Hi, I'm working on an application on MacOS. It contains a port-forward feature on TCP protocol. This application has no UI, but a local HTTP server where user can access to configure this application. I found that my application always exit for unknown purpose after running in backgruond for minutes. I think this is about MacOS's background process controlling. Source codes and PKG installers are here: https://github.com/burningtnt/Terracotta/actions/runs/16494390417

I've discovered that a system network extension can communicate with a LaunchDaemon (loaded using SMAppService) over XPC, provided that the XPC service name begins with the team ID. If I move the launchd daemon plist to Contents/Library/LaunchAgents and swap the SMAppService.daemon calls to SMAppService.agent calls, and remove the .privileged option to NSXPCConnection, the system extension receives "Couldn't communicate with a helper application" as an error when trying to reach the LaunchAgent advertised service. Is this limitation by design? I imagine it is, but wanted to check before I spent any more time on it.

my app need tracking location all the time both foreground and background. Please suggest how to prevent the app from being terminated. or detect when app is terminated.

Hello 👋 Our team added com.apple.security.temporary-exception.apple-events: com.apple.Terminal recently to our Mac app to be able to tell the terminal to execute a specific command line automatically for the user when clicking a button but we've been rejected during review because of this entitlement so for now we've deleted it and deleted the associated feature. It concerns the following feature (see attachment). Context: Among other things the application enable to review pull request changes (remote) and we would like a button to automatically clone the pull request on disk when user click a button. We would like to use terminal for security reason as when cloning using git command we need ssh keys or other credential and there's no reason (rather than technical ones) that the user provide us such private information that is stored in the ~/.ssh. We prefer think the other way around and tell the user what to execute instead (no credentials involved or shared). We referred to: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Miscellaneous/Reference/EntitlementKeyReference/Chapters/AppSandboxTemporaryExceptionEntitlements.html I admit it's unclear for me if this will imply a 100% rejection or if these entitlements are deprecated. Is "com.apple.security.temporary-exception.apple-events: com.apple.Terminal" an entitlement that is reserved for special Apple partners ? Is it an entitlement that we should demonstrate usage first ? Or should we completely remove the feature if we distribute through the App Store ? Is Apple advice for other APIs to develop such features (execute command line for the user) when distributing through the App Store ? As said we've disabled the feature for now. Thank you in advance for those who will take time to answer this,

I am trying to create an app bundle with an xpc service. The main app creates a keychain item, and attempts to share (keychain access groups) with the xpc service it includes in its bundle. However, the xpc service always encounters a 'user interaction not allowed' error regardless of how I create the keychain item. kSecAttrAccessiblei is set to kSecAttrAccessibleWhenUnlockedThisDeviceOnly, the keychain access group is set for both the main app and the xpc service and in the provisioning profile. I've tried signing and notarizing. Is it ever possible for an xpc service to access the keychain? This all on macos 15.5.

Basically the title. I am trying to implement a local notification to trigger, regardless of internet connection, around 3-5pm if a certain array in the app is not empty to get the user to sync unsaved work with the cloud. I wanted to used the BGAppRefreshTask as I saw it was lightweight and quick for just posting a banner notification but after inspecting it in the console, it looks like it needs internet connection to trigger. Is this the case or am I doing something wrong? Should I be using the BGProcessingTask instead?

Service Management framework supports installing and uninstalling services, including Service Management login items, launchd agents, and launchd daemons. General: Forums subtopic: App & System Services > Processes & Concurrency Forums tag: Service Management Service Management framework documentation Daemons and Services Programming Guide archived documentation Technote 2083 Daemons and Agents — It hasn’t been updated in… well… decades, but it’s still remarkably relevant. EvenBetterAuthorizationSample sample code — This has been obviated by SMAppService. SMJobBless sample code — This has been obviated by SMAppService. Sandboxing with NSXPCConnection sample code WWDC 2022 Session 10096 What’s new in privacy introduces the new SMAppService facility, starting at 07˸07 BSD Privilege Escalation on macOS forums post Background items showing up with the wrong name forums post Related forums tags include: XPC, Apple’s preferred inter-process communication (IPC) mechanism Inter-process communication, for other IPC mechanisms Share and Enjoy — Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

My app uses SMAppService to register a privileged helper, the helper registers without errors, and can be seen in System Settings. I can get a connection to the service and a remote object proxy, but the helper process cannot be found in Activity Monitor and the calls to the proxy functions seem to always fail without showing any specific errors. What could be causing this situation?

