Delve into the world of built-in app and system services available to developers. Discuss leveraging these services to enhance your app's functionality and user experience.

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Apple Intelligence on Workspace ONE
Hello! It's my first time posting in this forum. Apple Intelligence is enabled by default in Workspace ONE (WS1). I was wondering if Apple Intelligence can access or process corporate data within (WS1) corporate apps, which are containerized? Thank you!
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240
Dec ’24
Preparing your app to be the default calling app on iOS 18.2?
Hello, I’m working on a caller ID app and with the release of iOS 18.2, Apple has introduced the ability to set a third-party app as the default calling app. I have followed the official documentation for this feature and successfully set my app as the default phone app for making and receiving calls. Documentation Reference: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/callkit/preparing-your-app-to-be-the-default-calling-app Now, I’m facing some challenges and need some guidance: Custom UI for Incoming Cellular Calls: Is it possible to show a custom UI when receiving SIM-based cellular calls (not VoIP)? I want to replace the default iOS call screen with my own design when a cellular call is received. Can CallKit allow me to manage and display this custom UI for real cellular calls? Detecting Incoming Cellular Calls: Can I detect incoming SIM-based cellular calls when my app is set as the default calling app? I would like to track and show details of incoming calls (e.g., caller information, call duration) using a custom interface. Displaying Call Data (Call Duration, Recent Calls): Can I show call data (e.g., call duration, recent call history, etc.) for SIM-based cellular calls within my app when it is the default calling app? I need to know if it’s possible to retrieve and display this data in a custom format. Managing Outgoing Cellular Calls: For SIM-based outgoing calls, can I handle the process of initiating the call and then show a custom UI for the call in progress (similar to how VoIP apps manage outgoing calls)? I understand that CallKit can be used to manage the UI for calls, but I’m unsure about the limitations when it comes to real SIM-based cellular calls. Is it possible to implement these features with the current API capabilities, or are there any restrictions I should be aware of when managing cellular network calls? Thanks in advance for your help!
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459
Jan ’25
A Summary of the WWDC25 Group Lab - watchOS (Part 1)
At WWDC25 we launched a new type of Lab event for the developer community - Group Labs. A Group Lab is a panel Q&A designed for a large audience of developers. Group Labs are a unique opportunity for the community to submit questions directly to a panel of Apple engineers and designers. Here are the highlights from the WWDC25 Group Lab for watchOS (part 1). 1. I'm really excited about the new design system on all platforms. Liquid Glass is super cool. What do developers need to keep in mind when building for watchOS 26? To adopt the new design system, start with updating your app for watchOS 10 – If you have done so, your app will be mostly ready for watchOS 26. For more information, see Design and build apps for WatchOS 10. You can then look into Liquid Glass specific APIs to fine tune your app. This topic is covered in Adopting Liquid Glass. If you have SwiftUI views using any custom style, make sure they are still legible and fit with the new design system. 2. Something that really stood out to me were updates to the Smart Stack, with the system prioritizing Widgets when they're most relevant. Tell me more about these new opportunities for apps. Workout apps that record workouts using HealthKit may be automatically suggested on the watch face and appear in the Smart Stack without adding a widget. Relevant widgets are a great way to present information related to a date, location, point-of-interest type, sleep schedule, or fitness condition in the Smart Stack when it is relevant. Relevant widgets don't need to display a empty state view when they are not relevant. They are only shown in the Smart Stack when relevant. The watchOS 26 Design ToolKit in the Apple Design Resources includes a set of templates that you can use to layout your widgets. 