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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Question about Shield customization limits in ManagedSettingsUI (videos, text length, personalization)
Hi everyone, I’m currently developing a parental control app that uses the Screen Time API (FamilyControls, ManagedSettings, DeviceActivity). I have a question regarding the customization limits of the Shield UI in ManagedSettingsUI. From the documentation, I understand that we can customize the ShieldConfiguration (background color, blur style, icon, title, subtitle, button labels, etc.). However, I’d like to clarify a few points before finalizing the design: 1. Is it allowed (or technically possible) to display custom media content, such as videos, animations, or interactive elements, inside a custom Shield? 2. Are there limitations on the text length for the title and subtitle fields (e.g. maximum number of characters, multiline support, truncation behavior)? 3. Can the Shield be personalized per user (for example, showing a different title or color scheme based on user preferences or device state)? 4. Are there App Store Review restrictions or UI guidelines that define what a Shield should or should not contain (for instance, whether the Shield can resemble a mini-app experience)? I want to ensure that the implementation fully complies with Apple’s technical and design expectations before submission. Thanks in advance for any official clarification or best practices on how far we can go with Shield customization! Best regards, Ferdinand
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Oct ’25
Testing Live Caller ID Lookup Feature before App Store Release
Hi, We are working to integrate the Live Caller ID Lookup feature into our app. After submitting the request form via the link: https://developer.apple.com/contact/request/live-caller-id-lookup/, we received this reply from Apple: Apple’s OHTTP relay has been configured to talk to your OHTTP gateway. Now Live Caller ID Lookup should work for your application extension when distributed through App Store. However, before officially releasing our app on the App Store, we’d like to make sure the Live Caller ID Lookup feature is working as expected. To test this, we uploaded the app to TestFlight, and it successfully passed App Review. However, the test failed — we observed that the system tries to fetch the config from http://www.example.com/config instead of our actual configuration URL. Questions: Is this expected behavior when using TestFlight? Does the Live Caller ID Lookup feature only become active after full public release on the App Store? Is there any recommended way to test this feature before public release? Thank you!
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132
Oct ’25
How can I open my app from the restricted screen like many apps in the App Store, one of which is AppLocker?
class ShieldActionExtension: ShieldActionDelegate { override func handle(action: ShieldAction, for application: ApplicationToken, completionHandler: @escaping (ShieldActionResponse) -> Void) { // Handle the action as needed. switch action { case .primaryButtonPressed: if let url = URL(string: "blockfocusapp://") { let extensionContext = NSExtensionContext() extensionContext.open(url, completionHandler: nil) } // completionHandler(.defer) case .secondaryButtonPressed: let userDefaults = UserDefaults(suiteName: "group.in.appsquare.FocusApp.shieldExt") userDefaults?.set(false, forKey: "shouldOpenMainApp") completionHandler(.defer) @unknown default: fatalError() } } override func handle(action: ShieldAction, for webDomain: WebDomainToken, completionHandler: @escaping (ShieldActionResponse) -> Void) { // Handle the action as needed. completionHandler(.close) } override func handle(action: ShieldAction, for category: ActivityCategoryToken, completionHandler: @escaping (ShieldActionResponse) -> Void) { // Handle the action as needed. completionHandler(.close) } } I want to be able to open my app from ShieldActionExtension
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Oct ’25
Screen Time differences between DeviceActivityMonitor and times shown in DeviceActivityReport
I am still struggling to nail down the screen time between monitoring and showing it in a DeviceActivityReport. It's always off by a couple of percentage points, which results in a difference of a couple of minutes between the time shown for my total screen time in DeviceActivityReport and DeviceActivityMonitor with a threshold set for all apps/websites/categories. In the report, I am looping through all segment (there is only 1 segement using .daily segment interval for a given day) then loop through all categories and all apps within each category and sum up all totalActivityDuration for each app. Based on avaiable documentation, that should corrolate to DeviceActivityMonitor threshold but it doesn't. Are there any differences in how these 2 places count screen time? Are there any apps/core ios services which are excluded from DeviceActivityMonitor. Would appreciate any help at all, I'm losing my mind here. My current suspicion is that Apple Developer documentation is counted twice. i.e. this website https://developer.apple.com/documentation/deviceactivity/deviceactivitymonitor shows up in usage as an App with bundleId of apple.developer.wwdc-release and time spent there is counted twice, against this bundleId AND Safari. I don't know why it's not counted as a webdomain.
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171
Sep ’25
Provisioning profile "iOS Team Provisioning Profile:... doesn't support the Near Field Communication Tag Reading capability.
