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Explore the networking protocols and technologies used by the device to connect to Wi-Fi networks, Bluetooth devices, and cellular data services.

Networking Documentation

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Example of DNS Proxy Provider Network Extension
I am trying to setup a system-wide DNS-over-TLS for iOS that can be turned off and on from within the app, and I'm struggling with the implementation details. I've searched online, searched forums here, used ChatGPT, and I'm getting conflicting information or code that is simply wrong. I can't find example code that is valid and gets me moving forward. I think I need to use NEDNSProxyProvider via the NetworkExtension. Does that sound correct? I have NetworkExtension -> DNS Proxy Capability set in both the main app and the DNSProxy extension. Also, I want to make sure this is even possible without an MDM. I see conflicting information, some saying this is opened up, but things like https://developer.apple.com/documentation/Technotes/tn3134-network-extension-provider-deployment saying a device needs to be managed. How do private DNS apps do this without MDM? From some responses in the forums it sounds like we need to parse the DNS requests that come in to the handleNewFlow function. Is there good sample code for this parsing? I saw some helpful information from Eskimo (for instance https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/723831 ) and Matt Eaton ( https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/665480 )but I'm still confused. So, if I have a DoT URL, is there good sample code somewhere for what startProxy, stopProxy, and handleNewFlow might look like? And valid code to call it from the main app?
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Oct ’25
macOS Sequoia No Route to Host on first request. Retries work.
My app has local network permission on macOS Sequoia and works in most cases. I've noticed that after unlocking my MacBook Pro, the very first request will regularly fail with a No Route to Host. A simple retry resolves the issue, but I would have expected the very first request to succeed. Is this is a known issue on macOS Sequoia or by design? I'd prefer not to add a retry for this particular request as the app is a network utility.
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2k
Apr ’25
Network extension doesn't get the updated preferred language after changing phone language
We’ve noticed an issue where after running a network extension, if the phone’s language is changed the Locale.preferredLanguages array is not updated and still returns the old array. It only returns the updated array when the app is reinstalled or the phone is restarted. This is unlike the app itself where using the same Locale.preferredLanguages API immediately returns the updated array. We think this issue is also the cause of notifications that are sent by the network extension being in the previous language as long as the app isn’t reinstalled or the phone is restarted, despite our Localizable file having localised strings for the new language. Feedback ID: FB20086051 The feedback report includes a sample project with steps on how to reproduce the issue.
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178
Sep ’25
PacketTunnelProvider gets corrupted when app updated with connected Tunnel
We currently supporting proxy app with Tunnel.appEx and PacketTunnelProvider. Some users report about constant error "The VPN session failed because an internal error occurred." on VPN start (which fails rapidly). This error occur mostly after user updated app with active VPN. Rebooting device solves the problem and it doesnt come again, but it is still very frustrating. I can provide any required info about app setup to solve this issue if you need. Thanks
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Aug ’25
Managing the order of Transparent Proxies from MDM Profile
We have an application which is written in Swift, which activates Transparent Proxy network extension. Our Transparent Proxy module is a system extension, which is exposing an app proxy provider interface (We are using NETransparentProxyProvider class and in extension’s Info.plist we use com.apple.networkextension.app-proxy key.) We are using JAMF MDM profile for installing our transparent proxy in customer environment. We are using VPN payload(https://developer.apple.com/documentation/devicemanagement/vpn) for this network system extension. This payload does not have any field for order. As per https://developer.apple.com/documentation/devicemanagement/vpn/transparentproxy-data.dictionary documentation there is another payload for TransparentProxy and we could create a Transparent Proxy profile using iMazingProfile Editor. Noticed that, if we add the Order attribute to the VPN/TransparentProxy payload, while installing the extension, the save to preferences fails with "Error in saving TP configuration in updateOnDemandRule permission denied" error. Can we use this Order field to ordering the installed Transparent Proxy extension in a machine? Customer devices will likely have other Transparent Proxy network extensions as well. We want to allow the Customer to control the order in which each Transparent Proxy network extension receives the network traffic. How can we set the order of the Transparent proxy extension that can be deployed using MDM profile with VPN/TransparentProxy payload? Attached the TransparentProxy payload profile for the reference. DGWebProxy_TransparentProxy_iMazing
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Oct ’25
During the Wi-Fi Aware's pairing process, Apple is unable to recognize the follow-up PMF sent by Android.
