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Ask questions about how to use the Apple Developer Forums. Discuss forums bugs and enhancements requests that you’ve filed via Feedback Assistant.

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Irrelevant automatically generated answers on the forum
I've recently seen answers to posts that are apparently automatically generated but signed as App Store Connect Engineer. In several cases the answer is misinterpreting the OP. Here is an example: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/758391 The OP was really a developer question. Not related to a consumer feature. Is it really an automatic answer (which would be a bad trend for the forums IMHO)?
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Jun ’24
Privacy Solution for Apps in iOS (Please Read)
Hear me out, developers at Apple! You've done an amazing job with privacy so far. The introduction of ContactAccess and the Contact Access Button this year is truly an amazing work of art. Well done. However, all the way back to the first iPhone I got in 2007, I wished Apple would make API's available to access the users installed apps (in a privacy way). This would (further) open up apps in the category of App Managers and App Launchers. Back in the early days the trick was to use deep link, but that was also awkward, since you needed to know the deeplink upfront and the apps needed to support it. Not ideal. It also had a side effect that Apple noticed, that evil party's used it to scan your device to know which apps you had installed and create a profile from that. Apple fixed that by using LSApplicationQueriesSchemes. Now you have to tell the App upfront which apps you will be calling (up to 50), or use Universal Link to be freed from this limitation again. Again not ideal. Why not turn it around and let the user decide? User central. Imagine an App Launcher app. There is a button in the launcher app where you as a user can click on to add an app. It calls an api available from Apple to launch a privacy shielded sheet with the apps the user got installed on its device. These are not exposed to the launcher app. When the user clicks on the installed app (or apps) it likes to add, the launcher app will get identifiers to launch the app. That's it. This would be limited access, perhaps the api could also expose full access, so permission could be granted once and the app will get all identifiers available. The choice will be up to the user. One step further, but this would be more nice-to-have, is the ability to access meta data of the app, such as icon, title, last launched, app size, etc. This way App Launchers can make decisions such as putting the most recent launched app in front or App Managers can use this to decide which apps you are not using and can advise to remove them to clean up space. Love to hear everyone's opinion. So let it be the start of the discussion.
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Jun ’24
What’s New with Apple Developer Forums
The Apple Developer Forums have been redesigned for WWDC24 to help developers connect with Apple experts, engineers, and each other to find answers and get advice. Curious on what’s changed? Here’s some insight into what's different: Hello Homepage, Hello Topics Content across forums has been reorganized into topics and subtopics, supported by tags. Doing this helps you hone in on specific areas of interest while also connecting the resources, tools, and content that are most closely related. We hope the new format simplifies your forums experience, and allows you to easily locate the information and guidance you need. Not into topics? Not a worry: we’ve kept the all-forums-posts view open just for you - on the “Latest” tab. The RSS subscribe feature remains as well - allowing users to pipe a particular forums topic, subtopic, or tag area directly into feeds. Fresh look, fresh features Forums have also been redesigned to simplify how information is presented, lighten the cognitive load, and improve visual cues to allow you to scan and sort posts quickly with helpful information. UI changes include: Structure and layout improvements that condense the way information is presented on screen to improve readability Improved visual cueing for posts with clearer Apple Recommended Responses and/or Accepted Answer icons and placement Threads now have a highly visible “Boosts” count which allows forums participants to enhance visibility of the post. New thread navigation floats along the side of a post while to keeping the “watch” and “reply” buttons always accessible and right on screen Backed by Apple Experts One of the biggest changes to the Apple Developer Forums is one you can’t see – yet. Behind the scenes is a robust set of tools supporting Apple teams who are here every day to answer your questions in more efficient ways. Apple Developer Relations and Apple engineering are joining forces to field your questions and work to solve your technical issues. You’ll have access to an expanded knowledge base and enjoy quick response times — so you can get back to creating and enhancing your app or game. Wish there was a feature or improvement on Developer Forums? We welcome feedback and feature requests. Welcome to the all new Developer Forums; we’re all in, and hope you’ll be too ✨
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May ’24
DevForums Improvements 2024-06-07
Overnight we rolled out a number of minor fixes to the DevForums platform. Thanks to those of you who spotted these bugs and reported them. Here are the highlights: The reply editor now expands to full width when you uncheck the Live Preview checkbox (r. 128882713). Fixed an issue that resulted in the onboarding tour showing up repeatedly (r. 128882936). Copying text no longer frames it as a quote (r. 128883038). To insert a quote into your reply, click the quote button next to the selection. We’ve improved the handling of very long lines in a code block 128883131). Added support for applefeedback: links (r. 129165197). Fixed a few bugs including several rendering bugs with hovering, comments, text selection, multi-paragraph comments, and the editor’s attachment menu (r. 128875241, 128953001, 129046050, 129043503, 128987536). And more! (r. 129094445, 128931034) Share and Enjoy — Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"
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Jun ’24
Apple Developer Forums post is not published
■Confirmation My post on the Apple Developer Forums is not published even though it have been reviewed. Does any work need to be done at the time of submission or after review in order to be published? ■Background of the question I posted one on the Apple Developer Forums yesterday. Immediately after posting, a message saying "It will be published if it passes the review" was displayed on the screen. This morning, that message disappeared, so I thought the post had been published, but my post was not displayed on the post list screen. I tried searching for the post title, but it doesn't appear for a while.
