We have a content filter system extension as part of our macOS app. The filter normally works correctly, activation and deactivation works as expected but occasionally we see an issue when the content filter is activated.
When this issues occurs, the filter activation appears to behave correctly, no errors are reported. Using "systemextensionsctl list" we see the filter is labelled as "[activated enabled]". However, the installed content filter executable does not run.
We have seen this issue on macOS 15.3 and later and on the beta macOS 26.1 RC.
It happens only occasionally but when it does there is no indication as to why the executable is not running. There are no crash logs or errors in launchd logs.
Both rebooting and deactivating/activating the filter do not resolve the issue. The only fix appears to be completely uninstalling the app (including content filter) and reinstalling.
I have raised a FB ticket, FB20866080.
Does anyone have any idea what could cause this?
This seems like something that the NE team is going to have to investigate.
I have raised a FB ticket, FB20866080.
Thanks. That’s the best path forward here.
My only other suggestion is that you add a ‘first light’ log point to your sysex and to your NE filter provider, as explained in Debugging a Network Extension Provider. That’ll tell you whether the sysex started and, if it did, when the NE filter provider started within that. If your code isn’t started at all in these failure cases, that’s more evidence that this is an issue on the OS side of things.
Note The advantage of using the system for these ‘first light’ log points is that these log entries end up in the sysdiagnose log. You can then point to them, or the absence of them, in the sysdiagnose log that you attached to your bug.
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Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
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