We have developed a Parental/Self control app using Screen time API.
We have used individual authentication to authorize the app, using the instructions here:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/familycontrols/authorizationcenter
The problem is , that individual auth can be disabled easily , by the following steps:
enter Settings app.
in Settings app, click on the Parental/Self control app.
click to disable screen time restriction.
show the device owner's face/fingerprint. (or pin code)
Why is that a problem:
Parental control apps, or self-control apps, are about giving control to the software, To make it hard for the user to disable the restrictions.
So using the flow I have introduced above, it's super-easy for a user to disable his Parental control restrictions, which misses the entire point of Parental/Self control idea.
Furthermore, not only the user have the means to unlock his screen time restrictions, he also MUST have the means to unlock it.
This makes Screen time (with individual auth) useless:
I have a code ready to make a great parental control app for my clients, with amazing ideas, but I can't use the Screen time API unless this problem is fixed.
Why child-parent auth is not enough:
My clients are grownups people between ages of 15-40, that are interested in self-control, so they don't have iCloud child accounts.
also, the child-parent auth solution forces my clients to give some control to other person, and my clients prefer their privacy. Some of them prefer self-control and not parental-control.
What I suggest as a solution:
1: Give more options to users how to disable the Screen time restrictions. including:
a second faceID / FingerPrint (that isn't the same as the one used to unlock the device)
a second pin password.
a string password
2: Give the users the option to choose to not have the device's owner Face/Finger/Pincode ID , as a method to disable the Screen time restrictions.
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RSS for tagDelve 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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Has anyone had success attempting to place a PKCanvasView in front of an image / UIImageView ?Setting the canvas backgroundColor to clear appears to work correctly, however when finger/pencil touches down the background of the PKCanvasView reverts to black 100% alpha.ThanksBen
I am trying to follow the guidance for testing a Local Experience, as listed in the Testing Your App Clip’s Launch Experience - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/app_clips/testing_your_app_clip_s_launch_experience documentation. I have successfully created my App Clip target, and can confirm that running the App Clip on my device does launch the App Clip app as I expected. Further, I can successfully test the App Clip on device, by setting the _XCAppClipURL argument in the App Clip's scheme.
I would like to test a Local Experience. The documentation states that for testing Local Experiences;
To test your app clip’s invocation with a local experience, you don’t need to add the Associated Domains Entitlement, make changes to the Apple App Site Association file on your web server, or create an app clip experience for testing in TestFlight. Therefore, I should be able to configure a Local Experience with any desired domain in Settings -> Developer -> Local Experience, generate a QR code or NFC tag with that same URL, and the App Clip experience should appear. I have taken the following steps;
Built and run my App Clip on my local device.
In Settings -> Developer -> Local Experience, I have registered a new experience using a URL prefix https://somewebsite.com
Set my Bundle ID to com.mycompany.myapp.Clip, which exactly matches the Bundle Identifier, as listed in Xcode, under my App Clip target.
Generated a QR code which directs me to https://somewebsite.com
In theory, I believe I should be able to open the Camera app on my device, point the camera at the QR code, and the App Clip experience should appear. However, I received mixed experiences. 50% of the time, I receive a pop-up directing me to open https://somewebsite.com in Safari, the other 50% of the time, no banner or action occurs whatsoever.
Is this an issue anyone has faced before, or have I pursued these steps out of order?
There are use cases where someone who's using an Apple Pencil may not want to enter text via Scribble. A simple example is writing "UIViewController" in a text view is unlikely to be successful.
I'd like to disable Scribble in this case and let the keyboard become the input mechanism. (Disabling Scribble system-wide in Settings is both cumbersome and overkill.)
The closest I can come to making this happen is by adding a UIScribbleInteraction on a UITextView and returning false when scribbleInteraction(shouldBeginAt:) is called.
This disables Scribble on the text view, and prevents writing from being converted into text, but the input widget still appears on screen and isn't very useful.
Here is a sample project that demonstrates the problem:
http://files.iconfactory.net/craig/bugs/Scribbler.zip
Hopefully, I'm doing something wrong here. If not, I'm happy to submit this as a FB.
-ch
We have minimum deployments set to iOS 15 in one of the app for both application and widget target.
When install app in simulator or real device using Xcode 15.4, it works fine in iOS15, iOS16, iOS17 and iOS18 beta.
When install app in simulator or real device, using Xcode 16 beta 6, it works fine in iOS16, iOS17 and iOS18 beta but in iOS 15, our app doesn't show in widget gallery.
~5% of our users when downloading the iOS application from the Apple Store for the first time are unable to enrol a Passkey and experience an error saying the application is not associated with [DOMAIN].