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May ’24
Problems attaching crash reports?
I’ve seen a number of comments recently from folks who are unable to attach a crash report to their post. I’d like to gather some examples so that I can escalate this issue. If you’re affected by this, please reply here to let me know. Ideally I’d like that reply to contain a copy of your crash report. That’s problematic if you can’t post it! One workaround is to upload it to your favourite file sharing service and then post a link here. That’ll work as long as you post the link in the clear. See tip 14 of Quinn’s Top Ten DevForums Tips For general info on how to post a crash report, see Posting a Crash Report. Share and Enjoy — Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"
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Feb ’24
Bug Reporting: How and Why?
I file a lot of bug reports. I also ask a lot of third-party developers to file bug reports about problems they see. This post is my attempt at collecting together some hints and tips about Apple’s bug reporting process. To file a bug report, use Feedback Assistant. To file an enhancement request, use Feedback Assistant. In the “What type of issue are you reporting?” popup, choose Suggestion. If you’re filing a bug against an API, choose Developer Technologies & SDKs at the top level. The technologies popup should then list familiar items, from Accelerate Framework to XPC. If you can’t find the correct item, select “Something else not on this list”. Feedback Assistant is both a website and an app. For details on how to access the app, see Opening the app on the Developer > Bug Reporting page. For lots of great hints and tips about filing bugs, see File effective bug reports. I may repeat some of the info covered by that article, but only where I think it’s particularly important. After filing a bug report, please include the bug number in your DevForums post. Feedback Assistant shows the bug number in both the bug list and the bug detail view. Bug numbers start with FB and continue with a sequence of digits. For example, a recent bug report posted here on DevForums was FB11357055. Including the FB prefix avoids any confusion as to what type of bug number this is. Occasionally you’ll see other types of bug numbers. In release notes they are just in parens, so (99071807), and in DTS documents they have an r. prefix, so (r. 99071807). These are Radar numbers. Radar is the internal bug system here at Apple. Other developers can’t see your bug report. However, posting the bug number is still important for a couple of reasons: It allows Apple folks to quickly track down your issue. If another developer wants to file a related bug, they can reference your bug number in their bug report. You can share bug reports with other members of your team. For details on how to do that, see Collaborating with your team on the Developer > Bug Reporting page. Otherwise you can’t see a bug report filed by another developer, or one filed internally at Apple. One option here is to file your own bug and request that it be marked as a duplicate of the original bug. You’ll then be notified when the original bug is closed. The File effective bug reports article discusses the importance of including a sysdiagnose log with your bug report. I have a few additional tips: Include a sysdiagnose log from the machine that’s having the problem. Sometimes I see folks with an iOS problem include a sysdiagnose log for their development Mac )-: Include a sysdiagnose log even if you attach a test project that reproduces the problem. The contents of the log help with screening, making sure that your bug gets to the right person quickly. And that person will be very grateful to have your test project! If multiple machines are involved — for example, you’re reporting a Handoff problem — include a sysdiagnose log from each machine. Trigger the sysdiagnose log as soon as possible after you see the problem. The sooner you trigger the log, the more likely it is to capture relevant info. If the problem is hard to reproduce, see Using a Sysdiagnose Log to Debug a Hard-to-Reproduce Problem for hints on how to capture an actionable sysdiagnose log. If you install a debug profile, install it before you reproduce the problem. These profiles typically enable more logging, and you want that logging to be active at the time of the problem. Most profiles activate immediately but some require that you restart. Follow the instructions that came with the profile. When reproducing the problem, make a rough note of the time and include that in your bug report. This doesn’t have to be super precise. Just note down the time, with seconds, shortly after you reproduce the problem. If the bug involves a crash, reproduce the crash outside of Xcode and then take your sysdiagnose log. This means running your code as the user would, so running an app from the Finder on macOS, running an app from the Home screen on iOS, and so on. If you reproduce the crash inside Xcode, the Xcode debugger catches the crash and prevents the system from generating a crash report to include in the sysdiagnose log. File focused bug reports. Imagine you’re seeing two problems, A and B, related to the same API. Don’t file a single bug that covers both A and B. Rather, file separate bugs for A and B. Feel free to reference your A bug in your B bug, and vice versa. Finally, some personal notes: DevForums is not an official support channel. Mentioning a problem here is not the same as filing a bug about it. That’s true even if you’re discussing your issue with an Apple person. Apple is a big company, and it’s very unlikely that the person you’re talking to is directly responsible for fixing your bug. Historically I used to post a lot of Radar links, of the forms rdar:nnn, where nnn includes the bug number. I no longer use these links because I’ve found that they