3. Is the Wrist Flick gesture available to developers in the same way as Double Tap is? The system uses Wrist Flick to dismiss notifications and incoming calls, silence timers and alarms, or return to the watch face. There is no separate API for the Wrist Flick gesture. Apps that are using XCUIAutomation to make sure their user interface behaves as intended can use the XCUIDeviceHandGesture.flick to automate tests that verify that their app responds appropriately to the Wrist Flick gesture. For apps using automated testing, the XCUIDeviceHandGesture.doubleTap can be also be used to automate testing of the app with the Double Tap gesture. See XCUIDevice.perform(handGesture:) 4. Can HRV measurements be triggered on demand via API in watchOS? Guidelines or processes for enabling energy-intensive biometric sampling on development devices for IRB-approved research? You don’t have direct control on the sampling rate in watchOS. You can use HealthKit (HKQuantityTypeIdentifierHeartRateVariabilitySDNN, to be specific) to query the HRV data, once the system has sampled and persisted the data to HealthKit. If that doesn’t help, we suggest that you file a feedback report with your concrete use case for us to investigate. Specific to IRB-approved research using Apple Watch or its companion iPhone, you might want to look at this FAQ and SensorKit to see if they can be of any help. 5. What is the best advice for someone who is new to making a watchOS app that’s been on iOS and iPadOS? You can start with exploring the system experience features on watchOS, such as notifications, controls, and widgets, and getting familiar with the system spaces, like Smart Stack, watch face, and control center. Knowing the watchOS app design principles and practices is important as well. Design and build apps for WatchOS 10 is a great resource for this topic. SwiftUI is an amazing across-platform framework, and you will use it to create your watchOS app. If you're already using it, great! Keep in mind some watch-only constraints. Comparing to iPhone or iPad, Apple Watch has a limited battery and smaller screen size, which significantly impacts how people use your app and how your app works. 6. Was there any extension this year to the 7 day limit on querying Apple Health data on the watch? There is no change on the limit this year. You can get this official limit at runtime using earliestPermittedSampleDate. There are some exceptions, and so don't be surprised if you see some data types are retained longer. The companion iPhone holds the full set of the health data. If you need to access the health data that has been purged from the Apple Watch, consider doing it with your iOS app, and then passing the result to your watchOS app.
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118
Jul ’25
FamilyActivityPicker: manage own device AND children device
Hello, I am unable to figure out how I tell the FamilyActivityPicker whether it should show apps installed on my personal device (to be used with AuthorizationCenter.shared.requestAuthorization(for: .individual)) or apps installed on my child’s device (authenticated their phone via AuthorizationCenter.shared.requestAuthorization(for: .child)). Is there any parameter or SwiftUI modifier I need to apply? Otherwise, how does the user or the app know which token belongs to them and which token belongs to their child’s device? Radar: FB17020977 Thanks a lot for your help!
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92
Mar ’25
Issue with Live CallerID URL Caching
I've been testing the Live CallerID feature using the Apple-provided local server example - live-caller-id-lookup-example. I've been running a local server with tunneling using ngrok for the initial setup. Everything was working perfectly with the following setup: @main final class CallerID: LiveCallerIDLookupProtocol { var context: LiveCallerIDLookupExtensionContext { LiveCallerIDLookupExtensionContext( serviceURL: URL(string: "https://example-tunnel.ngrok.io")!, tokenIssuerURL: URL(string: "https://example-tunnel.ngrok.io")!, userTierToken: Data(base64Encoded: "BBBB")! ) } } However, after I updated the URLs to the production ones, I encountered an issue: @main struct CallerID: LiveCallerIDLookupProtocol { var context: LiveCallerIDLookupExtensionContext { LiveCallerIDLookupExtensionContext( serviceURL: URL(string: "https://example.net/")!, tokenIssuerURL: URL(string: "https://example/issue")!, userTierToken: Data(base64Encoded: "BBBB")! ) } } The problem is that during calls or when updating PIR parameters, the application still attempts to connect to the initial ngrok tunnel URLs instead of using the new production URLs. I can confirm this because the logs on my local server show incoming requests, indicating that the application is still referencing the old ngrok tunnel URLs. Steps I’ve taken to resolve the issue include: Deleting and reinstalling the application. Using reset(forExtensionWithIdentifier:) Unfortunately, these attempts have not been successful. I even extracted the binary of the app and extension to inspect the strings, confirming that the correct production URLs are present. The server was started with the following command: PIRService --hostname 127.0.0.1 service-config.json Could this be some sort of caching bug on the iOS side, or am I missing something?
