Delve into the world of built-in app and system services available to developers. Discuss leveraging these services to enhance your app's functionality and user experience.

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Methods for dealing with macOS Wallpaper Cache
Hello, Back in January 2024, I filed a bug report regarding a cache being kept by the macOS Wallpaper Agent. This cache contains every image ever set as a users wallpaper, and at the time the issue was reported, it never cleared, leaving hundreds of gigabytes wasted on users disks in some cases. FB13536275 This issue was ultimately fixed in macOS 15.1 beta 6, and remained fixed for the duration of macOS 15. The fix was excellent - the cache was reduced to storing just 2-3 days worth of images. Sadly, we've discovered that this issue is back in macOS Tahoe. The cache has moved locations, and once again is not clearing. We have filed this bug again, less than a year after it was first fixed: FB20636593 We develop an app called 24 Hour Wallpaper that keeps the wallpaper in sync with the time of day. This necessitates that the app regularly changes the wallpaper, which sadly now results in an infinitely growing and useless cache of BMP files generated by the system. As we waited 10 months for this to get fixed the first time, we expect to wait at least that long to get it fixed again, and have no confidence that it will stay fixed because the last fix lasted less than a year. This leaves us in a bad position, as people can't use our app without the cache growing arbitrarily and ultimately completely filling their disk. We've already had customers call Apple to complain about this, and the good news is that the support agents understand that this is a problem with macOS, not with our app. What we've decided to do is add a feature to the app that monitors the size of this cache and periodically deletes it. We're required to get the users permission the first time to do this, but after that the permission is cached, so the app can keep the cache folder clean regardless of if macOS is doing it's job or not. We haven't seen any side effects or problems as a result of doing this. We've seen other apps like CleanMyMac do this without any problems. We're wondering if there is anything we should be aware of regarding this caches behavior before releasing this flushing feature. Thanks for your time, -josh
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286
Jan ’26
About 0xBAADCA11 error
I am developing "local push" VoIP application. I have a question about issues I found while testing this app. After repeating a test for 24 hours in which a incoming call followed by an immediate disconnect 0.1 seconds later, the iPhone of incommig call side encountered a 0xBAADCA11 error, causing iOS to force-close the app. (The incidence is low, occurring three times in 17280 times incoming call(24 hours.)) This problem found on iOS17.6.1 (iPhone11Pro). When the same test was performed on iOS18.2 (iPhoneSE3), the problem did not occur. Did iOS take something measures against the 0xBAADCA11 error between iOS17.6.1 and iOS18.2? If yes, I want to encourage customers to upgrade to the latest iOS version, please tell me about it? ※I have attached an ips files and sysdiagnose file of the 0xBAADCA11 error occurring. (please refer sysdiagnose also if you need.) FjSoftPhone-2025-01-16-113049.ips FjSoftPhone-2025-01-16-175253.ips FjSoftPhone-2025-01-17-070449.ips [sysdiagnose_2025.01.17_14-24-48+0900_iPhone-OS_iPhone_21G93.tar.gz] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CV8laKzdnQxvwaAIOwMcXL8rAYL2jq35/view?usp=sharing
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809
Mar ’25
XPCEndpoint cannot be encoded
I am trying to send an anonymous XPC listener endpoint to my daemon from user context in order to be able to do some bidirectional XPC. I was trying to use the new XPCListener and XPCSession objects and the easiest method I figured was using the Codable version of the send() methods, in which I wanted to send the XPCEndpoint object - alongside the name of the anonymous endpoint (because I want to have more XPCEndpoints sent over, so I want to be able to identify them. However, trying to manually encode XPCEndpoint throws an exception: ERROR: Missing CodingUserInfoKey CodingUserInfoKey(rawValue: "_XPCCodable") Here is a simple command-line tool reproducing the issue: import Foundation import XPC let listener = try XPCListener(service: "mach-service.xxx.yyy", incomingSessionHandler: { $0.accept(incomingMessageHandler: { (msg: XPCReceivedMessage) in return nil }) }) var endpoint = listener.endpoint do { let endpointData = try JSONEncoder().encode(endpoint) print("EndpointData object: \(endpointData.count) bytes") } catch let error { print("ERROR: \(error)") } Wrapping my object into an XPCDictionary, then adding multiple keys alongside an "endpoint" key with the XPCEndpoint as value works, but XPCDictionaries are less ideal - they don't even support vanilla Data objects, only ones converted to an xpc_object_t with xpc_data_* functions Is this expected behavior? I shouldn't encode an XPCEndpoint myself? I am using the latest Xcode 26.0 beta, with deployment target of macOS 15.1, running on macOS 15.5. (Btw it's also incorrect that this XPCEndpoint API is available from macOS 15.0 - it cannot be found in Xcode 15.4 under macOS 15.5. At the very best it's backDeployed but this isn't mentioned in its public declaration.)
