Hi, are there any known issues with delayed iCloud Keychain synchronization to macOS?
I have an app for iOS and macOS that supports creating, reading, updating, and deleting synchronizable Keychain items. Both versions are signed with the same Team ID, and all test devices are signed in to the same Apple Account.
I’m observing a significant difference depending on the direction of synchronization:
- macOS → iOS: approximately 30 seconds.
- iOS → other iOS devices: approximately 30 seconds.
- iOS → macOS: approximately 30 minutes, with some variation.
Changes eventually appear on the Macs, but incoming updates take much longer. Is this expected behavior, a known issue, or something that could be caused by my implementation? What diagnostics would help investigate it? Devices are on iOS 26 and macOS 26.
There are no API-level controls for this behaviour. You either opt in to synchronisation (kSecAttrSynchronizable) or you don’t, and once you do the system is in charge of that process.
I’m not aware of any specific reason why iOS-to-macOS synchronisation would be slow, but the synchronisation process is complex and thus there’s plenty of scope for such problems. If you continue to encounter these delays as you test your apps on a wider range of machines, I encourage you to file a bug about that. Make sure to include a sysdiagnose log from both the source (iOS) and destination (macOS).
If you do end up filing a bug, please post your bug number, just for the record.
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Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
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