I've noticed issues with logging in the Mac's console app for a very long time now (from Xcode 15?) but have just spent several hours trying to objectively observe and monitor what's going on and try to set up reliable logging. But I've totally been unable to and my conclusion is that logging just absolutely cannot be relied upon at all, its so chronically bad as to be unusable. If I for example add some logging lines right at the start of didFinishLaunchingWithOptions() and use a variety of logging mechanisms NSLog(), print(),os_log_with_type(), OSLog() (AppDelegate is in Obj-C and calls Obj-C logging, then calls a swift function for Swift logging), then none of them are reliable. If the app is build/installed via Xcode then logging is reliable within Xcode's console and also within the Mac's console app. But then if the app is uploaded/installed via Testflight it's a very different matter. Sometimes, but not very often, the logging is as expected, but more often than not, some of it is missing. How much is missing seems totally random, sometimes its a little, sometimes its a lot, and something else that very very often happens is there's lots of duplicate logging, each logging line will appear 2 or three times. Here's a very simple example to illustrate what happens (in this example for simplicity I'm just showing using NSLog, don't focus on that as I know NSLog is "old", its the exact same result regardless of how the logging is actually performed). - (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions { appDelegate = self; NSLog(@"Log line 1"); NSLog(@"Log line 2"); NSLog(@"Log line 3"); NSLog(@"Log line 4"); NSLog(@"Log line 5"); When the app is downloaded from Testflight then only very rarely will I see 5 lines of logging, sometimes it'll be 4, sometimes 2, sometimes none. And quite often the logging is duplicated i.e. I might see for example in the Console app: Log line 1 Log line 1 Log line 2 Log line 2 Log line 3 Log line 3 In general it's just totally unusable and unreliable. It just cannot be be used at all. Why is it this bad? What can be done to make logging reliable and useful? I've spent days and days reading the recommended approaches, trying things out, including the new stuff like OSLog etc. But it remains dreadful. What is the recommended approach to make logging 100% reliable? There's never any problem with Xcode's console, it's only with the Mac's console app. However, when an app is being tested which has been installed from Testflight then using Xcode's console can't be used. So If a QA team find problems with a Testflight build and attach the Console log its utterly useless as its contents are effectively random.

One of the questions Apple ask regarding iOS apps is "Does your app provide end-to-end encryption?" But without defining exactly what they mean by end-to-end encryption specifically. Isn't HTTPS basically etee? Therefore any app that contacts a server using https provides end-to-end encryption? Or does the question mean something additional above and beyond https?

In the documentation for a Message Filter Extension it states: If you have servers that can help your app extension determine how to handle a message, you must add the Associated Domains capability to your Xcode project and specify those domains. (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sms_and_call_reporting/sms_and_mms_message_filtering/creating_a_message_filter_app_extension) The words servers and domains are in the plural. If it's possible to specify multiple servers/domains for a Message Filter Extension then how is that done? There's no documentation nor reference for that. If multiple domains can be added to the info.plist then what is the iOS behavior in that case? Can the extension supply/change which domain is used at run time?

I'm attempting make to make a distribution build of an app. In the Xcode target the supported destinations has only iPhone and build active architectures only is set to NO. I created an archive, then selected Distribute App/ Debugging, but then got this error: Provisioning profile "iOS Team Provisioning Profile: com.abc.def" doesn't include the currently selected device "DT-iPad-XXXX" (identifier YYYY-YYYYYY). I've no idea what this device is, it's nothing to do with me, somebody must have added it to the provisioning profile. But that should be beside the point shouldn't it? Because this device has never ever been connected to my Mac/Xcode and so can't be "the currently selected device". So I tried again. I changed build active architectures to YES and connected an iPhone to the Mac/Xcode and created an archive again. But it was the exact same error. What's going on, why is Xcode saying this iPad is the currently selected device when attempting to make a distribution?

I can sucessfully send pushes to an app (which has been installed/run via Xcode) when the pushes are going through the Apple sandbox server. However I want to test the server is configured correctly to send them through the Apple production server. In the Xcode scheme I tried to change the build configuration to release (and ticked debug executable off) ,however the pushes still only work when sent through the sandbox. Is there a way of installing/running the app using Xcode such that its compatible with the push production environment? Does the APS Environment entitlement come into play here? this only ever says development. (The app is on behalf of a 3rd party company, they've added me to their apple developer account but with limited powers, I can't upload to Testflight nor make an ad-hoc release with with to test with)

I want to set the minimum deployment to 16.0, however Xcode (16.2) won't let me select that. In the drop down box it shows 18,17,16,15, however if any of these is selected it sets them as 18.6, 17.6, 16.6 or 15.6 (see image) If an attempt is made to edit the value manually, to 16.0, then after change it, Xcode just deletes that value and sets it to nothing. What's going on here? Why is Xcode only allowing the version other than be something.6 and why will it not let you manually edit it?