SMAppService Error 108 "Unable to read plist" on macOS 15 Sequoia - Comprehensive Test Case Summary We have a fully notarized SMAppService implementation that consistently fails with Error 108 "Unable to read plist" on macOS 15 Sequoia, despite meeting all documented requirements. After systematic testing including AI-assisted analysis, we've eliminated all common causes and created a comprehensive test case. Error: SMAppServiceErrorDomain Code=108 "Unable to read plist: com.keypath.helperpoc.helper" 📋 Complete Repository: https://github.com/malpern/privileged_helper_help What We've Systematically Verified ✅ Perfect bundle structure: Helper at Contents/MacOS/, plist at Contents/Library/LaunchDaemons/ Correct SMAuthorizedClients: Embedded in helper binary via CREATE_INFOPLIST_SECTION_IN_BINARY=YES Aligned identifiers: Main app, helper, and plist all use consistent naming Production signing: Developer ID certificates with full Apple notarization and stapling BundleProgram paths: Tested both Contents/MacOS/helperpoc-helper and simplified helperpoc-helper Entitlements: Tested with and without com.apple.developer.service-management.managed-by-main-app What Makes This Different Systematic methodology: Not a "help me debug" post - we've done comprehensive testing Expert validation: AI analysis helped eliminate logical hypotheses Reproduction case: Minimal project that demonstrates the issue consistently Complete documentation: All testing steps, configurations, and results documented Use Case Context We're building a keyboard remapper that integrates with https://github.com/jtroo/kanata and needs privileged daemon registration for system-wide keyboard event interception. Key Questions Does anyone have a working SMAppService implementation on macOS 15 Sequoia? Are there undocumented macOS 15 requirements we're missing? Is Error 108 a known issue with specific workarounds? Our hypothesis: This appears to be a macOS 15 system-level issue rather than configuration error, since our implementation meets all documented Apple requirements but fails consistently. Has anyone encountered similar SMAppService issues on macOS 15, or can confirm a working implementation?

My app is for personal use currently, so distribution won't be a problem. It registers a privileged helper using SMAppService, and I was wondering whether there is a way to customize the authorization dialog that the system presents to the user.

Hi everyone, We’re developing a macOS SwiftUI app that uses a local Swift Package (CasSherpaCore) to invoke an external compiled binary (sherpa-onnx-offline-tts) for text-to-speech synthesis using system calls. The package works flawlessly when tested from terminal or via a lightweight test C program. However, when we invoke it from a SwiftUI app (even with Full Disk Access granted to Xcode and Terminal), we consistently get the error: sh: /Users/xxxxxxxxxxx/SherpaONNX/sherpa-onnx/build/bin/sherpa-onnx-offline-tts: Operation not permitted We’ve tried: Granting Full Disk Access to Xcode and Terminal. Removing the quarantine flag with xattr -d com.apple.quarantine. Setting executable permission via chmod +x. Using both system() and Process in C and Swift contexts. Testing within a Swift Package that’s integrated into the app as a local dependency. Running the command manually from terminal (works perfectly). It appears that macOS (or Xcode’s runtime sandbox) is restricting execution of binaries from certain locations or contexts when launched via system() inside the app. Questions: Is there a specific entitlement or configuration that allows execution of local binaries from a SwiftUI macOS app? Is this related to System Integrity Protection (SIP) or a hardened runtime limitation? Are there best practices or alternative approaches to safely execute local TTS binaries from within a Swift app? Any help would be deeply appreciated. This is a core feature in our project and we’re stuck at this point. Thank you so much in advance!