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Sep ’25
Inquiry About Deferred Deep Link Limitation and Alternative Options
Dear Apple Support Team, I hope this message finds you well. I’m reaching out to inquire about the limitations of deferred deep linking within iOS applications. Specifically, I’m interested in understanding the constraints and challenges that prevent deferred deep links from functioning as expected in certain scenarios (e.g., when the app is not installed or other related issues). Additionally, I would like to ask if there are any recommended alternative approaches or solutions to implement deep linking, ensuring that users can still be directed to specific content or screens even if they need to install the app first. Your insights and guidance would be greatly appreciated as I work to enhance the user experience in my app. Thank you for your time and assistance. Best regards, Santosh
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1.2k
Apr ’25
Database disk image is malformed in Call Blocking
I have an app developed by using the Callkit/Call-Blocking and received feedback from individual users, when using [cxcalldirectorymanager reloadextensionwithidentifier] to write call blocking data, it returned error code 11 with the following contents: errorCode: 11 errorDomain: com.apple.callkit.database.sqlite errorDescription: sqlite3_step for query 'DELETE FROM PhoneNumberBlockingEntry WHERE extension_id =?' returned 11 (11) errorMessage 'database disk image is malformed' I want to know the reasons for this error and how to solve it,Thanks!
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1.1k
Nov ’25
How to learn most recent best practices?
Hello. Background: Most learning resources are for leaning Swift/Objective-C. I'm pretty sure I need something different. I'm already an experienced software engineer, just new to iOS/MacOS development. My problem is not learning the language, but rather how to learn modern best practices. I cannot find examples for what I'm looking for. So much seems to be sparse on implementation details, out of date, or both. I'm trying to write an app that has a few distinct parts. The UI portion will be mostly a menu bar app, which I am not having a problem discovering resources for how to implement. The app will also have a daemon and utilize network extensions. This is where I am having trouble. What's the current best practices on how to write and launch a daemon? Should the daemon be its own library/package which is them imported into the main app? If so, which Xcode template do I use for this? Are there any Hello World! examples of this? What is the best way for a UI app to communicate with a daemon? Are there any Hello World! repositories on how to implement network extensions? Should this be done in the main UI app, or in a separate library/package? TIA
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166
Apr ’25
How do I handle force-quit in Swift
How do I handle force quit in Swift? I received crash reports during a tesflight test. I didn't understand what it was: none of my app's symbols were present, and Xcode didn't want them either... unlike two others who were very specific. By doing a few Google queries, I saw that [UIApplication _terminateWithStatus:] + 136 (UIApplication.m:7578). Accompanied by a SIGSEV... corresponded to a simple thing: it's a crash during a force quit. I tested it with two iPhones, connected to my Mac, and launched the app from Xcode on each of them. I waited a bit, then quit it. It immediately went into the background and waited to launch operations with BackgroundTaskManager. I went to the app carousel and quit it with a swipe of my finger. I immediately see in the log that "sceneDidDisconnect" from SceneDelegate is called... then the immediate crash occurs, with the same elements as those received during the test flight crashlog.crash : SIGSEV and [UIApplication _terminateWithStatus:] and identical elements thereafter. And this applies regardless of what I put in "SceneDidDisconnect," a print, and something to close the BGtasks if they are running (but iOS should normally kill them too, right?) .. 1 or 2 secondes after it crashes. At the moment of the crash, the Xcode cursor is positioned on "class Appdelegate" in AppDelegate. class AppDelegate: UIResponder, UIApplicationDelegate, UNUserNotificationCenterDelegate { My question is: how do I handle force quit in Swift? I have another Objective-C application that does the same thing and runs identical operations in the background. If I force quit it, there is no crash.