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410
Dec ’24
PSA: Call Screening breaks in a multitude of ways; no missed call notifications or badges; not lighting up screen; not visible when using focus;
Call Screening has serious issues right now leading to missing calls from genuine callers because the system does not acknowledge them with missed call notifications or badges in a lot of cases. I'm posting this in the hope of catching an engineer who can bring this to the attention of the teams working on this. Filed as FB20678829 — I ran the following tests with iOS 26.1 beta 3, but the issues have been occurring on iOS 26.0 as well. I used an iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, and Mac for this. The iPhone has Call Screening enabled with the option „Ask Reason for Calling“ The iPhone has call forwarding enabled to all devices. Test 1: Active Focus Turn on a focus like Do not Disturb on all devices. Lock all devices. Make a phone call to the iPhone with an unknown number. Behavior: iPhone: displays Call Screening UI on the Lock Screen, but it will not light up the screen. You don’t know Call Screening is happening unless you activate the display just in that moment on devices without Always On Display. Watch: does nothing. Mac: does nothing. iPad: displays Call Screening UI on the Lock Screen, but it will not light up the screen. You don’t know Call Screening is happening unless you activate the display just in that moment. In this test the caller does not answer any of the Call Screening questions and just hangs up. The result is that only the Mac displays a missed call notification. iPhone, iPad, and Watch do not acknowledge the missed call (no phone app icon badge, no notification, no badge inside the Phone app itself), you can only see the call inside the Calls list when manually looking for it. Test 2: No Focus Turn off any focus like Do not Disturb on all devices. Lock all devices. Make a phone call to the iPhone with an unknown number. Behavior: iPhone: displays Call Screening UI on the Lock Screen, but it will not light up the screen. You don’t know Call Screening is happening unless you activate the display just in that moment on devices without Always On Display. Watch: does nothing. Mac: displays Call Screening UI when unlocked. iPad: displays Call Screening UI on the Lock Screen, but it will not light up the screen. You don’t know Call Screening is happening unless you activate the display just in that moment. In this test the caller does not answer any of the Call Screening questions and just hangs up. The result is that only the Mac displays a missed call notification. iPhone, iPad, and Watch do not acknowledge the missed call (no phone app icon badge, no notification, no badge inside the Phone app itself), you can only see the call inside the Calls list when manually looking for it. The only improvement here is that the Mac now shows the Call Screening UI. Test 3: Caller answers Call Screening questions An active focus does not matter. Lock all devices. Make a phone call to the iPhone with an unknown number. Once the caller answered the Call Screening questions, the following happens: All devices ring like expected When the caller hangs up or I don’t answer: Mac: Shows Missed Call notification without details iPhone: Shows Missed Call notification with transcript of Call Screening (also badges phone app icon) iPad: does nothing. Watch: Shows the mirrored iPhone notification. Things to note: When turning off call forwarding on iPhone to other Apple devices like iPad and Mac, the phone app icon is always badged for missed calls when Call Screening was active, but no notification is displayed regardless.
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78
Oct ’25
ManagedSettingStore limits and groups
So what's the point of being able to block unto 50 apps per ManagedSettingStore via store.application.blockedApplications (which works fine) until removing the blocked apps or clearing the store. Where the following occurs if you have a social networking group with more than 9 apps only 9 apps will go back into the group and all the others will go onto the springboard all jumbled if you end up with an empty group then tap into the group, it is removed then during the reset all apps are placed back on to the springboard
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323
Jan ’25
Background Modes for Audio Playback
Summary: I'm developing an iOS audio app in Flutter that requires background audio playback for long-form content. Despite having a paid Apple Developer Program account, the "Background Modes" capability does not appear as an option when creating or editing App IDs in the Developer Portal, preventing me from enabling the required com.apple.developer.background-modes entitlement. Technical Details: In the app that I am developing, users expect uninterrupted playback when app is backgrounded or device is locked similar to Audible, Spotify, or other audio apps that continue playing in background The Problem: When building for device testing or App Store submission, Xcode shows: Provisioning profile "iOS Team Provisioning Profile: com.xxxxx-vxxx" doesn't include the com.apple.developer.background-modes entitlement. However, the "Background Modes" capability is completely missing from the Developer Portal when creating or editing any App ID. I cannot enable it because the option simply doesn't exist in the capabilities list. What I've Tried: Multiple browsers/devices: Safari, Chrome, Firefox, incognito mode, different computers Account verification: Confirmed paid Individual Developer Program membership is active New App IDs: Created multiple new App IDs - capability never appears for any of them Documentation review: Followed all Apple documentation for configuring background execution modes Different regions: Tried changing portal language to English (US) Cache clearing: Logged out, cleared cookies, tried different sessions Apple Support Response: Contacted Developer Support (Case #102633509713). Received generic documentation links and was directed to Developer Forums rather than technical escalation. Has anyone else experienced the "Background Modes" capability missing from their Developer Portal? Has anyone successfully used the App Store Connect API to add background-modes when the GUI doesn't show it? What's the proper escalation path when Developer Support provides generic responses instead of technical assistance? Things I have attempted to solve this: audio_service package: Implemented as potential workaround, but still requires the system-level entitlement Manual provisioning profiles: Cannot create profiles with required entitlement if capability isn't enabled on App ID Other perhaps important facts about the environment where I am building the app: macOS Sonoma Xcode 15.x Flutter 3.5.4+ Apple Developer Program (Individual, paid)
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114
Jul ’25
How to Filter App Usage for a Specific Time Period Using Screen Time API?
