor[57507:35387550] Training 'Play ${ShortcutEntity}|Play ${ShortcutEntity} on ${+applicationName}' for English 2025-08-18 14:07:49.444 appintentsnltrainingprocessor[57507:35387550] Training Negative Phrases '' for English 2025-08-18 14:07:49.444 appintentsnltrainingprocessor[57507:35387550] Application name 'UnityFramework' for English 2025-08-18 14:07:49.449 appintentsnltrainingprocessor[57507:35387550] Generated AppIntents SSU YAML files in file:///Users/jpetersen/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/Unity-iPhone-dtnhxevagfkzsjdavesziaqrwisr/Build/Intermediates.noindex/Unity-iPhone.build/ReleaseForRunning-iphoneos/UnityFramework.build/ssu/ 2025-08-18 14:07:49.449 appintentsnltrainingprocessor[57507:35387550] Copied AppIntents SSU YAML files to file:///Users/jpetersen/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/Unity-iPhone-dtnhxevagfkzsjdavesziaqrwisr/Build/Products/ReleaseForRunning-iphoneos/UnityFramework.framework/Metadata.appintents/

So I think it should be making the required app intent data 🤷

Answered by DTS Engineer in 854849022

The key thing here is that you are placing the intents in a framework. There is one extra step required to set up an AppIntentsPackage so those intents in the framework are visible to the system.

— Ed Ford,  DTS Engineer

Boost

Answer 1

Petersen OP

Aug ’25

Ok, some information, but I'm still not sure what is going wrong.

In the console (but not in xcode which is annoying), I see:

Failed to refresh AppShortcut parameters with error: Error Domain=Foundation._GenericObjCError Code=0 "(null)"

So there must be something wrong with my shortcut, but this isnt a useful error. Maybe someone has an idea?

0

Answer 2

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

Aug ’25

Accepted Answer

The key thing here is that you are placing the intents in a framework. There is one extra step required to set up an AppIntentsPackage so those intents in the framework are visible to the system.

— Ed Ford,  DTS Engineer

1

Answer 3

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

1w

Can you provide additional documentation or an example of this being required?

The documentation I linked to above is the information — there isn't anything else I can cite, but it really is just the few lines of code that you'll find in that article.

That seemed to work, so I can see app entities in search and in shortcuts, but if the app is not running and I tap on them in the Shortcuts app, I get: "This current action is not allowed"

If you take your intent implementations into a new test project along with whatever other code you need to support those intent implementations, do you still get that behavior and log message? If so, I'd like to see a copy of that smaller test project to understand what's happening.

— Ed Ford,  DTS Engineer

0

Answer 4

Petersen OP

4d

Greetings, I did get this working, thanks Ed. I didnt fully understand that I needed 2 AppIntentsPackage, one in the framework and one in the main project.

This project used it and reading their code was helpful: https://github.com/ztzhang/locked_capture_example

Here is the one in the framework: https://github.com/ztzhang/locked_capture_example/blob/main/MyIntentFramework/AppIntentsPackage.swift

And here is the one in the main project, including that one in the framework: https://github.com/ztzhang/locked_capture_example/blob/main/AVCam/AppIntents.swift

And then a bonus one because they had an extension where they also had an intent: https://github.com/ztzhang/locked_capture_example/blob/main/ControlButtonExtension/AppIntents.swift

As for my other issue with "This current action is not allowed", I still havent been able to reproduce it in a smaller project unfortunately, there is seem to work, but its also a lot simpler. So I'm still looking for a solution for that.

0