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152
Apr ’25
WatchOS app not downloaded from appstore
This is a bit of a headscratcher. Xcode 16 fyi. I've written a standalone watchos app (with a stub ios app). Distributes and works perfectly over Testflight. I've submitted for app store and it passed the checks an I've released it for sale. Told my brother to use a promo code to download it and show me how it looks and report me any nuisances. He tells me there's no app neither on phone (expected) nor in watch. And he checked both the Watch ios app list and the watch. I've gone through various GPTs and they've all told me the basic troubleshooting. That his watch might not be supported (wrong, it's a watch 10 ultra with latest updates and my min supported versions are hilariously low). They've suggested that I might not have the right keys for making it standalone set, also no. They suggested that skip_install shouldn't be set to no; also wrong I think they're thinking xcode 13 and below. The stub ios app has a dependency on watchos app and also has an embed directive. I also checked the archive and saw the watchos app embedded indeed. Again, the app works perfectly fine when distributed over testflight. And AFAIK that's a release build which I know for a fact because I had a problem with not giving healthkit entitlements to release (that was another but minor headscratcher at the time, when it was working over direct xcode upload). Minor detail, I've written, test(flight)ed the app in UK and in English, my brother is in Turkey. Of course now I immediately pulled the app out of sale because I don't want people paying and getting nothing, that's gonna cause a lot of trouble. So I need any help I can get to How to debug this without exposing the app and myself: is it possible to limit the release? Obviously: what could be going wrong? How the hell did I even pass app review? Is this maybe isolated to my brother's watch? I'm more than happy to share project files and/or info.plist files(end products of them, because my plists are generated from project file).
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221
Apr ’25
FamilyActivityPicker Crashing / Freezing
Our users report frequent crashes with the FamilyActivityPicker. Since this is a screen controlled by Apple, I'm assuming that there's nothing I can do to prevent these crashes. I'm wondering, though, if there's any way to gracefully handle these crashes? When this happens, the following is printed to the console: [com.apple.FamilyControls.ActivityPickerExtension(1121)] Connection to plugin invalidated while in use. Does anyone know how to handle/catch this error?
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1.3k
Aug ’25
Receive Custom URL Parameters
Hello! I’m trying to handle custom URLs (e.g., customurl://open?param=value) that open the app. However, while the app launches via the custom URL as expected, the parameters are not being passed to or are accessible from the iOS-specific implementation. Currently, if I open a custom URL via Safari, the app gets launched but the custom URL and parameters are not accessible. customurl://open?hello=test According to the iOS Docs ( https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/defining-a-custom-url-scheme-for-your-app#Handle-incoming-URLs ) any URLs should be passed to: func application(_ application: UIApplication, open url: URL, options: [UIApplication.OpenURLOptionsKey : Any] = [:] ) -> Bool I do not register the above application function to be called but instead this one is executed during app start with launchOptions always being nil: func application(_ application: UIApplication, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [UIApplication.LaunchOptionsKey : Any]? = nil) -> Bool This is the case regardless of if the App is started fresh or was already running in the background. My pInfo entry for the custom URL: <key>CFBundleURLTypes</key> <array> <dict> <key>CFBundleTypeRole</key> <string>Viewer</string> <key>CFBundleURLName</key> <string>dev.customurl.project</string> <key>CFBundleURLSchemes</key> <array> <string>customurl</string> </array> </dict> <dict/> </array> TLDR: How can I access the parameters, passed with the URL? Any thoughts on what I am doing wrong?