The error message thrown by the iOS credentials API is
"The operation couldn't be completed. Application with identifier [APPID] is not associated with domain [DOMAIN]"
We have raised this via the developer support portal with case id: 102315543678
Question:
Why does the AASA file fail to fetch on app install and is there anything that can be done to force the app to fetch the file?
Can this bug be looked at urgently as it is impacting security critical functionality?
Other Debugging Observations
We have confirmed that our AASA file is correctly formatted and hosted on the Apple CDN. Under normal circumstances the association is created on install and Passkey enrolment works as intended.
We have observed that when customers uninstall/reinstall the app this often, but not always, resolves the issue. We also know this issue can resolve itself overtime without any intervention.
We have ruled out network (e.g VPN) issues and have reproduced the issue across a number of different network configurations.
We have ruled out the Keychain provider and have reproduced it across a variety of different providers and combinations of.
We observed this across multiple versions of the iOS operating system and iPhone hardware including the latest hardware and iOS version.
Hello, I want to echo the DeviceActivityReport "concurrency" problems flagged in https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/720549, and ask a related question. (Thanks to Kmart and other Apple dev support folks who have been monitoring these forums and responding diligently.)
I would like to display daily and weekly stats in the same view, broken down by specific apps (as in the native Screen Time). However, instantiating multiple DeviceActivityReport objects with different filters and/or different contexts leads to confusion, where the two views will incorrectly and intermittently swap data or duplicate data where it shouldn't (seemingly upon some interval when the extension provides fresh data). There isn't documentation on how to display multiple reports at once. Is the idea that logic for multiple reports should be embedded within the extension itself in the makeConfiguration() function and there should only be a single DeviceActivityReport in the main App, or is this a bug?
Even with a single DeviceActivityReport, I run into inconsistencies where the View provided by the extension takes multiple seconds to load or fails to load altogether. The behavior seems random...I will build the application with the same code multiple times and see different behavior each time.
Finally, a plug for better support in the Simulator for the entire set of Screen Time APIs.
Thanks!
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
General
Tags:
Family Controls
Device Activity
Screen Time
wwdc2022-110336
Our app's widget often doesn't show up in the "Widget Gallery".
Lots of our users complain about this issue.
They can't see the widget in widget gallery after opening the app.
In some cases, the widget does not appear in the widget gallery even after turning the phone off and on.
I saw in another question that this is a bug.
This bug will be fixed someday, but is there anything we can do before that?
It looks like Apple has added some new API(s) to SFSpeechRecognition
My app, which is currently listed on App Store does feature speech recognition.
Yet, trying to use it under iOS 18.0 throws errors:
-[SFSpeechRecognitionTask localSpeechRecognitionClient:speechRecordingDidFail:]_block_invoke Ignoring subsequent local speech recording error: Error Domain=kAFAssistantErrorDomain Code=1101 "(null)"
What happens is that after several words are transcribed and displayed, the next sentence results in previous words disappearance.
That's probably what that portion of the error text - "Ignoring subsequent local speech recording error: Error Domain=kAFAssistantErrorDomain Code=1101 "(null)" means.
The problem occurs ONLY when the app is running under iOS 18.0
Even when it's compiled in Xcode 16.0 using iOS 17.5 everything works fine.
Any suggestions?
I'm working on an API client for a REST service that uses a custom token-based authentiation scheme. The app hits a specificed authentication endpoint with a username and password, said endpoint returns a token that's good for X amount of time, and the app passes that token along with every subsequent request. When that token expires, we start over.Most literature out there tells me to manually set the Authorization header on my request, but official Apple documentation discourages this, as that header is meant to be 'owned' by the built-in HTTP loading system. That said, official documentation on the 'correct' way to do this is shockingly lacking, and the standard didReceiveChallenge callbacks seem better suited for non-custom Basic/Digest/etc authentication schemes. One thought I had was registering my own URLProtocol subclass to handle our custom flow. However, while I haven't had a chance to sit down and take a crack at that yet, my understanding from skimming these forums is that it's suffering from some bit-rot right now, so it 'might' (?) not be the best choice. That, and it's also not clear to me whether the rules around the Authorization header change when a custom URLProtocol is in play.So, community (paging eskimo in particular!), what's the correct way for me to go about this?
After building my app with Xcode 16 beta 6 I'm getting this warning in my AppIntents.
