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External GPS receiver
Hello, We are a software and hardware development company for the forestry and environmental sectors. We have been based in Quebec (Canada) for over 30 years now. Our Canadian market covers Quebec, Ontario, and the Maritime provinces in the east. We are currently expanding across Canada and into the northern United States. We are on Android platforms with several map and data entry applications. To ensure the success of our expansion, we aim to become part of the Apple family, which is why we are contacting you today. We have developed our own GNSS receiver to increase the location accuracy of our users. It uses Bluetooth BLE to communicate with mobile devices and a high-precision GPS that transmits its position using the NMEA protocol. We would like this device to be compatible with an iPhone/iPad. We have developed a mock location application in MAUI (multi-platform). Based on our interpretation of your documentation, we understand that the concept of mock location does not exist at Apple. How can we ensure that our Bluetooth GNSS device is compatible with your iPhone/iPad devices and that they can use the position of the Bluetooth device rather than the internal GPS of your devices? We are a reseller for Juniper Systems, and we know that they have an app on the App Store that has the same features as our product. https://junipersys.com/index.php/support/article/14709 We look forward to your follow-up and recommendations.
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Oct ’25
OS Location via Bluetooth GPS receiver
Hello, We are a software and hardware development company for the forestry and environmental sectors. We have been based in Quebec (Canada) for over 30 years now. Our Canadian market covers Quebec, Ontario, and the Maritime provinces in the east. We are currently expanding across Canada and into the northern United States. We are on Android platforms with several map and data entry applications. To ensure the success of our expansion, we aim to become part of the Apple family, which is why we are contacting you today. We have developed our own GNSS receiver to increase the location accuracy of our users. This device is called GSFGPS. It uses Bluetooth BLE to communicate with mobile devices and a high-precision GPS that transmits its position using the NMEA protocol. We would like this device to be compatible with an iPhone/iPad. We have developed a mock location application in MAUI (multi-platform). Based on our interpretation of your documentation, we understand that the concept of mock location does not exist at Apple. How can we ensure that our Bluetooth GNSS device is compatible with your iPhone/iPad devices and that they can use the position of the Bluetooth device rather than the internal GPS of your devices? We are a reseller for Juniper Systems, and we know that they have an app on the App Store that has the same features as our product. https://junipersys.com/index.php/support/article/14709 We look forward to your follow-up and recommendations.
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139
Oct ’25
CLLocation.sourceInformation.isSimulatedBySoftware not detecting third-party location spoofing tools
Summary CLLocationSourceInformation.isSimulatedBySoftware (iOS 15+) fails to detect location spoofing when using third-party tools like LocaChange, despite Apple's documentation stating it should detect simulated locations. Environment iOS 18.0 (tested and confirmed) Physical device with Developer Mode enabled Third-party location spoofing tools (e.g., LocaChange etc.) Expected Behavior According to Apple's documentation, isSimulatedBySoftware should return true when: "if the system generated the location using on-device software simulation. " Actual Behavior Tested on iOS 18.0: When using LocaChange sourceInformation.isSimulatedBySoftware returns false This occurs even though the location is clearly being simulated. Steps to Reproduce Enable Developer Mode on iOS 18 device Connect device to Mac via USB Use LocaChange to spoof location to a different city/country In your app, request location updates and check CLLocation.sourceInformation?.isSimulatedBySoftware Observe that it returns false or sourceInformation is nil Compare with direct Xcode location simulation (Debug → Simulate Location) which correctly returns true
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Oct ’25
iOS 26: Maps share sheet no longer provides com.apple.mapkit.map-item and only shares short maps.apple/p/... URLs (how to get coordinates?)