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210
Apr ’25
app crashed _CFRelease.cold.1
In my app, I implemented a screen recording functionality. But there was an unexpected crash. 0 CoreFoundation _CFRelease.cold.1 + 16 1 CoreFoundation ___CFTypeCollectionRelease 2 ReplayKit ___56-[RPScreenRecorder captureHandlerWithSample:timingData:]_block_invoke + 148 3 libdispatch.dylib __dispatch_call_block_and_release + 32 4 libdispatch.dylib __dispatch_client_callout + 16 5 libdispatch.dylib __dispatch_lane_serial_drain + 740 6 libdispatch.dylib __dispatch_lane_invoke + 388 7 libdispatch.dylib __dispatch_root_queue_drain_deferred_wlh + 292 8 libdispatch.dylib __dispatch_workloop_worker_thread + 540 9 libsystem_pthread.dylib __pthread_wqthread + 292
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182
Jul ’25
ExtensionFoundation on iOS 26
Hi, I'm trying to add an extension to my app on iOS 26. I've followed the instructions on https://developer.apple.com/documentation/extensionfoundation/adding-support-for-app-extensions-to-your-app and made it as far as being able to launch the extension: let monitor = try await AppExtensionPoint.Monitor(appExtensionPoint: .localWebServerExtension) currentIdentity = monitor.identities.first if let currentIdentity = currentIdentity { let myConfig = AppExtensionProcess.Configuration(appExtensionIdentity: currentIdentity, onInterruption: { NSLog("extension was terminated") }) myProcess = try await AppExtensionProcess(configuration: myConfig) myConnection = try myProcess?.makeXPCConnection() } None of these calls throw, and when I examine myProcess from inside that code, it seems to be normal (there's a pid, for example). Yet the code inside my extension seems to not be executed: breakpoints are not triggered, NSLog() calls do not appear on the console. The onInterruption() callback is also not triggered, or at least it does not appear on the console either. I've probably missed something obvious, but what could it be?
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166
Oct ’25
CallKit blocked call remains Missed Calls
I’m currently developing a spam number blocking app using CallKit. I’ve confirmed that up to iOS 26 beta 5, there is a bug where number blocking doesn’t work. In my current tests, the ringtone doesn’t sound and the blocking works fine, but the call still appears in the missed calls list, which is bothersome. If the bug is fixed in future versions (as it was in previous versions), is there a way to block the number so that it also does not appear in missed calls?
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147
Aug ’25
iOS26 beta4 CallKit block number function not working
Hi I'm novice developer. I’m currently developing a phone number blocking app using a Call Directory Handler Extension. The blocking feature works perfectly on iOS 18.5, but it doesn’t seem to function properly on iOS 26 beta 4. The extension is invoked, and the numbers are passed correctly, but incoming calls are not being blocked as expected. Is there a known issue with CallKit or Call Directory Extensions on iOS 26 beta 4
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199
Aug ’25
identitylookup needed for ILMessageFilterQueryHandling?
My iOS app uses a Message Filter extension (via ILMessageFilterQueryHandling) and works only when run directly as the extension target. When installed normally (via TestFlight), the filter does not trigger at all — which I now believe is because iOS enforces the com.apple.developer.identitylookup entitlement at runtime. Anyone know anything about this? I put in a request for the entitlement last week but heard nothing back. Called Apple "technical" support and they had no idea what I was talking about. The documentation around this is EXTREMELY lacking in my opinion...
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100
Apr ’25
Associated Domains and location of the AASA file when “service”=”Authsrv”
We are planning to use our internal IdP (PingFederate) for authentication of end users in their iOS apps using ASWebAuthenticationSession. Initial tests are successful, but the user is prompted for every login (and logouts) with a consent dialogue box: “AppName” wants to use “internal domain-name” to Sign In This allows the app and website to share information about you. Cancel Continue” Let’s say that our top-level domain is “company.no”, where our IdP is placed at “idp.company.com”. I have seen examples where the Associated domains entitlement points to the idp as a webserver for serving the JSON output AASA file. In this case that would be: authsrv: idp.company.com Anyone with experience implementing this structure with the IdP as webserver for serving the JSON output? Our problem is that trying to use the IdP as webserver for this purpose is that it is very complicated to modify the IdP’s webserver configuration. Also, this modification needs to be re-done every time we need to upgrade the IdP. My question is therefore also related to the options of which webserver to install the AASA file on. Has anyone installed the file on a generic webserver on the toplevel domain like “webserver.company.com” ?
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133
Apr ’25