Encountered a non-optional type for parameter: computer. Conformance to the following AppIntent protocols requires all parameter types to be optional: AppIntents.WidgetConfigurationIntent, AppIntents.ControlConfigurationIntent
The intent looks something like this
struct WakeUp: AppIntent, WidgetConfigurationIntent, PredictableIntent {
@Parameter(title: "intent.param.computer", requestValueDialog:"intent.param.request_dialog.computer")
var computer: ComputerEntity
init(computer: ComputerEntity) {
self.computer = computer
}
init() {
}
public static var parameterSummary: some ParameterSummary {
Summary("Wake Up \(\.$computer)")
}
static var predictionConfiguration: some IntentPredictionConfiguration {
IntentPrediction(parameters: (\.$computer)) { computer in
DisplayRepresentation(
title: "Wake Up \(computer)"
)
}
}
@MainActor
func perform() async throws -> some IntentResult & ProvidesDialog {
}
}
According to the docs though specifying optional is how we say if the value is required or not. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appintents/adding-parameters-to-an-app-intent#Make-a-parameter-optional-or-required
So is this warning accurate? If so, how do I specify that a parameter is required by the intent now?
We use call directory extension in one of our applications, we notice that call id is truncated on IOS 18.
Example: "Grady GmbH" instead of "GRADY ARCHIE,
PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPER GMBH"
We notice also if we have calls in the history then the caller id is shown correctly.
Issue only on IOS 18.
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
General
Our app uses a 24-hour DeviceActivityMonitor repeating schedule to send users notifications for every hour of screen time they spend on their phone per day. Notifications are sent from eventDidReachThreshold callbacks at 1, 2, 3, etc, hour thresholds to keep them aware of their screen time.
We have recently received an influx of emails from our users that after updating to iOS 17.6.1 their DeviceActivityMonitor notifications are saying their screen time was much higher than what is shown in DeviceActivityReport and their device's Screen Time settings.
These users have disabled "Share Across Devices" - but I suspect the DeviceActivityMonitor is still getting screen time from their other devices even though that setting is turned off.
Has anybody else noticed this, understands what is causing this, or could recommend a fix that we can tell our users to do?
When I tap on one of the buttons in the ShieldAction extension I want to close the shield and open the parent app instead of the shielded app. Is there any way of doing this using the Screen Time API?
class ShieldActionExtension: ShieldActionDelegate {
override func handle(action: ShieldAction, for application: ApplicationToken, completionHandler: @escaping (ShieldActionResponse) -> Void) {
// Handle the action as needed.
let store = ManagedSettingsStore()
switch action {
case .primaryButtonPressed:
//TODO - open parent app
completionHandler(.defer)
case .secondaryButtonPressed:
//remove shield
store.shield.applications?.remove(application)
completionHandler(.defer)
@unknown default:
fatalError()
}
}
}
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
General
Tags:
Managed Settings
Family Controls
Device Activity
Screen Time
I've been trying to add a CoreSpotlight indexer to my macOS application. The new template for the indexer uses the new appex CSImportExtension style importer.
I've been following this ->
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corespotlight/csimportextension
I changed the CSSupportedContentTypes in the Info.plist file to the correct file type uti.
I added a dummy value into the attributes (see code below) - just setting contentDescription to 'noodle' (easy to search for)
class ImportExtension: CSImportExtension {
override func update(_ attributes: CSSearchableItemAttributeSet, forFileAt: URL) throws {
// Add a dummy value, and see whether spotlight finds it
attributes.contentDescription = "noodle"
}
}
I have a number of files on disk that match the uti (and can be found when I search by the file name)
Yet, when I build and run my app, the a spotlight search for 'noodle' finds no results.
Can anyone give me any advice? I cannot find any indication that the ImportExtension is called (although when I put a log message at the start of the update() call there's no message in the console which seems to suggest it's not being called).
Is there any way of debugging this?
Cheers and thanks -- Darren.
Hello,
After submitting onboarding form for Live Caller ID Lookup feature, we received rejection response that our OHTTP gateway doesn't support HTTP/2.
We have run provided command openssl s_client -alpn h2 -connect with our domain several times from different machines and environments, and our results consistently confirm that HTTP/2 is indeed supported by our OHTTP gateway.
The output clearly shows ALPN protocol: h2, indicating successful HTTP/2 negotiation. Here is the log chunk from the command-line response:
No client certificate CA names sent
Peer signing digest: SHA256
Peer signature type: RSA-PSS
Server Temp Key: X25519, 253 bits
---
SSL handshake has read 4393 bytes and written 406 bytes
Verification: OK
---
New, TLSv1.3, Cipher is TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
Server public key is 2048 bit
This TLS version forbids renegotiation.
Compression: NONE
Expansion: NONE
ALPN protocol: h2
Early data was not sent
Verify return code: 0 (ok)
---
DONE
We have also tried different 3rd-party services to check the HTTP/2 support and they also confirmed that HTTP/2 is supported.