I am working on a SwiftUI app using the Screen Time API and the DeviceActivityReport view to display app usage data. My current implementation successfully shows daily app usage using a DeviceActivityFilter with the .daily(during:) segment. However, I need to filter this data to show app usage only for a specific time period during the day, e.g., 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM. I created a DeviceActivityFilter with a .daily(during:) segment and passed a DateInterval for the desired time range: let now = Date() let startTime = calendar.date(bySettingHour: 16, minute: 0, second: 0, of: now)! let endTime = calendar.date(bySettingHour: 17, minute: 0, second: 0, of: now)! let timeInterval = DateInterval(start: startTime, end: endTime) let filter = DeviceActivityFilter( segment: .daily(during: timeInterval), users: .all, devices: .init([.iPhone]) ) I applied this filter to the DeviceActivityReport view: DeviceActivityReport(context, filter: filter) Even with the DateInterval set for the specific time range, the report still shows the total daily usage for each app, instead of restricting the results to the specified 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM range.
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436
Dec ’24
AppleTV returns to homescreen overnight
Hi We have an AppleTV app that is used to continuously display information (digital signage). One of our clients reports that their AppleTV returns to the homescreen by morning. While our recommendation is to setup Mobile Device Management to lock the AppleTV into running only our app, not every client will have the IT knowledge to set this up. So we're trying to figure out possible causes for the app getting closed. We've not received any crash reports, nor does the device give any indication the app crashed. The energy saving settings are set to run continuously without sleep. The client is reporting this happens every night, so it seems unlikely to be caused by tvOS updates. Are there other things I could rule out to find the cause of this issue? Any ideas are welcome, thanks!
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1w
Secure Integration of Apple Calendar (iCalendar) in a Third-Party App
Hi everyone, We’re integrating Apple Calendar (iCalendar) into our Codapet app but haven’t found any official Apple APIs for event management and synchronisation. Currently, we use CalDAV with Apple ID authentication and an app-specific password (ASP), storing the ASP encrypted in our database and decrypting it for each API call. We’re looking for a more secure and recommended approach to this integration. Does Apple provide dedicated APIs for calendar sync, or is there a better alternative to avoid sending the ASP with every request? Any guidance or best practices would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
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142
Mar ’25
Unblocking Apps After a Scheduled Duration in FamilyControl
I am able to block apps using FamilyControl and Shield. Unblocking is also simple—just assign nil to store.shield.applications. However, I want to unblock them even when the app is not open. Use case: Let's say the app allows users to create a session where a particular app is blocked for a specific duration. Once the session starts, the app should remain blocked, and as soon as the session time ends, it should automatically be unblocked. Please help me with this. Thank you!
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407
Feb ’25
How to stop today's instance of repeating alarms in AlarmKit without affecting future days?
I'm using the new AlarmKit framework to build a Swift app that lets users schedule multiple repeating alarms. The goal is to allow users to stop all alarms for today if they wake up early, but the alarms should still ring on their scheduled days in the future (for example, every Monday). What I tried: When the user chooses to stop alarms for today, I delete all alarms and re-add them. However, this doesn't work as expected. If today is Monday and I delete and re-add the alarm with .weekday = .monday, it still rings today. That means re-adding the alarm doesn't skip today's instance, even though it's repeating. What I want to achieve: Skip or suppress today's alarms when the user stops them manually Keep the same alarms active for their scheduled days in the future Questions: Is there a way in AlarmKit to prevent a repeating alarm from ringing today if it was just re-added or there are better alternatives to this problem? Is the only workaround to delay re-adding until after today’s alarms would have fired? What is the best approach to achieve this?
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87
Aug ’25