Forum activity for 2026

But the current poor state of forums …

I totally agree. Forums have become nearly useless, both for those who post (rarely get a reply to a real developer question) and for those who read to provide answer and to learn from the questions as well (that was a great value of the forum in the past).

Interesting to note that is is not the case on Stack Overflow. My guess is that, as it is developer.apple forum, many believe or hope it is a direct channel to Apple to boost or influence their review.

Unfortunately, some answers from Apple staff like "thank you for contacting us, we shall forward…" is just encouraging the trend whilst bringing no answer (just let the author feel having been heard).

allow other developers to ignore them.

Absolutely, notably in the general list of posts (https://developer.apple.com/forums/allPosts)

PS. I've noticed that the situation deteriorated rapidly after the change of forum software a few years ago.

Interesting to note that is is not the case on Stack Overflow.

Stack Overflow is dying. Have you seen this chart?

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/437921/how-does-the-continued-decline-in-posts-since-may-25-influence-our-interpretati

Perhaps Apple feels that these posts are still engagement and useful for keeping the site alive. Otherwise, the suits might have already killed it.

many believe or hope it is a direct channel to Apple to boost or influence their review.

Do we know for certain that they're wrong?

Unfortunately, some answers from Apple staff like "thank you for contacting us, we shall forward…" is just encouraging the trend whilst bringing no answer (just let the author feel having been heard).

I think there is some value to that. I was laid up for a weekend and didn't fell like doing any real work. I tried to go through and give those posts something. I don't know if it did any good. Seemed to annoy some Apple folks.

I've noticed that the situation deteriorated rapidly after the change of forum software a few years ago.

Yeah. It was a wasteland for a long time. That's what bothers me. These review, enrolment, rejection complaints are engagement. They have livened up the forums. I can't deny that.

I just can't help them. It's like with all the other social media sites, you can follow whom you want, and isolate yourself into a happy little echo chamber. You can do that on the Apple Support Community if you want too. But not here. It's like being forced to see all of the posts on X, Facebook, or Reddit. That would drive a normal person insane.

If Apple wants to be the only one answering questions, that's fine. Turn off my reply button and I'll go away. But if they're going to do that, I think, they should reply to all posts. Fact is, they could check and reply to someone, "I checked your app, it's properly queued/reviewed." Yeah, they'd need staff for that. Such is life.

That's why I'm asking for an unhappy medium. If they want to ghost these people, fine. Just let me ghost them too.

I don't know. Perhaps it's a cultural, American thing. I did briefly work on the west coast, in Seattle. Couldn't take it. Went back to Canada. Maybe that's the right way to handle it.

Very interesting post about SO.

Does it it mean that spy called social media have poured over those forums ? I heard that the same is happening to LinkedIn for instance. So the problem is larger than developers.

On my own, I'll continue to participate to these forums until there is nothing worth to it.

What is surprising is the lack of proper moderation:

• immediately remove spams (they are easy to detect)
• for questions about the long time for review process, inform with a private message the one who posted that it's not the purpose of the forum and delete the post. Or move the post to a specific section and not show on the general flow of posts.

That would seriously clean up the forum. And with less than 200 posts a day, that does not seem to be an overwhelming moderation effort.

I took another snapshot this morning and ran the numbers a different way. Here is the breakdown for the past 24 hours (10 pages).

19%: Enrolment problems

25%: App Review problems

54%: Technical questions

1%: Solicitations

0%: Spam (already removed, but not zero)

2%: Feedback

1%: Apple

So I guess it's not as bad as it seems?

But still, I went through a snapshot of 10 pages. How many people are going to go through all 10 pages?

And I'm only categorizing by the snippet. Where these posts show up depends on how active each thread is. There are lots of new App Review and Enrolment questions, but they tend not to get any activity. So this is a larger number of posts that will flood the forums and quickly fade away to page 11. Actual questions are likely to get responses and follow-ups, thereby making them over-represented on the first 10 pages.

The technical questions are spread over many different categories. I don't know anything about most of them. In terms of that finer-grain categorization, App Review and Enrolment problems overwhelm anything else.

So I think my point is still valid. The forum software has the capability to provide a subscription list. The Apple Support Community uses a similar back-end and they have that feature.

I agree that private messages would be a good idea. But I don't think the forum software supports that. I'm sure developer support is pretty low on the priority list.

Before I did this last exercise, I was thinking that this was a priority 1 problem - Mission Failure, as we used to say. I can't support that position anymore, but it's still a big problem.

This is how developers are using the site. This site is just one avenue for developer support. Most people do say they tried other support options first. Maybe a more powerful AI chatbot would be enough. Developers seem to really appreciate those.

Sorry it took me so long to reply here. It’s been a hectic week.