General: DevForums subtopic: App & System Services > Processes & Concurrency Processes & concurrency covers a number of different technologies: Background Tasks Resources Concurrency Resources — This includes Swift concurrency. Service Management Resources XPC Resources Share and Enjoy — Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

We are experiencing a crash in our application that only occurs on devices running iOS beta 26. It looks like a Beta problem. The crash appears to be caused by an excessive number of open File Descriptors. We identified this after noticing a series of crashes in different parts of the code each time the app was launched. Sometimes it would crash right at the beginning, when trying to load the Firebase plist file. That’s when we noticed a log message saying “too many open files,” and upon further investigation, we found that an excessive number of File Descriptors were open in our app, right after the didFinishLaunching method of the AppDelegate. We used the native Darwin library to log information about the FDs and collected the following: func logFDs() { var rlim = rlimit() if getrlimit(RLIMIT_NOFILE, &rlim) == 0 { print("FD LIMIT: soft: \(rlim.rlim_cur), hard: \(rlim.rlim_max)") } // Count open FDs before Firebase let openFDsBefore = countOpenFileDescriptors() print("Open file descriptors BEFORE Firebase.configure(): \(openFDsBefore)") } private func countOpenFileDescriptors() -> Int { var count = 0 let maxFD = getdtablesize() for fd in 0..<maxFD { if fcntl(fd, F_GETFD) != -1 { count += 1 } } return count } With this code, we obtained the following data: On a device with iOS 26 Beta 1, 2, or 3: FD LIMIT: soft: 256, hard: 9223372036854775807 Open file descriptors BEFORE Firebase.configure(): 256 On a device with iOS 18: FD LIMIT: soft: 256, hard: 9223372036854775807 Open file descriptors BEFORE Firebase.configure(): 57 In the case of the device running iOS 26 beta, the app crashes when executing Firebase.configure() because it cannot open the plist file, even though it can be found at the correct path — meaning the OS locates it. To confirm this was indeed the issue, we used the following code to close FDs before proceeding with Firebase configuration. By placing a breakpoint just before Firebase.configure() and running the following LLDB command: expr -l c -- for (int fd = 180; fd < 256; fd++) { (int)close(fd); } This released the FDs, allowing Firebase to proceed with its configuration as expected. However, the app would later crash again after hitting the soft limit of file descriptors once more. Digging deeper, we used this code to try to identify which FDs were being opened and causing the soft limit to be exceeded: func checkFDPath() { var r = rlimit() if getrlimit(RLIMIT_NOFILE, &r) == 0 { print("FD LIMIT: soft: \(r.rlim_cur), hard: \(r.rlim_max)") for fd in 0..<Int32(r.rlim_cur) { var path = [CChar](repeating: 0, count: Int(PATH_MAX)) if fcntl(fd, F_GETPATH, &path) != -1 { print(String(cString: path)) } } } } We ran this command at the very beginning of the didFinishLaunching method in the AppDelegate. On iOS 26, the log repeatedly showed Cryptexes creating a massive number of FDs, such as: /dev/null /dev/ttys000 /dev/ttys000 /private/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/AEE414F2-7D6F-44DF-A6D9-92EDD1D2B014/Library/Application Support/DTX_8.191.1.1003.sqlite /private/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/AEE414F2-7D6F-44DF-A6D9-92EDD1D2B014/Library/Caches/KSCrash/MyAppScheme/Data/ConsoleLog.txt /private/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/AEE414F2-7D6F-44DF-A6D9-92EDD1D2B014/Library/HTTPStorages/mybundleId/httpstorages.sqlite /private/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/AEE414F2-7D6F-44DF-A6D9-92EDD1D2B014/Library/HTTPStorages/mybundleId/httpstorages.sqlite-wal /private/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/AEE414F2-7D6F-44DF-A6D9-92EDD1D2B014/Library/HTTPStorages/mybundleId/httpstorages.sqlite-shm /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.01 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.11 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.12 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.13 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.14 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.15 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.16 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.17 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.18 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.19 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.20 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.21 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.22 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.23 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.24 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.25 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.26 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.29 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.30 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.31 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.32 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.36 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.37 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.38 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.39 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.40 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e … This repeats itself a lot of times. … /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.36 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.37 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.38 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.39 /private/preboot/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e.40

