I have a simple Safari extension which contains only Javascript and no native code. Currently I have the placeholder SafariWebExtensionHandler.swift that Xcode created when I added the extension. It's not doing anything useful, but simply deleting it doesn't seem to work. Can I have an extension that includes no native code?

Is this symbol, which Safari uses to the left of the address bar, in the public SF Symbols set? What's it called?

Is there a way to determine whether the current device has a physical home button or not? I am building part of a UI which is very much like the Files app - it has buttons for "iCloud Documents" and "Documents on this device". For the latter, it will use a suitable symbol from SF Symbols i.e. "iphone" or "ipad" (or something for Macs). Just like the Files app. But I notice that the Files app uses the ".homebutton" symbol variants on older devices that have a physical home button. What is the easiest way to replicate that? I was considering looking at the "iPhoneNN,M" string and comparing it with the model number of the first devices without a physical button, but that is complicated by e.g. the current iPhone SE, which is "iPhone14,6". I don't want to have to maintain a table. Is there some easy way to do this? Thanks.

Dear Experts, Xcode 14 is giving me a new deprecation warning about sprintf. I understand why this is here (*) but I need to suppress it in some cases. I don't want to disable it everywhere (or lose other deprecation warnings). Specifically, I #include some Boost headers which use it in inline functions. I know that I can use #pragma to disable it, but I don't want to modify the Boost headers. Adding #pragma everywhere that I #include a Boost header is also unappealing. What other options do I have? (*) I'm not enthusiastic about the suggesting in the warning to use snprintf instead; snprintf leaves the destination unterminated on overflow, which can be just as bad as the sprintf behaviour.

Dear Experts, I'm attempting to make a custom icon appear in the iOS Files app, etc., for my file type. I've found a couple of bits of documentation for Info.plist keys: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/information_property_list/utexportedtypedeclarations/uttypeiconfiles describes UTTypeIconFiles, to be included in UTImportedTypeDeclarations. This documentation is very sparse! Older document https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/General/Reference/InfoPlistKeyReference/Articles/CoreFoundationKeys.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009249-SW9 describes CFBundleTypeIconFiles, to be included in CFBundleDocumentTypes. Which of these should I be using? (Both? Neither?) Nothing I've tried so far has worked. I wonder if I need to, for example, power-cycle to make the Files app pick up the new icons. Also, in Xcode, I've found the Imported Type Identifiers section of the Info settings which has a box labelled "Add imported type identifiers here" - but clicking + and choosing a file does nothing; the box remains empty. Anyone else have that problem? What size should the icons be? The older document suggests some rather small sizes, e.g. 22x29; the newer doc says nothing. Suggestions anyone?

Dear Experts, PHAsset.creationDate is an NSDate, which does not have a timezone associated with it, right? Consider a photo viewer app. If I take a photo of the sunrise at 0600 local time while I am away, when I get home and view the photo in the app, I believe I want the timestamp shown with the photo to be 0600. Do you agree? But NSDate is just a time-point, and I don't think Foundation (or anything else in iOS) has a type that combines a time-point with a time zone. Nor does PHAsset have any other useful attributes - unless I were to determine the time zone from the location! Am I missing anything?

Dear All, My iOS app used to work OK on macOS, but since a macOS update in-app purchases have stopped working. It seems that the storekitagent process is no longer able to save the receipt to the filesystem. Here is what I see in the system log after I do a "refresh receipt": default 22:03:47.822657+0100 storekitagent [58C16E76_SK1] Writing receipt (83905 bytes) to file:///Users/phil/Library/Containers/0407ACA7-9EE2-4E32-AA3E-101A1B38EE70/Data/StoreKit/sandboxReceipt error 22:03:47.823539+0100 kernel Sandbox: storekitagent(1382) deny(1) file-write-unlink /Users/phil/Library/Containers/0407ACA7-9EE2-4E32-AA3E-101A1B38EE70/Data/StoreKit/sandboxReceipt error 22:03:47.824306+0100 storekitagent [58C16E76_SK1] Error writing receipt (83905 bytes) to file:///Users/phil/Library/Containers/0407ACA7-9EE2-4E32-AA3E-101A1B38EE70/Data/StoreKit/sandboxReceipt: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=513 "You don’t have permission to save the file “sandboxReceipt” in the folder “StoreKit”." UserInfo={NSFilePath=/Users/phil/Library/Containers/0407ACA7-9EE2-4E32-AA3E-101A1B38EE70/Data/StoreKit/sandboxReceipt, NSUnderlyingError=0x145c19f80 {Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"}} Note that is a sandboxReceipt on my development system, but I have a report from a user who seems to be suffering the same problem with the app store version of the app. Is anyone else seeing this? Is there a "quick hack" I can do to grant the storekitagent process permission to write to that folder?