Is it possible to provide additional details on the specific criteria or test conditions that led to its non-approval? I'm happy to provide any further diagnostic information or engage in more detailed technical discussion.
Could someone please explain how to use a custom sound when setting up an alarm using AlarmKit? It keeps playing a default sound.
Also, I keep having an issue where the alarm sound plays but doesn’t show the alarm interface buttons unless the screen is locked.
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
General
I created a ShieldConfigurationExtension in Xcode 14.3 with File > New > Target > ShieldConfigurationExtension. This created the extension with all the necessary Info.plist values (correct NSExtensionPrincipalClass, etc.), with the extension included in embedded content in the host app target.
No matter what I try, the extension is not getting invoked when I shield applications from my host app. The custom UI does not show as the shield, and looking at the debugger, an extension process is never invoked.
I am shielding categories like this:
let managedSettings = ManagedSettingsStore()
...
managedSettings.shield.applicationCategories = .all()
And my extension code overrides all the ShieldConfigurationDataSource functions.
class ShieldConfigurationExtension: ShieldConfigurationDataSource {
override func configuration(shielding application: Application) -> ShieldConfiguration {
return ShieldConfiguration(
backgroundBlurStyle: UIBlurEffect.Style.systemThickMaterial,
backgroundColor: UIColor.white,
icon: UIImage(systemName: "stopwatch"),
title: ShieldConfiguration.Label(text: "You are in a Present Session", color: .yellow)
)
}
override func configuration(shielding application: Application, in category: ActivityCategory) -> ShieldConfiguration {
return ShieldConfiguration(
backgroundBlurStyle: UIBlurEffect.Style.systemThickMaterial,
backgroundColor: UIColor.white,
icon: UIImage(systemName: "stopwatch"),
title: ShieldConfiguration.Label(text: "You are in a Present Session", color: .yellow)
)
}
override func configuration(shielding webDomain: WebDomain) -> ShieldConfiguration {
return ShieldConfiguration(
backgroundBlurStyle: UIBlurEffect.Style.systemThickMaterial,
backgroundColor: UIColor.white,
icon: UIImage(systemName: "stopwatch"),
title: ShieldConfiguration.Label(text: "You are in a Present Session", color: .yellow)
)
}
override func configuration(shielding webDomain: WebDomain, in category: ActivityCategory) -> ShieldConfiguration {
return ShieldConfiguration(
backgroundBlurStyle: UIBlurEffect.Style.systemThickMaterial,
backgroundColor: UIColor.white,
icon: UIImage(systemName: "stopwatch"),
title: ShieldConfiguration.Label(text: "You are in a Present Session", color: .yellow)
)
}
}
What am I missing?
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
General
Tags:
Extensions
Managed Settings
Family Controls
Device Activity
Some of our users encounter an issue after updating their iPhone/iPad to iOS 17.5.1.
The tokens passed in the Shield Configuration extension don't match the tokens they selected in my app using the FamilyPicker before updating to iOS 17.5.1. It seems the tokens changed for no reason. My app can't match the token from the ShieldConfigurationDataSource to any tokens stored on my end, causing my shield screens to turn blank. The same applies to tokens in the Device Activity Report extension.
The only workaround I've found is to tell affected users to unselect and reselect apps and websites to block in my app. This gets them new tokens from the FamilyActivityPicker, which solves the issue. However, for some users, the bug reoccurs a few days later. Tokens seem to change again, causing the same issue in the Shield Configuration extension.
I am not able to reproduce the issue on my test devices so I have no sysdiagnose to attach. However, this issue is affecting other screen time apps:
https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/732845
https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/756440
FB14082790
FB14111223
A change in iOS 17.5.1 must have triggered this behaviour. Could an Apple engineer give us any updates on this?
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
General
Tags:
Family Controls
Device Activity
Managed Settings
Hi, I have a released screentime app ScreenZen. The last few days I've seen a disturbing spike in bug reports coming from people with 17.4.1 and 17.5.1 phones with no update to the app itself. People reported they saw the issue immediately after updating their iOS version. Unfortunately it is not replicable on all phones with those versions, so we haven't been able to replicate it on our test phones.
It appears the issue is the ApplicationToken passed into ShieldActionExtension and ShieldConfigurationExtension does not match any of the ApplicationTokens that the user selected to block through FamilyControls. (The selected ApplicationTokens are being loaded through a group UserDefaults and they are indeed being loaded in the ShieldActionExtension in the bug reports).This is preventing the app from loading the correct settings and handling the blocking accordingly. I am trying to isolate this better with a new release with better logging, but would appreciate any help on this issue.