Lemme start out with some sort of semi-official answer:

• Yes, we recognise that this situation is less than ideal and we’re working on ways to improve things (r. 190253666).
• I have no details as to what that’ll be, or any sort of timeline to share.

Oh, and thanks for all the work you’ve put into answering questions on the forums over the years.

And with that out of the way, I want to give you my own thoughts about two aspects of this:

• What should this look like?
• What do you do right now?

Regarding the first, my take on this is that the forums are primarily a place to help folks with Apple APIs and tools. These are things that we can discuss in public, and having that discussion in public is beneficial for everyone involved.

However, there is a set of things that we simply can’t handle here on the forums. For example, if you have a problem with your programme enrolment, fixing that will likely require a bunch of private info, which isn’t appropriate for these public forums.

There are existing support channels for these things [1], including:

• DTS Code-Level Support Requests
• App Review
• App Store Connect support
• Developer Program Support

So, I see this as a problem of getting folks started on the right path. To continue the programme enrolment example, I’d like to see folks with those questions encouraged to contact DevPrograms rather than posting here on the forums.

And I’m using the word encouraged deliberately. If someone is really committed to talking about enrolment issues in public, that’s fine by me, as long as they recognise that they won’t get formal support.

[1] There’s also Apple Support Community, for public discussions of user-focused stuff.

My second point is about what you can do right now. I agree that it’s not much fun wading through all of those threads looking to find technical questions to answer. I don’t have a complete solution to that, but I can explain how I use the forums.

I never look at the All Posts view. Even back in the day, it always contained stuff that’s way outside of my wheelhouse. I mean, I know as much about SwiftUI as the next network/thread/file system engineer, which is not a lot [1]. So, I’ve never tried sifting through the full list of threads to find questions to answer

Rather, I rely exclusively on subtopic and tags. I have a long list of subtopics and tags that I monitor, and I use that to build my list of questions to answer.

The way I do that is weird — it’s old, and it’s very specific to my setup — so I’m not going to go into those details. Rather, I encourage folks to:

• Use RSS feeds to learn about new threads.
• Watch threads to learn about updates.

The latter is easy:

• When you find a thread you’re interested in, click the watch (bell) icon.
• Bookmark the Watching tab and go there when you want to catch up.

To learn about new threads, plug the forums RSS feeds into your RSS reader of choice. Every topic, subtopic, and tag page has such a feed.

This will yield duplicates, because a thread might have multiple tags that you’re watching, but you can de-dup based on the thread URL.

Now, this isn’t perfect:

• Some folks don’t set their subtopic and tags appropriately, so you might miss a question you would’ve answered otherwise.
• Some folks apply incorrect tags, so you might see a thread that’s not what you’re looking for [2].

Both of these are annoying, but hardly the end of the world.

[1] My SwiftUI apps typically have a single Test button that runs my test code (-:

[2] When I see those, I fix the subtopic and tags, but that’s not an option for most folks.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

Yes, we recognise that this situation is less than ideal and we’re working on ways to improve things (r. 190253666).

So Apple is listening.

I have no details as to what that’ll be, or any sort of timeline to share.

Yes. I do understand. Any solution that I can dream up with involves some kind of software change or new feature, if not in the forum back-end, then in App Store Connect. Both are fraught with peril.

But changes are possible. I'm using the new editing tool right now and that's really nice! Thanks!

There are existing support channels for these things

I've also recommended "Meet with Apple" session for those cases where I think it could be useful. I've never done that for App Review myself, but I did for technical issues and it was very useful.

But I think one important aspect is that people are posting here in this forum as a last resort. They don't feel they're being heard through those other channels. An ideal solution might involve App Store Connect displaying a more accurate estimated wait time or position in queue.

I don't get the sense that people inside Apple truly understand what it's like on the outside. When I first setup my account in 2015, I waited 5 months for Apple to fill out a one-page form for Canada Revenue Agency. So when people complain about long wait times with no feedback, I really do understand that frustration.

I've also been on the receiving end of a complicated rejection, so I understand that too. It's frustrating to see the same old rejection complaints day after day. But then again, I did setup my account over a decade ago, and I had a personal account before that. When younger people see those 2 day support response estimates, or the 90% in 24 hours review estimates, they don't seem to understand the scale or reality. That's just boilerplate text that can easily be changed.

To learn about new threads, plug the forums RSS feeds into your RSS reader of choice

I did use RSS feeds with the Apple Support Community years ago, but then they took that feature away and replaced it with "My Subscriptions".

These days, my Apple social media activity is much more casual than it was back then. This current "situation" is curious and morbidly fascinating. But I have other things I need to be doing. That's the challenge for an org like Apple trying to run a forum. A bunch of new people are actively engaging. Other people like me are fading away. Where do you choose to allocate your resources for support?