I am looking at StoreKit Views, new in iOS 17. In a SubscriptionStoreView, is it possible to show the user their current subscription's renewal/expiry date, or to present a cancel button? According to https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/storebuttonkind/4203108-cancellation , storeButton for: .cancellation is "A type of button for canceling a subscription.", but actually it just shows a (X) button at the top right to dismiss the view - and this is what the WWDC video presenter (2023 session 10013) seems to believe it should do (around 28:30, "The cancellation button shows a platform-appropriate button to dismiss the view"). Is that a documentation bug? It seems that I can show renewal/expiry dates and a cancellation button if I use AppStore.showManageSubscriptions(...). But this is rather disjointed. Shouldn't I be able to show all of this in one place? Does my UI need two separate buttons for these overlapping features? Or am I missing something?

Dear Experts, In "limited access" photos mode, I present a PHPickerViewController. It shows the entire photo library, with a note at the top saying that the app can only access the items that I select. I select a photo. In the delegate method, I get a PHPickerResult containing a plausible-looking string for the assetIdentifier. It's the same string that I get for that photo in "full access" mode. Should this photo now be accessible, or do I need to do something else at this point? When I call fetchAssetsWithLocalIdentifiers using this assetIdentifier, I get no results. When I call cloudIdentifierMappingsForLocalIdentifiers, I get error PHPhotosErrorIdentifierNotFound. In "full access" mode, both work OK. What am I missing? Thanks.

Dear All, I've recently released a new app with a subscription. It has a 3-day free trial and a 1-year subscription, and I've enabled a grace period of 16 days, but the grace period is enabled only for paid-to-paid renewals. As it's a new app, no-one has reached the end of their subscription yet; there will not have been any paid-to-paid renewals. Yet I see a small number of "enter grace period" and "renewal from grace period" events reported in App Store Connect. Can anyone explain why this could be?

Dear Experts, I have been looking at thr SimpleWatchConnectivity sample code: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/watchconnectivity/transferring-data-with-watch-connectivity There are a couple of things in there that look out of date. Firstly, it uses a WKApplicationDelegate to receive the background tasks. I believe this can probably be entirely removed, and replaced with .backgroundTask(.watchConnectivity) { ... } on the App. Is that true? What do I need something inside the { ... } there? Secondly, it is using NSNotificationCenter to send received data from the WCSessionDelegate to the SwiftUI view hierarchy. Is there a better way to do that? I have spent a while trying to work out how a WCSessionDelegate class can connect to a binding to a SwiftUI @State property, and cause the UI to update in response to received data, but I haven't made it work. Are there any newer examples of how to do this? I'm currently only trying to send some simple applicationContext state from the phone to the watch and have some views update to show the latest values. Thanks, Phil.

I would like to be able to write something like: struct FooView: View { let foo: Foo; var body: some View { assert(foo.valid); ...... } }; but of course I can't, because "Type () cannot conform to View". What's the best way to achieve this?

I'm struggling to implement a flash animation in SwiftUI. Generally animations animate from one value to another. I'd like to animate from normal to the flashed state and then back to normal, each time the data shown by the view changes. The "flashed state" could be transparent, or a white background, or it could be a scale change for a pulse effect, or something. Example: struct MyView: View { let value: String; var body: some View { ZStack { Capsule() .fill(Color.green); Text(value); } }; }; Each time value changes, I'd like the colour of the capsule to quickly animate from green to white and back to green. I feel this should be easy - am I missing something? For bonus points: I'd like the Text to change to its new value at the midpoint of the animation, i.e. when the white text is invisible on the white background. I'd like to get the flash effect whenever I have a new value even if the new value is equal to the old value, if you see what I mean.

Pseudo-code: PhaseAnimator([false,true], trigger: foo) { flash in ZStack { Capsule() .foregroundStyle(flash ? .red : .green) Canvas { context, size in context.draw(image: Image(name: "foo"), toFitRect: some_rectangle); context.draw(text: Text("foo"), toFitRect: another_rectangle); } .foregroundStyle(flash ? .black : .white) } } animation: { flash in return .linear(duration: 0.5); } The Capsule's colour animates, but the Canvas's doesn't. The Canvas drawing code is only ever called with flash==false. What do I have to do to the Canvas so that it redraws with the intermediate colours during the animation?

Anyone else seeing this? I'm sometimes getting "too many redirects" errors from Safari when trying to view this forum: It goes away after a while, randomly. Also: this is hard to debug; the Network tab in the Safari Javascript Console only shows the final load of the error page, not the failure. Is there a way to see the actual redirect loop URLs?