Anyone know what exactly this means? I have enabled in Capabilities Near Field Communications Tag Read in the Xcode project AND just to make sure added it in by hand in the app certificate section on the website, yet keep on getting the error started in the title: "/Provisioning profile "iOS Team Provisioning Profile: --------" doesn't support the Near Field Communication Tag Reading capability." Ive taken an Apple demo and it works right out of the box. Any ideas?
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Dec ’24
ShieldConfiguration: Shield does not update when token is moved from one store to anohter (while in foreground)
Hello, I have noticed that the ShieldConfiguration is only requested when opening a target app, and never when the application token is moved to a different shield while the target app remains in foreground. This causes problems because many times the wrong ShieldConfiguration is displayed (recycled) instead of requesting a new ShieldConfiguration. This bug has been around since the introduction of the Screen Time API in 2020 and is has not been addressed. Bug reports: FB14237883 FB17902392 Please fix asap!! Not acceptable to have bugs not being addressed for more than 5 years. Most concerning: This is still reproducing on iOS 26 beta 7!! Thanks a lot for your help.
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Aug ’25
Can the App Clip banner for full app download be disabled?
Hello, I have a question about the default UI in an App Clip. I know that when App Clip launches, a system banner appears at the top for a few seconds, prompting the user to download the full app from the App Store. I'd like to confirm if this is the standard, default behavior for all App Clips. More importantly, is there any way to disable or hide this banner? We would prefer to manage the prompt to download the full app within our own UI. Thanks in advance for your help!
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1w
Stopping a non-repeating alarm does not cancel it
I'm currently experimenting with AlarmKit and, when configuring an alarm with a Relative schedule, but that never repeats, I find that it is still scheduled in the AlarmManager, but the documentation says that an alarm that has no repeat schedule will be removed from the AlarmManager after firing. This behavior is experienced both in my project and with the sample code AlarmKit-ScheduleAndAlert To reproduce, create a non-repeating alarm, and, after firing, it will still be on the list marked as Scheduled Am I doing something wrong or is this a bug?
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Aug ’25
Testing iMessage extension from recipient POV
Hello, I am building an iMessage extension for my app and I am struggling to figure out how to test it. The extension allows users to send their friends an interactive widget and the recipient experience is very important to test. I tried to do it in the simulators, but simulators do not support iMessage. I have got a second iPhone and created a sandbox account, but I cannot install TestFlight with the sandbox account, as this feature is not supported. Reddit, Stackoverflow, ChatGPT and Apple Developer support also did not help. Can someone share their experience with testing recipient experience in the iMessage extension?
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Aug ’25
How to uninstall/delete Voice Control on macOS?
How to uninstall/delete Voice Control on macOS so that I can test my app for the case when the initial use of Voice Control causes it to be downloaded from Apple? Is there a folder in the macOS System or Library to delete to force a re-download of Voice Control? My macOS app uses the older NSSpeechRecognizer to handle speech commands, but to use NSSpeechRecognizer required authorization via [SFSpeechRecognizer requestAuthorization...]. I do this and on a macOS system it can trigger a download of Voice Control, the macOS feature. An alert appears with: "A 390 MB download is required to use speech recognition features in MyApp. You may need to quit and open MyApp again after download completes."
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334
Jan ’25
Associated domain not recognised
I have a public and accessible .well-known/apple-app-site-association file for both my domain.com and subdomain.domain.com with "paths": ["*"] . Both example.com and blog.example.com are added in Associated domains and any link that contains domain.com and domain.com/path normally deep links into my app. I used to have an *.example.com that successfully deep linked all my subdomains into my app but now I had to remove it as some subdomains will need to link to other apps, but some should still link to the same app. I removed * but left blog.example.com as that specific subdomain still needs to deep link into my app. But now blog.example.com is not even being recognized by my app and any link starting with blog.example.com just opens in safari. What am I missing? Why is this happening ?
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Aug ’25
How to stop today's instance of repeating alarms in AlarmKit without affecting future days?
I'm using the new AlarmKit framework to build a Swift app that lets users schedule multiple repeating alarms. The goal is to allow users to stop all alarms for today if they wake up early, but the alarms should still ring on their scheduled days in the future (for example, every Monday). What I tried: When the user chooses to stop alarms for today, I delete all alarms and re-add them. However, this doesn't work as expected. If today is Monday and I delete and re-add the alarm with .weekday = .monday, it still rings today. That means re-adding the alarm doesn't skip today's instance, even though it's repeating. What I want to achieve: Skip or suppress today's alarms when the user stops them manually Keep the same alarms active for their scheduled days in the future Questions: Is there a way in AlarmKit to prevent a repeating alarm from ringing today if it was just re-added or there are better alternatives to this problem? Is the only workaround to delay re-adding until after today’s alarms would have fired? What is the best approach to achieve this?
