Hi all, I'm working on a cross-platform runtime that manages a pool of threads (think game engine / emulator style... dozens of guest threads mapped 1:1 to host pthreads). It was originally written for Linux and Windows and we're now porting to macOS on Apple Silicon. We've hit a wall with a deadlock on macOS and traced it back to our use of POSIX unnamed semaphores (sem_init / sem_wait / sem_post) for thread suspend and resume. We were unaware these have never actually been implemented on macOS, sem_init silently returns -1 with ENOSYS and then sem_wait just hangs forever. That explains our deadlock. The tricky part is how we use them. Our suspend mechanism works by sending SIGUSR1 to a target thread via pthread_kill. The signal handler then calls sem_wait to block the thread in place until another thread calls sem_post to resume it. So whatever we replace sem_init/sem_wait with needs to be safe to call from inside a signal handler. From what I can tell: dispatch_semaphore_wait is not documented as async-signal-safe pthread_cond_wait is also not async-signal-safe os_sync_wait_on_address looks promising but requires macOS 14.4+ which is a pretty high floor We could spin on a std::atomic with .wait() / .notify_all() but I've seen reports of high wake latency (up to 15ms) in libc++'s implementation on macOS My questions: What's the recommended way to block a thread inside a signal handler on macOS? Is there an async-signal-safe wait primitive I'm missing? Would restructuring to avoid blocking in the signal handler entirely be the better approach? For example, having the signal handler just set an atomic flag and then checking it at yield points — would that be the expected pattern on macOS? For the non-signal-handler suspend/resume paths, is dispatch_semaphore_t the right replacement for sem_t, or is there something better suited for high-frequency thread synchronization in 2026? Separately, we're also using ucontext (makecontext/swapcontext) for a fiber system on macOS and hitting issues on native arm64, it works under Rosetta but breaks natively. We have a setjmp/longjmp + manual stack pivot backend we can switch to. Is there any plan to fix or un-deprecate the ucontext functions on arm64, or should we just move off them permanently?

Hi, I've now identified a few areas when BGContinuedProcessingTask gets expired by the system no progress for ~30 seconds high CPU usage high temperature Some of these I can preempt and expire preemptively and handle the notification, others I cannot and just need to let the failure bubble up. When the failure does bubble up, I'd like to update the title and subtitle. I'm able to update the title, but the subtitle is fixed at "Task Failed" Is there any workaround? Or shall I file a bug here?

Platform: iOS 26 (23E254) Xcode: 26.0 Reproduces on: Debug builds AND TestFlight Summary: I'm using Apple-Hosted Managed Background Assets with on-demand download policy. The .aar archives download successfully (correct file size, status = downloaded), but the contents are never extracted into the asset pack namespace. AssetPackManager.shared.contents(at:) returns fileNotFound for all path variants, and url(for: FilePath(".")) returns a URL that exists but contains zero children. Root Cause from Sysdiagnose: The backgroundassets.user daemon logs reveal this error on every download attempt: A bundle record couldn't be looked up for the application identifier "AtlasDrift.SnapTrail": Error Domain=NSOSStatusErrorDomain Code=-10814 "(null)" UserInfo={_LSFile=LSBindingEvaluator.mm, _LSLine=1973, _LSFunction=runEvaluator} Error code -10814 is kLSApplicationNotFoundErr. The BA daemon downloads the .aar blob, then attempts to find the app bundle via LaunchServices to locate the extension for extraction — but the LS lookup fails. Without the extension, extraction never occurs. Verified Configuration Everything matches the documentation and WWDC sessions: Extension embedded at SnapTrail.app/Extensions/BackgroundDownloadExtension.appex Bundle IDs: App = AtlasDrift.SnapTrail, Extension = AtlasDrift.SnapTrail.BackgroundDownloadExtension (correct parent-child pattern) Extension point: com.apple.background-asset-downloader-extension Product type: com.apple.product-type.extensionkit-extension Protocol: StoreDownloaderExtension from StoreKit (for Apple-hosted packs) App group: group.AtlasDrift.SnapTrail (matching in both app and extension entitlements) Info.plist keys: BAAppGroupID, BAHasManagedAssetPacks = YES BAUsesAppleHosting = YES (no BAInitialDownloadRestrictions or other BA keys) .aar Packaging Archives built with xcrun ba-package from the Assets directory. Manifest format: { "assetPackID": "ireland", "downloadPolicy": { "onDemand": {} }, "fileSelectors": [{ "directory": "POIRegions/ireland/IR" }], "platforms": ["iOS"] } Uploaded via App Store Connect API with assetType: "ASSET". Diagnostic Observations AssetPackManager.shared.assetPack(withID:) returns valid metadata (correct download size) ensureLocalAvailability(of:) completes without error assetPackIsAvailableLocally(withID:) returns true url(for: FilePath(".")) returns a URL that exists but has zero children (empty namespace) contents(at:) returns fileNotFound for all path variants tested The extension never runs — breadcrumb file written in init() is never created The -10814 error appears in daemon logs for every download cycle Questions Has anyone successfully used Apple-Hosted Managed Background Assets on iOS 26 beta? Is the daemon's LaunchServices integration known to be broken in this seed? Is there anything about the bundle identifier format or provisioning profile setup that could cause the BA daemon's LS lookup to fail, even though the app installs and runs fine otherwise? Are there any additional Info.plist keys or entitlements beyond what's documented that might be required for the daemon to locate the app bundle? Any guidance would be appreciated. I've filed a Feedback report with the full sysdiagnose attached.