iPhone 12 pro with iOS 26.0 (23A5276f) App: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/wifiaware/building-peer-to-peer-apps We aim to use Wi-Fi Aware to establish file transfer between Android and Apple devices. Apple will act as the Publisher, and Android will act as the Subscriber. According to the pairing process outlined in the Wi-Fi Aware protocol (Figure 49 in the Wi-Fi Aware 4.0 specification), the three PASN Authentication frames have been successfully exchanged. Subsequently, Android sends the encrypted Follow-up PMF to Apple, but the Apple log shows: Failed to parse event. Please refer to the attached complete log. We request Apple to provide a solution. apple Log-20250808a.txt
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Aug ’25
Prevent SSL Handshake with User Installed Certificates
how can I prevent handshake when certificate is user installed for example if user is using Proxyman or Charles proxy and they install their own certificates now system is trusting those certificates I wanna prevent that, and exclude those certificates that are installed by user, and accept the handshake if CA certificate is in a real valid certificate defined in OS I know this can be done in android by setting something like <network-security-config> <base-config> <trust-anchors> <certificates src="system" /> </trust-anchors> </base-config> </network-security-config>
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Aug ’25
5G Network Slicing and NetworkExtension
Hello, I am writing a NetworkExtension VPN using custom protocol and our client would like to able to use 5G network slice on the VPN, is this possible at all? From Apple's documentation, I found the following statement: If both network slicing and VPN are configured for an app or device, the VPN connection takes precedence over the network slice, rendering the network slice unused. Is it possible to assign a network slice on a NetworkExtension-based VPN and let the VPN traffic uses the assign network slice? Many thanks
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574
Dec ’25
Getting a basic URL Filter to work
I haven’t been able to get this to work at any level! I’m running into multiple issues, any light shed on any of these would be nice: I can’t implement a bloom filter that produces the same output as can be found in the SimpleURLFilter sample project, after following the textual description of it that’s available in the documentation. No clue what my implementation is doing wrong, and because of the nature of hashing, there is no way to know. Specifically: The web is full of implementations of FNV-1a and MurmurHash3, and they all produce different hashes for the same input. Can we get the proper hashes for some sample strings, so we know which is the “correct” one? Similarly, different implementations use different encodings for the strings to hash. Which should we use here? The formulas for numberOfBits and numberOfHashes give Doubles and assign them to Ints. It seems we should do this conversing by rounding them, is this correct? Can we get a sample correct value for the combined hash, so we can verify our implementations against it? Or ignoring all of the above, can we have the actual code instead of a textual description of it? 😓 I managed to get Settings to register my first attempt at this extension in beta 1. Now, in beta 2, any other project (including the sample code) will redirect to Settings, show the Allow/Deny message box, I tap Allow, and then nothing happens. This must be a bug, right? Whenever I try to enable the only extension that Settings accepted (by setting its isEnabled to true), its status goes to .stopped and the error is, of course, .unknown. How do I debug this? While the extension is .stopped, ALL URL LOADS are blocked on the device. Is this to be expected? (shouldFailClosed is set to false) Is there any way to manually reload the bloom filter? My app ships blocklist updates with background push, so it would be wasteful to fetch the filter at a fixed interval. If so, can we opt out of the periodic fetch altogether? I initially believed the API to be near useless because I didn’t know of its “fuzzy matching” capabilities, which I’ve discovered by accident in a forum post. It’d be nice if those were documented somewhere! Thanks!!
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2d
An error occurred when downloading a background assets packs hosted by Apple.
On macOS Tahoe26.0, iOS 26.0 (23A5287g), Xcode 26.0 beta 3 (17A5276g) 1、Follow this tutorial Downloading asset packs hosted by Apple When i download a background asset packs hosted by Apple, Xcode callback "Download failed: The helper received an invalid server response with the status code “400”." Before downloading, I uploaded the three aar files to the Apple server using the Transporter app. Three Manifest.json content is: {"assetPackID":"bdassets2","downloadPolicy":{"onDemand":{}},"fileSelectors":[{"file":"1.jpg"},{"file":"2.pag"},{"file":"3.mp4"}],"platforms":["iOS"]} and {"assetPackID":"bdassets1","downloadPolicy":{"prefetch":{"installationEventTypes":["firstInstallation","subsequentUpdate"]}},"fileSelectors":[{"file":"1.jpg"},{"file":"2.pag"},{"file":"3.mp4"},{"directory":"a1"}],"platforms":["iOS"]} and {"assetPackID":"bdassets0","downloadPolicy":{"essential":{"installationEventTypes":["firstInstallation","subsequentUpdate"]}},"fileSelectors":[{"file":"1.jpg"},{"file":"2.pag"},{"file":"3.mp4"},{"directory":"a1"}],"platforms":["iOS"]} The same error was reported when the three aar files were obtained. I obtained it using the following code: do {       let assetPack = try await AssetPackManager.shared.assetPack(withID: "bdassets2")       try await AssetPackManager.shared.ensureLocalAvailability(of: assetPack)     } catch {       print("Download failed:", error)     } 2、Follow this tutorial Testing your asset packs locally I use this command line to start the test server:xcrun ba-serve --host 172.17.9.62 bdassets2.aar, The content displayed on the terminal is: Loading asset packs… Loading the asset pack at “bdassets2.aar”… Choose an identity in the panel to continue. Listening on port 56061… When running the project, Xcode reports an error:Download failed: Could not connect to the server. I use iPhone directly visit this website: https://172.17.9.62:56061, on the page display "Hello, world!" There are too few error messages in both of the above questions. I have no idea what the specific reasons are.I hope someone can offer some guidance. Best Regards.