I’m trying to enable Background Modes (specifically for audio, background fetch, remote notifications) in my iOS SwiftUI app, but I’m getting this error: Provisioning profile “iOS Team Provisioning Profile: [my app]” doesn’t include the UIBackgroundModes entitlement. On the developer website when I make the provision profile It doesnt give me the option to allow background modes. I added it to the sign in capabilities seccion in X code and matched the bundle ID to the provision profile and certificate etc but it still runs this error because the provision profile doesnt have the entitlements..

I am developing the application in Mac. My requirement is to start the application automatically when user login. I have tried adding the plist file in launch agents, But it doesn't achieve my requirement. Please find the code added in the launch agents &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt; &lt;!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"&gt; &lt;plist version="1.0"&gt; &lt;dict&gt; &lt;key&gt;Label&lt;/key&gt; &lt;string&gt;com.sftk.secure&lt;/string&gt; &lt;key&gt;ProgramArguments&lt;/key&gt; &lt;array&gt; &lt;string&gt;/Applications/Testing.app/Contents/MacOS/Testing&lt;/string&gt; &lt;/array&gt; &lt;key&gt;RunAtLoad&lt;/key&gt; &lt;true/&gt; &lt;key&gt;KeepAlive&lt;/key&gt; &lt;false/&gt; &lt;/dict&gt; &lt;/plist&gt; I have tried by adding manually in the setting, but it was opened sometimes and closed suddenly. On open manually it works. Please provide a solution to start the application automatically on system starts

An XPC service’s process has a system-managed lifecycle: the process is launched on-demand when another process tries to connect to it, and the system can decide to kill it when system resources are low. XPC services can tell the system when they shouldn’t be killed using xpc_transaction_begin/end. Do extensions created with ExtensionFoundation and/or ExtensionKit have the same behavior?

Hi Team, We intend to create a custom serial dispatch queue targetting a global queue. let serialQueue = DispatchQueue(label: "corecomm.tallyworld.serial", target: DispatchQueue.global(qos: .default)) The documentation for DispatchQueue init does not show any minimum OS versions. BUT DispatchSerialQueue init does show iOS 17.0+ iPadOS 17.0+ Mac Catalyst macOS 14.0+ tvOS 17.0+ visionOS watchOS 10.0+. Does that mean - I will not be able to create a custom serial dispatch queue below iOS 17?

Hello, My app (daemon) time to time need to know list of GUI login sessions. According to the recommendation, I am using getutxent(). https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/qa/qa1133/_index.html However, I have faced with unclear behaviour in case of running "Migration Assistant". It can be re-created without my app. Steps to recreate: login as 'user #1' start "Migration Assistant" quit "Migration Assistant" new login prompt will be opened login as 'user #2' In spite the session of 'user #1' is closed, the command line tool "who", which gathers information from /var/run/utmpx, reports opened sessions of 'user #1'. Is it bug or feature? Thank you in advance!

