I received the email from Apple entitled "Final reminder: Answer the updated age ratings questions." However if I login to App Connect, or click on the link in the email to go directly to App Connect, there are no questions. There are 6 tabs/sections in App Connect, flicking through them, there are no questions about age ratings. Even if I could find these questions, if there are no apps actually released to the App Store (and no plans to release any) is answering these questions necessary? The Apple email sounds quite threatening in its tone, hinting at consequences if you don't comply, but I can't comply because no questions in App Connect are being presented.

If I have two iOS apps, with bundle ids com.mycompany.A and com.mycompany.B, and they both have the shared group id of group.com.mycompany.B, then they can read/write data to same file (in shared defaults or, for example, a Realm database saved to the same shared group location). What I have noticed is that if both apps get installed and some data X written to shared defaults (but data which isn't accessed by both apps i.e. if only app A uses this data), then if app A is deleted and reinstalled then X is not deleted in this situation (unless both apps A and B are deleted). I guess that is to be expected as they both use the same group id and the OS won't clear that area out unless both apps are deleted. However I think I am seeing a situation where if app A has group.com.mycompany.A as its group and app B has group.com.mycompany.B as its group, then this is still the same situation - data written by app B for doesn't get deleted if only app B is deleted/reinstalled on the phone. It won't get deleted unless both app B and A are deleted from the phone. This is not what I was expecting. I need to perform some more checks (its more complex to verify as app A is developed by one company and app B by another), but if this were to be the case would this be unexpected behavior by the OS? Presumably it would be unexpected as the container should be identified by the full group id and not a partial portion of the group id right?

From watching the video on App Attest the answer would appear to be no, but the video is a few years old so in hope, I thought I would post this question anyway. There's several scenarios where I would like a notification service extension to be able to use App Attest in communications with the back end(for example to send a receipt to the backend acknowledging receipt of the push, fetching an image from a url in the push payload, a few others). Any change App Attest can be used in by a notification service extension?

Is it possible for an iOS app to programmatically detect if its built for TestFlight/App Store distribution versus built for development? The motivation for doing this is so that the app can detect if a push server should send pushes using the Apple production server or the sandbox server - when the app sends the push token to the server, I'd like it to additionally send an indicator to the server so the server knows which of the Apple servers to use. Is there a way to achieve this? TIA

I'm trying to digest and understand the new set of APIs relating age verification that were released last week. I have say that without some cohesive overview, example app, just a simple diagram showing the relationship of everything, its not at all clear to me what's going on nor what an app developer is expected to do to use these apis (I'm a senior engineer with 15 year's iOS experience, but hey maybe I'm just a bit slow in the head). I have a few questions, but the topic of this post is what is the relationship between age verification i.e. between the declared age range/significant change and Permission Kit? The documentation for the former mentions the Significant Change API/Topic (https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=2ezb6jhj / https://developer.apple.com/documentation/PermissionKit/SignificantAppUpdateTopic). Now the Significant Change Topic is documented as being part of PermissionKit, however the documentation for that (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/permissionkit) States emphatically at the top: "Communication experiences using the PermissionKit framework are only available using iMessage." Meaning you can't use PermissionKit for anything other than iMessage? If it doesn't mean that, then why does it state so? If it does mean that, then how does an app which has nothing to do with iMessage make use of Significant Change - because this documentation:https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=2ezb6jhj Is talking about using significant change for all apps, not iMessage. So there is a contradiction here.

In the summary documentation about the declared Age Range API:https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=2ezb6jhj It states: "The API will also return a signal from the user’s device about the method of age assurance, such as credit card or government ID" But if the api itself, and its documentation is examined, there is no such mechanism nor mention of it: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/declaredagerange/agerangeservice So my question is, is the first documentation incorrect, if not, then where and how to access the method of age assurance?

On this page: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/testing-age-assurance-in-sandbox It says: Start with a Sandbox account. What is a Sandbox account and how does one set one up? Just it just simply mean an Apple account id used for testing, or something else?

I've got a large and complex app which has several dependencies upon 3rd party libraries (installed as pods). The app is structured according to Model-View-Controller design and there is a requirement to implement the Model part as an .xcframework so it can be included and used in the original app along with a few new apps. However, Apple documentation states that umbrella frameworks are not supported (Technical Note TN2435). The Model code has several dependencies which would be totally unfeasible to replace or remove, for example it uses RealmSwift for database storage. Obviously it would be impossible to write one's own database storage scheme in place of using Realm. However, if my framework uses Realm as a dependency, then its now become an umbrella framework. So therefore not supported according to Apple documentation. So what are options/solutions?

In Xcode I've: select Product / Scheme / Edit scheme tap on Archive on the left hand side of the select post actions and + to add a new script Then in there I have added a script I want to run on the archive after its created. I'd like to be able to see the output the script churns out as it goes along but doesn't seem possible? If I just add something like echo "hello" to the start of the script then I don't see "hello" visible anywhere when I build an archive (via Product/Archive). I'm looking in the build navigator. Is there somewhere else to look or is it possible to get the logging into the navigator?

One of the responses to a call to AgeRangeService.shared.requestAgeRange is AgeRangeService.Error.invalidRequest. This has no documentation. What on earth is an invalid request - I mean the app just calls the API, there's no parameters supplied or anything, how can the request ever be invalid? If the app calls AgeRangeService.shared.requestAgeRange and gets this as a response then what is the app supposed to do with that?

Its possible to add the Declared Age Range entitlement to extensions, in particular I'm looking at a Notification Service Extension. However the DAR requestAgeRange() API takes a view controller as a parameter. Presumably therefore its not possible for a notification service extension to obtain the age range itself directly? Yes the extension can read it from shared groups if the app reads it and set it into the group. However the scenario I'm thinking of is this: App runs and gets the age range. Sets its functionality accordingly. The server sends pushes which are intercepted by the notification service extension, the extension adjusts its functionality based upon what the app wrote to shared groups The user changes the age range setting, but the app doesn't run. The extension keeps receiving pushes but its functionality is now out of sync with the age range as its not able to obtain it directly

How can experimentation and testing calling the AgeRangeService.shared.requestAgeRange() functionality be recreated easily? The very first time I ran this the OS popped up a dialog, however it won't do so again, even after the app is deleted and the device re-started. If one navigates to Settings/User/Personal Information/Age Range for Apps/Apps that have requested your age range appear here. Then the names of apps appear here even after the app has been deleted. Therefore how can it be removed from this section? Erasing and resetting the phone will presumably reset things back to a state such that the dialog can be presented again. But doing that and having to wait for that to complete each development or test run is impractical. Is there an alternative?

What are guidelines for apps being released in the US App Store in order to comply with The Texas App Store Accountability Act? I mean there's no way to differentiate an app downloaded in Texas from the other states and it would be ridiculous to add location awareness to an app to comply with this, so effectively it means any developer of any app for release in the US must comply with this in case it might be being used in Texas? This new Apple API has zero background, zero context, zero example of usage, zero guidelines about how to use it in practice: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/declaredagerange/

If an iOS application has a notification service extension which gets sent a push, but the user has not been prompted for notification authorization via requestAuthorization() then what is the expected behavior? Will the push get delivered to the NSE but the resulting notification not displayed? Or will the push not get delivered at all to the NSE?

If there is a Notification Service Extension which has the com.apple.developer.usernotifications.filtering entitlement, then does/how having that entitlement affect the preconditions for the NSE to be delivered a push? Specifically, if the app has not prompted for requestAuthorization() is it expected that the push will be delivered to the NSE or not? Thank you