confuses folks. They click the link and wonder why it does nothing. If you post an FB number here, DevForums automatically turns it into a link. However, that link is only useful to you. Other folks can’t access the bug via that link. I’ve filed a bug against DevForums requesting that it only generate this link for the bug’s originator (r. 92946014). In the meantime, I work around this by putting FB numbers in code style, which disables this link generation. If you want to share bug information outside of DevForums, one popular option is Open Radar (https://openradar.appspot.com/). Apple uses a lot of open source and many open source projects maintain their own bug tracker. Two big examples are Swift and WebKit. If your bug originates in such an open source project, consider filing it in the project’s bug tracker. You can then go on to submit a pull request with the fix (-: Share and Enjoy — Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com" Revision History 2024-03-07 Made minor editorial changes. 2023-10-26 Added a link to Using a Sysdiagnose Log to Debug a Hard-to-Reproduce Problem. Added a recommendation to file focused bug reports. 2023-06-28 Updated the advice on how to file an API-level bug based on recent changes to Feedback Assistant. Corrected some link titles. 2023-03-21 Added a bunch of bullets to the personal notes section. 2023-03-13 Extended the discussion of seeing other folks’ bugs to make it clear that you can’t see bugs filed internally at Apple. 2022-12-13 Added advice about the “Something else not on this list” option. 2022-09-01 Added a personal notes section at the end. Added a new bullet in the sysdiagnose section about running your app outside of Xcode. Made other minor editorial changes. 2022-08-29 Added a note about filing duplicate bugs. 2022-08-24 First posted.
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Aug ’22
Desperately needed features
It looks like these new forums are based on the new Apple Support Communities code. I frequently post on ASC so I know what does and does not work there. I will focus on features that need to be imported from ASC and features that don't. Email notifications - Some people really like to work from e-mail notifications. ASC has notifications for participation, following, points, etc. Just make sure they always default to "OFF". Subscriptions - ASC already has this and is (in my opinion) the ideal way to find and respond to questions. Essentially, this is just searching on multiple tags. The subscriptions is an interface to let me define what tags I want to search for by default. Sorting - Primarily, we need to see messages sorted by descending timestamp. Sorting - I would like to be able to sort by both created or updated timestamps. Sometimes I want to see bona fide new messages. Searching - This is ASC's big weak spot. Search is virtually useless on ASC. You have to really tweak the "filters" to get anything useful out of it. Re-do this and then back-port it to ASC please. Threads - Thread view is all messed up. This thread (https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/134075) is a good example. It seems to be organized hierarchically, with new replies to individual posts appearing immediately after the post being replied to. This is really confusing. Just order it by timestamp. ASC has a feature to automatically guess the target forum (tag in these forums) from the content of the question being asked. That would be useful here. Otherwise, you risk everything going into "iOS". Provide an easy way to see my own posts to see if anything has been updated. ASC doesn't really offer this. I have found a custom filter query that I use to simulate the "Inbox" of an old version of ASC. None of those custom filters seem to work over here. This is another opportunity to fix and then port back to ASC. Filtering - ASC has a complicated system of filtering. Please don't import that. 10. Subscriptions - If you do implement a subscriptions system like ASC, pay attention to unpopular forums. Otherwise, new question in popular forums will drown out questions in more specific forums. The "Top Tags" list has already started that. Of course "iOS" and "macOS" will be most popular. But if everybody uses only those tags, they become useless. Specialties - This is part of ASC gamification system. I don't necessarily mind them, but they aren't implemented very well on ASC. One has to perform specific actions, such as asking a question, to start earning a speciality. What about people who don't ask questions? How do you handle people with multiple specialties? ASC seems to pick one at random and display it, which is very annoying. Guidelines - I think the Terms of Use need to be expanded and be crystal clear about what is allowed and not. I've just seen my first help wanted ad here. Is that allowed? I don't know. Other comments: Very nice use of Markdown in the editor. This is probably not something that could be ported back to ASC. Developers should be able to handle it though. I like the documentation links at the top of tag results pages.
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Jun ’20
New 'Same Here' button on the forum
I've noticed there is a new 'Same Here' button showing on any post (except your own posts). I first thought it was a link to a similar question… Specially when the button just says 'Same here' without any badge value. But no, it is just similar to a like… I guess the goal is to avoid and speed up instead of posting a reply or a comment 'Same here'. Unfortunately, it is not possible to undo and no way to know who posted. As your own posts do not show the button, does it mean you cannot know how many share the same issue than the one you posted ? If so, that's bizarre. Hope it will show the counter at least when it is non zero. Let me see how many 'Same here' on this post… .
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Feb ’24