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260
Jul ’25
Can't update VPN app when includeAllNetworks is set to true
If the includeAllNetworks flag to true, we cannot update our app via Xcode, TestFlight or the AppStore. In the AppStore and TestFlight cases, it seems that the packet tunnel process is stopped before the new app is downloaded - once the packet tunnel process is stopped, it can’t be started again via Settings/VPN profiles, nor can it be started via the app.
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120
Jun ’25
Extracting IP with swift on visionOS
Hey everyone, I’m developing an app for visionOS where I need to display the Apple Vision Pro’s current IP address. For this I’m using the following code, which works for iOS, macOS, and visionOS in the simulator. Only on a real Apple Vision Pro it’s unable to extract an IP. Could it be that visionOS currently doesn’t allow this? Have any of you had the same experience and found a workaround? var address: String = "no ip" var ifaddr: UnsafeMutablePointer<ifaddrs>? = nil if getifaddrs(&ifaddr) == 0 { var ptr = ifaddr while ptr != nil { defer { ptr = ptr?.pointee.ifa_next } let interface = ptr?.pointee let addrFamily = interface?.ifa_addr.pointee.sa_family if addrFamily == UInt8(AF_INET) { if let name: Optional<String> = String(cString: (interface?.ifa_name)!), name == "en0" { var hostname = [CChar](repeating: 0, count: Int(NI_MAXHOST)) getnameinfo(interface?.ifa_addr, socklen_t((interface?.ifa_addr.pointee.sa_len)!), &hostname, socklen_t(hostname.count), nil, socklen_t(0), NI_NUMERICHOST) address = String(cString: hostname) } } } freeifaddrs(ifaddr) } return address } Thanks in advance for any insights or tips! Best Regards, David
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160
Jun ’25
VPN Split DNS behaviour
I encountered an undesired DNS behaviour when using L2TP/ipsec VPN. I have DHCP configured Wi-Fi connection, which send dns servers and search domain (192.168.0.10, lan) VPN sends its own DNS server (10.0.0.2), search domain (intranet) is added manually in VPN DNS config settings. I expect, when VPN is connected, to be still able to resolve local names, i.e some-host.lan. However, they become unresolvable. quick check shows that the remote dns server is used to resolve local names. shilishper@mac ~ % host -v some-host.lan Trying "some-host.lan" Host some-host.lan not found: 3(NXDOMAIN) Received 106 bytes from 10.0.0.2#53 in 16 ms Received 106 bytes from 10.0.0.2#53 in 16 ms Actually, all dns queries are going to the remote server. I would expect that only queries for the configured domain (intranet) should go to that server. I played with the service order, but it didn't change anything. Is anything can be done about this, programmatically? PS new to macOS, but have extensive linux knowledge
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Sep ’25
Unable to understand Flow of Network extension for iOS
For a past few days, I have been exploring control Filter and data filter. I am unable to understand how control moves from various functions of data filter to control Filter. One thing that I am unable to figure out is that when I pass verdict as .allow in dataFilter's handleNewFlow and mark .shouldReport as true, I get inBytes and outbytes in the flow report of handle() in controlFilter. But when I pass verdict as needRules and wait till the handle is called in controlFilter when the report.event == .flowClosed, I don't get inBytes and outBytes. I am unable to understand this complete flow of network extension from the apple documentation. Can someone provide me with some flow chart or some pictorial representation or detailed explanation of network extension for iOS? Also is there some way to imitate the ..statisticsReportFrequency for iOS as it is not available for iOS?
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153
Aug ’25
Missing flows for content filter on macOS 15 Sequoia
We use as content filter in our app to monitor flows, we gather data about the flow and block flows deemed suspicious. Our content filter is activated/deactivated by a UI app but the flows are reported via XPC to a separate daemon process for analysis. As of macOS 15, we are seeing cases where flows are missing or flows are not received at all by the content filter. The behaviour is not consistent, some devices seem to receive flows normally but others don't. It appears Intel devices are much less prone to showing the problem, whereas Arm devices routinely exhibit missing flows. On macOS 14 or earlier, there is no sign of missing flows. Testing on earlier beta versions of macOS 15 did not appear to show the problem, however I can't rule out if issue was present but it wasn't spotted. Experimenting with simple examples of using a content filter (e.g. QNE2FilterMac) does not appear to reproduce the issue. Questions, What has changed between macOS 14 and 15 that could be the cause of the lack of flows? Is our approach to using an app activated content filter reporting to a daemon connected via XPC unsupported?
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Aug ’25