Since iOS 26, the Apple Maps share sheet no longer provides a com.apple.mapkit.map-item attachment when sharing a location to my Share Extension. Additionally, on real devices the shared URL is now a short link (https://maps.apple/p/...), which does not contain coordinates. On the simulator, the URL still includes coordinates (as in previous iOS versions). I'm trying to find the official or recommended way to extract coordinates from these new short URLs. Environment: Devices: iPhone (real device) on iOS 26.0 / 26.0.1 Simulator: iOS 26.0 / 26.0.1 simulator (behaves like iOS 18 — see below) App: Share Extension invoked from Apple Maps -> Share -> my app Xcode: 26.0.1 Steps to Reproduce Open Apple Maps on iOS 26 (real device). Pick a POI (store/restaurant). Share -> choose my share extension. iOS 18 and earlier (lldb) po extensionContext?.inputItems ▿ Optional<Array<Any>> ▿ some : 1 element - 0 : <NSExtensionItem: 0x60000000c5d0> - userInfo: { NSExtensionItemAttachmentsKey = ( "<NSItemProvider: 0x600002930d20> {types = (\"public.plain-text\")}", "<NSItemProvider: 0x600002930c40> {types = (\"com.apple.mapkit.map-item\")}", "<NSItemProvider: 0x600002930bd0> {types = (\"public.url\")}" ); } Typical URL: https://maps.apple.com/place?address=Apple%20Inc.,%201%20Apple%20Park%20Way,%20Cupertino,%20CA%2095014,%20United%20States&coordinate=37.334859,-122.009040&name=Apple%20Park&place-id=I7C250D2CDCB364A&map=explore iOS 26 (lldb) po extensionContext?.inputItems ▿ 1 element - 0 : <NSExtensionItem: 0x6000000058d0> - userInfo: { NSExtensionItemAttachmentsKey = ( "<NSItemProvider: 0x600002900b60> {types = (\"public.url\")}", "<NSItemProvider: 0x600002900fc0> {types = (\"public.plain-text\")}" ); } URL looks like: https://maps.apple/p/U8rE9v8n8iVZjr On simulator iOS 26 same missing map-item provider - but the URL is still long and contains coordinates, like this: https://maps.apple.com/place?coordinate=37.334859,-122.009040&name=Apple%20Park&.. Issue The short URLs (maps.apple/p/...) cannot be resolved directly - following redirects ends with: https://maps.apple.com/unsupported The only way I've found to get coordinates is to intercept intermediate redirects - one of them contains the expanded URL with coordinate=.... Example of my current workaround: final class RedirectSniffer: NSObject, URLSessionTaskDelegate { private(set) var redirects: [URL] = [] func urlSession(_ session: URLSession, task: URLSessionTask, willPerformHTTPRedirection response: HTTPURLResponse, newRequest request: URLRequest) async -> URLRequest? { if let url = request.url { redirects.append(url) } return request } } Then I look through redirects to find a URL containing "coordinate=". This works, but feels unreliable and undocumented. Questions Was the removal of com.apple.mapkit.map-item from the Maps share payload intentional in iOS 26? If yes, is there a new attachment type or API to obtain an MKMapItem? What’s the official or supported way to resolve https://maps.apple/p/... to coordinates? Is there any MapKit API or documented URL scheme for this? Is intercepting redirect chains the only option for now? Why does the iOS 26 simulator still return coordinate URLs, while real devices don't?
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219
Oct ’25
iOS26+, MKMapview crash
I have a UIViewController that uses MKMapview to display the motion history trajectory. Repeatedly entering and exiting UIViewController will cause a crash, and the crash stack is as follows: Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV) Exception Subtype: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x000000014bfc0fc8 Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000001, 0x000000014bfc0fc8 VM Region Info: 0x14bfc0fc8 is not in any region. Bytes after previous region: 217033 Bytes before following region: 61496 REGION TYPE START - END [ VSIZE] PRT/MAX SHRMOD REGION DETAIL VM_ALLOCATE 14bf88000-14bf8c000 [ 16K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV ---> GAP OF 0x44000 BYTES VM_ALLOCATE 14bfd0000-14bfd4000 [ 16K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV Termination Reason: SIGNAL 11 Segmentation fault: 11 Terminating Process: exc handler [1881] Triggered by Thread: 8 Thread 8 name: Dispatch queue: com.apple.root.background-qos Thread 8 Crashed: 0 CoreFoundation 0x19e36ac40 CFRelease + 44 1 VectorKit 0x1ce16af6c md::TileGroupNotificationManager::~TileGroupNotificationManager() + 132 2 VectorKit 0x1cd6f7178 <deduplicated_symbol> + 76 3 VectorKit 0x1cdba8d74 -[VKSharedResources .cxx_destruct] + 32 4 libobjc.A.dylib 0x19b3321f8 object_cxxDestructFromClass(objc_object*, objc_class*) + 116 5 libobjc.A.dylib 0x19b32df20 objc_destructInstance_nonnull_realized(objc_object*) + 76 6 libobjc.A.dylib 0x19b32d4a4 _objc_rootDealloc + 72 7 VectorKit 0x1cdba93fc -[VKSharedResources dealloc] + 476 8 VectorKit 0x1cdafa3fc -[VKSharedResourcesManager _removeResourceUser] + 68 9 VectorKit 0x1cdafa380 +[VKSharedResourcesManager removeResourceUser] + 44 10 VectorKit 0x1cdafa2fc __37-[VKIconManager _internalIconManager]_block_invoke + 168 11 libdispatch.dylib 0x1d645b7ec _dispatch_client_callout + 16 12 libdispatch.dylib 0x1d6446664 _dispatch_continuation_pop + 596 13 libdispatch.dylib 0x1d6459528 _dispatch_source_latch_and_call + 396 14 libdispatch.dylib 0x1d64581fc _dispatch_source_invoke + 844 15 libdispatch.dylib 0x1d6453f48 _dispatch_root_queue_drain + 364 16 libdispatch.dylib 0x1d64546fc _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 180 17 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x1f9b7e37c _pthread_wqthread + 232 18 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x1f9b7d8c0 start_wqthread + 8 I have checked the code and did not find any issues. I have also tested on iOS 15, 16, and 18 without any issues. Could this be an error in the iOS 26 system? Have you ever met any friends? I hope to receive an answer. Thank you.
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