I'm building a macOS safari extension and porting its functionality from a chrome extension. The chrome extension uses native messaging hosts to communicate with another process using IPC and holding a persistent connection. To use the same functionality in Safari, I understand that will need to use the handler to communicate it to the containing app, and the app will have to hold the persistent IPC connection. My question derives from that concept: should the app be running in a long-lived state? And if so, how can I ensure that app be running 100% of the time. Also is there any way I can control it's lifecycle with the Safari browser's lifecycle? I will not be using XPC here, but a different UDS to make the connection. Also in addition to that, what would you recommend the best approach is the communicate between the extension and it's handler? -> should it be again a UDS or userDefaults +darwin notification be enough? Also I wouldn't want the inter-message relayed between components to be dropped, is there a fault tolerant architecture you would recommend?

Hello together, the user is able to do recordings with my app. The recordings also runs, while the App is in Background. I have Background Modes Audio & Background enabled. When the user accidentally terminates the App while the recording is still running, the whole recording is lost. I tried AppDelegate applicationWillTerminate on my iOS 26 App and it works perfectly to wrap up the LiveActivity that is shown while the recording is active. But it does not save the Audio and also doesn't update the Widgets (they are interactive and show a different state while recording and stay stuck in recording-state on accidental termination). Any ideas? Best wishes, Dominik

Hello! I'm trying to implement an editor app (macOS) that allows the user to write code, which will be compiled and executed, showing the result in the editor window. Imagine it like SwiftUI previews, but the graphic output is created with Metal, not SwiftUI. I found that IOSurface can be used to share that kind of data over XPC, so I would not have to rely on the private NSRemoteView. However, I'm confused if it is, at all, possible for my editor app to connect to an XPC Service, that was NOT bundled with it (but compiled by it at runtime). I succeeded to launch an XPC service defined as: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>Label</key> <string>com.myteam.myproject.service</string> <key>MachServices</key> <dict> <key>com.myteam.myproject.service</key> <true/> </dict> <key>Program</key> <string>/Path/to/service/run_my_service.sh</string> </dict> </plist> But the call to let connection = NSXPCConnection(machServiceName: "com.myteam.myproject.service") let proxy = connection.remoteObjectProxyWithErrorHandler { error in continuation.resume(throwing: error) } as? MyServiceProtocol fails with "The connection to service named com.myteam.myproject.service was invalidated: Connection init failed at lookup with error 3 - No such process." I have added <key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.mach-lookup.global-name</key> <array> <string>com.myteam.myproject.service</string> </array> to my entitlements. Since the tutorials I followed are quite old, I'm wondering if support for something like this was dropped at some point. Thanks for any advice!