I've got an existing app which is using some 3rd party xcframeworks within its app extensions (for example within a Notification Service Extension). Within the target for the app extensions there is a Frameworks and Libraries section where the xcframework was dragged and dropped into. However now I want to create a new project and do a similar thing, within the app's target there is a Frameworks and Libraries section, but when an app extension target is created, Xcode is not adding a Frameworks and Libraries section. There is a Link Library with Binary section, however this doesn't have an embed section (where you can select to embed, don't embed, embed without signing etc.) and I get build error trying to drag and drop the xcframework in here. Where id the Framewoks and Libraries section go for app extensions for projects created with Xcode 16? How can this section be added?

If an iOS app gets terminated by watchdog due to, for example, hanging the main thread, is that considered to be a crash or something different. I'm asking because, according to google and AI, Crashlytics can detect and report these,but in my experience it does not. If I deliberately cause a watchdog termination by for example sleeping on the main thread for a long time then these never appear in Crashlytics. I know Apple folks here don't comment on non Apple software, so I'm not asking about Crashlytics, just wondering and interested about watchdog timeout terminations and how they differ from a "regular" crash.

Within Xcode's settings location section is a drop down menu to switch between setting the derived data location to be default, relative or custom. However its a global setting. I work on more than one project simultaneously, and for one of them I want the location set to relative, but default for all the others. Is there any way of achieving that?

If I create an Xcode (version doesn't matter, 16.N )project of type framework then install some dependencies using SPM. Then within the Frameworks and Libraries section, the Embed part is empty. This doesn't happen if the project type is app rather than framework. If I want to set this to embed or not embed then how can this be done if its not even visible, for that matter how can I tell what it is set to even?

I've got several Xcode iOS projects and in the Editor menu section there are dozen's of options, as in the diagram. However if I create a new iOX Project (with Xcode 16.2) look at how sparse the Editor menu is. Why is that, why do they appear for other projects but not for a new one and why are the contents different?

If an Xcode project has some compiler flags set in Build Phases / Compile Sources, then is it possible to have those enabled if scheme A is selected and disabled if scheme B is selected. Same question for things in Build Settings, such as Other Compiler Flags. I suppose it could be achieved by having two targets, one with things enabled and one without, but for a very large complex project, duplicating targets is not necessarily an easy thing to do.

Is this setup possible / have a solution: There is a .xcframework F, which uses a 3rd party library, lets call it L. There is an app which uses the xcframework The app also uses L Both the app and F use SPM to integrate L F is using L for its own internal purposes. F is providing some functionality to the app. How it implements that ideally should be a black box from the app's perspective. The app also happens to use L for its own purposes. I can't get this set up working, always get warnings about duplicate symbols when running the App. This will presumably be due to the fact there are separate copies of L in both F and A. So how can that be eliminated? Can F not statically like to L and use the App's version of L at runtime? If so how can Xcode be configured so that F can actually compile? Or vice versa - can the App not statically link in its own copy of L and use that in the framework? If so, similar questions, how to configure Xcode to set this up? I can't believe this is an obscure use case, yet after days of searching and reading documentation I can't find any solution. Note that I was able to get this going when the app and the framework used Cocoapods to integrate L, but I just can't do similarly if the use of Cocoapods is replaced with SMP. When using cocoapods, within the frameworks Xcode section, the pods framework is set to Do Not Embed. This is probably the vital difference between the working Cocoapods implementation and the not working SPM solution. However, when using SPM Xcode doesn't present any option to either embed nor not embed the dependency. Why not? Can it somehow be set to not embed?

Delete me

I'm currently finding it impossible to get a text filtering extension to be invoked when there's an incoming text message. There isn't a problem with the app/extension because this is the same app and code that is already developed, tested, and unchanged since I last observed it working. I know if there's any history of the incoming number being "known" then the extension won't get invoked, and I used to find this no hindrance to testing previously provided that: the incoming number isn't in contacts there's no outgoing messages to that number there's no outgoing phone calls to the number. This always used to work in the past, but not anymore. However, I've ensured the incoming text's number isn't in contacts, in fact I've deleted all the contacts. I've deleted the entire phone history, incoming and outgoing, and I've also searched in messages and made sure there's no interactions with that number. There's logging in the extension so I can see its being invoked when turned on from the settings app, but its not getting invoked when there's a message. The one difference between now and when I used to have no problem with this - the phone now has iOS 18.5 on it. Its as if in iOS 18.5 there ever was any past association with a text number, its not impossible to remove that association. Has there been some known change in 18.5 that would affect this call filtering behavior and not being able to rid of the incoming message caller as being "known" to the phone? Update I completely reset the phone and then I was able to see the the message filter extension being invoked. That's not an ideal situation though. What else needs to be done beyond what I mentioned above in order to get a phone to forget about a message's number and thus get an message filtering extension to be invoked when there's a message from that number?