The new beta also addressed my questions about peerAuthenticationRequired(false) and peerAuthenticationOptional(false) in my initial post as these APIs were replaced with the much more sensible peerAuthentication(...) API which takes options .none, .optional and .required.

Thanks so much for looking into this and reporting back! I see run(...) now supports multicast protocols in Xcode Beta 6. Yay!

@DTS Engineer I was hoping the evolution of the relationship of QUIC and the new API you mentioned would happen during the 26 beta period. But at this point it seems that it will be impossible to receive QUIC connections using the new APIs in iOS/iPadOS 26 and I'll likely have to wait another year or hope for changes in a dot release? As far as I can tell there have been no changes to the API in this respect as of beta 6, correct?

Thank you Quinn! Good to know that it is still incomplete, but that this is known and (presumably) being worked on.

I filed a feedback (FB18497343) requesting a new "wifi-aware" key in UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities to indicate that an app requires a Wifi Aware capable device. 🤞

Thank you, that's great! I suspect it was added recently, because I think I would have noticed that before, but who knows. In any case it is great that it is officially documented now. (PS: Your link was self-referential 😉)

Thank you, Quinn, much appreciated! That’ll ensure that you code behaves correctly as Wi-Fi Aware support evolves in the future. I assume this means there won't be a UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities key, as support is not just a function of hardware capabilities? Is it possible/likely that devices that aren't currently supported will be in the future? Or is it more about the possibility of support going away (for example if Apple wins an appeal against the EU's DMA, which I understand compelled Apple to adopt Wi-Fi Aware)?

Interesting. So people use a new stream even for sending tiny control messages? I guess that makes sense if creating the stream is basically free. Though I assume you lose all guarantees about the order in which messages will be received? In the end I think performance of the current approach should be fine (of course I'll profile it). Even if there is an additional memory copy (not sure there is), I doubt it would make a meaningful difference.

My workaround was to rip out the (very basic) custom protocol framer and implement the same packaging logic on top of NWConnection's byte stream send and receive methods. Which is actually much simpler code, but maybe less performant? (Because of an additional data copy?)

Thanks, yes, I much prefer replies over (the very hidden) comments. I just thought using a reply to reply to a (kind of invisible) comment would be weird/wrong. I did just file this as FB15694053 Thank you for your update on the other FB, much appreciated!

I filed enhancement request FB15647226 for the initial issue of NWConnectionGroup not supporting connections to Bonjour service endpoints.

Thank you, I tried it but it didn't make any difference. However I just figured it out: The issue was that I was adding my custom protocol framer options into the NWParameters in addition to the QUIC options when establishing the tunnel / connection group. It seems that tripped up nw_endpoint_flow_setup_cloned_protocols. Removing the custom framer allows me to now successfully create a NWConnection from the group. Next I'll have to figure out how to get my custom framer added back into the individual NWConnections. It seems that even though the .parameters property is a constant, I can still modify it because it is a reference type. So hopefully that will work. 🤞

I just filed the enhancement request as FB15642049

I did (try to) implement the workaround of using Bonjour just for device discovery, resolving the hostname and then trying to establish a QUIC tunnel (multiplexed NWConnectionGroup) using that hostname and a hardcoded port. Unfortunately I did not get very far before hitting another wall. Creating the NWConnectionGroup using my QUIC parameters and a .hostPort() endpoint worked without getting an error. On the other device I am creating a NWListener with QUIC parameters and the hardcoded port. Its newConnectionGroupHandler is called, and after accepting it (by calling start(queue:..)) the NWConnectionGroups on both devices enter the .ready state. Great!! 🥳 Next I am getting a QUIC stream (NWConnection) from the group by calling .extract(), and call .start(queue:..) on it. Unfortunately this is where I hit a wall again. The logs show the following errors: nw_endpoint_flow_setup_cloned_protocols [C4 fe80::1c46:3f2a:b0a6:c276%en0.7934@en0 in_progress channel-flow (satisfied (Path is satisfied), interface: en0[802.11], scoped, ipv4, ipv6, dns, uses wifi)] could not find protocol to join in existing protocol stack nw_endpoint_flow_failed_with_error [C4 fe80::1c46:3f2a:b0a6:c276%en0.7934@en0 in_progress channel-flow (satisfied (Path is satisfied), interface: en0[802.11], scoped, ipv4, ipv6, dns, uses wifi)] failed to clone from flow, moving directly to failed state and the connection ends up .cancelled. The exact same error messages were being discussed in this older thread on QUIC multiplexed groups. However in that thread the issue ended up being different QUIC options being used for establishing the tunnel and the individual streams. In my case I am letting the stream inherit the QUIC options from the group/tunnel (though I also tried passing them in explicitly). I am using the same QUIC options that had been working for establishing a single NWConnection.

Thank you for the quick reply. Unfortunately I don't quite understand how I would do this. I assume I would still use a NWListener with a NWListener.Service to advertise my service over Bonjour? But even if I don't need to resolve the hostname and instead hardcode it (in my case as "_aircam._udp.local."), I'd still need to specify a port to use .hostPort(), right? And NWListener doesn't allow me to choose my own port as far as I can tell. I assume nw_group_descriptor_allows_endpoint is a closed source function?