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Aug ’25
Universal Links not working with subdomains without AASA on root domain
Hi all, I'm trying to set up universal links for my app but it's not working. What I want: cogover.com → Safari (website) - NOT my app *.cogover.com (any subdomain like abc.cogover.com) → My app What I did: Added applinks:*.cogover.com in Xcode Put AASA files on all subdomains They work fine (checked with curl) Problem: All links still open in Safari, not my app. I do not put AASA on my root domain cogover.com because I don't want open my app with root domain. I have checked TN3155: Debugging universal links | Apple Developer Documentation but it only say about universal link works with both root domain and subdomains. Weird thing I found: I checked how Salesforce does it - their *.force.com subdomains work perfectly. But when I tried to check their setup, (https://force.com/.well-known/apple-app-site-association) doesn't seem to exist either! So how does theirs work? Even stranger - Apple's CDN has their file cached at (https://app-site-association.cdn-apple.com/a/v1/force.com) but the actual domain doesn't serve it. Can Apple's CDN have a file cached even if it's not on the website anymore? Thanks for any help!
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137
Jul ’25
FinanceKit - Any way to get merchant location info from transactions?
Hi all — I’m building a Wallet-style transaction details view using FinanceKit and I’m running into a gap around merchant location. What I’m seeing FinanceKit gives me great core fields (amount, currency, status, dates, MCC, merchantName, transactionDescription), but I’m not seeing any address or place/location metadata on a Transaction. For example, a small/local merchant where I can plausibly infer a single place: Fetched transaction: Transaction( id: 8D142B16-3E0E-40B8-945A-2E7C0CF65F1D, accountID: 14939CF4-DBC3-4A9D-8292-5FEA495B8461, transactionAmount: 47.24 USD, creditDebitIndicator: .debit, transactionDescription: "Local Dental Care", originalTransactionDescription: "Local Dental Care", merchantCategoryCode: 8021, merchantName: "Local Dental Care", transactionType: .pointOfSale, status: .booked, transactionDate: 2025-08-20 22:27:50 +0000, postedDate: 2025-08-21 11:22:06 +0000 ) Because this appears to be a single-location practice, I can usually resolve it to a place using MapKit search heuristics. But for big-box chains, I don’t get enough signal to determine which store: Fetched transaction: Transaction( id: 3F8E9F74-7565-4D24-9038-8FD709184799, accountID: 14939CF4-DBC3-4A9D-8292-5FEA495B8461, transactionAmount: 441.77 USD, creditDebitIndicator: .debit, transactionDescription: "The Home Depot", originalTransactionDescription: "The Home Depot", merchantCategoryCode: 5200, merchantName: "The Home Depot", transactionType: .pointOfSale, status: .booked, transactionDate: 2023-12-27 23:07:02 +0000, postedDate: 2023-12-29 03:09:41 +0000 ) There’s no store number, address, phone, or any stable identifier. With hundreds of locations, I can’t deterministically choose a map pin or fetch the right brand assets. What I’m trying to achieve I’d like to replicate the Apple Wallet experience: show a small map snapshot and merchant visuals (logo/name that match Apple Maps / the Place Card) on the transaction detail screen. Without a location hint, I have to either: Ask users to pick a store manually, or Make a guess based on a coarse, app-defined region …neither of which feels great. Questions Is there any way in FinanceKit today to access merchant location or a resolvable identifier (e.g., address, city/state, store number, Apple Maps place identifier, network merchant ID/MID, terminal ID, etc.)? If not, can FinanceKit expose additional merchant metadata (even opt-in / privacy-preserving) to enable Wallet-like enrichment? A few examples that would unblock this: merchantAddress (or components: street/city/region/postalCode/country) merchantPhone (often unique per store) merchantIdentifier (stable per physical location, e.g., network merchant ID / store number) mapsPlaceURL or mapsPlaceIdentifier (linkage to the Apple Maps Place Card) brandAssetURL (logo/brand reference similar to what Wallet shows) With even one of the above, I could reliably: Render an accurate map snapshot, Fetch the correct brand assets, and Avoid prompting the user or inferring via fuzzy search. Context / constraints I do not want to (and shouldn’t need to) request or monitor the user’s device location to resolve a merchant’s store location. For small merchants, MapKit text search is often enough. For large chains, I need a store-level identifier. If there’s an existing field or recommended approach I’m missing, I’d love pointers. If not, please consider this a feature request for richer merchant metadata in FinanceKit so developers can build Wallet-quality transaction details. Thanks!
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Aug ’25