For some reason, after invoking an unrelated dlclose() call to unload any .dylib that had previously been loaded via dlopen(..., RTLD_NOW), the subsequent call to task_info(mach_task_self(), TASK_DYLD_INFO, ...) syscall returns unexpected structure in dyld_uuid_info image_infos-&gt;uuidArray, that, while it seems to represent an array of struct dyld_uuid_info elements, there is only 1 such element (dyld_all_image_infos *infos-&gt;uuidArrayCount == 1) and the app crashes when trying to access dyld_uuid_info image-&gt;imageLoadAddress-&gt;magic, as image-&gt;imageLoadAddress doesn't seem to represent a valid struct mach_header structure address (although it looks like a normal pointer within the process address space. What does it point to?). This reproduces on macOS 15.4.1 (24E263) Could you please confirm that this is a bug in the specified OS build, or point to incorrect usage of the task_info() API? Attaching the C++ file that reproduces the issue to this email message It needs to be built on macOS 15.4.1 (24E263) via Xcode or just a command line clang++ compiler. It may crash or return garbage, depending on memory layout, but on this macOS build it doesn’t return a correct feedfacf magic number for the struct mach_header structure. Thank you Feedback Assistant reference: FB18431345 //On `macOS 15.4.1 (24E263)` create a C++ application (for example, in Xcode), with the following contents. Note, that this application should crash on this macOS build. It will not crash, however, if you either: //1. Comment out `dlclose()` call //2. Change the order of the `performDlOpenDlClose()` and `performTaskInfoSyscall()` functions calls (first performTaskInfoSyscall() then performDlOpenDlClose()). #include &lt;iostream&gt; #include &lt;dlfcn.h&gt; #include &lt;mach/mach.h&gt; #include &lt;mach-o/dyld_images.h&gt; #include &lt;mach-o/loader.h&gt; void performDlOpenDlClose() { printf("dlopen/dlclose function\n"); printf("Note: please adjust the path below to any real dylib on your system, if the path below doesn't exist!\n"); std::string path = "/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/lib/libswiftDemangle.dylib"; printf("Dylib to open: %s\n", path.c_str()); void* handle = ::dlopen(path.c_str(), RTLD_NOW); if(handle) { ::dlclose(handle); } else { printf("Error: %s\n", dlerror()); } } void performTaskInfoSyscall() { printf("Making a task_info() syscall\n"); printf("\033[34mSource File: %s\033[0m\n", __FILE__); task_t task = mach_task_self(); struct task_dyld_info dyld_info; mach_msg_type_number_t size = TASK_DYLD_INFO_COUNT; kern_return_t kr = task_info(task, TASK_DYLD_INFO, (task_info_t)&amp;dyld_info, &amp;size); if (kr != KERN_SUCCESS) { fprintf(stderr, "task_info failed: %s\n", mach_error_string(kr)); } const struct dyld_all_image_infos* infos = (const struct dyld_all_image_infos*)dyld_info.all_image_info_addr; printf("version: %d, infos-&gt;infoArrayCount: %d\n", infos-&gt;version, infos-&gt;infoArrayCount); for(uint32_t i=0; i&lt;infos-&gt;infoArrayCount; i++) { dyld_image_info image = infos-&gt;infoArray[i]; const struct mach_header* header = image.imageLoadAddress; printf("%d ", i); printf("%p ", (void*)image.imageLoadAddress); printf("(%x) ", header-&gt;magic); printf("%s\n", image.imageFilePath); fflush(stdout); } printf("\n\n"); printf("infos-&gt;uuidArrayCount: %lu\n", infos-&gt;uuidArrayCount); for(uint32_t i=0; i&lt;infos-&gt;uuidArrayCount; i++) { dyld_uuid_info image = infos-&gt;uuidArray[i]; const struct mach_header* header = image.imageLoadAddress; printf("%d ", i); printf("%p ", (void*)image.imageLoadAddress); printf("(%x)\n", header-&gt;magic); fflush(stdout); } printf("task_info() syscall result processing is completed\n\n"); } int main(int argc, const char * argv[]) { performDlOpenDlClose(); performTaskInfoSyscall(); return 0; }

We are currently developing a VoIP application that supports Local Push extention. I would like to ask for your advice on how the extension works when the iPhone goes into sleep mode. Our App are using GCD (Grand Central Dispatch) to perform periodic processing within the extension, creating a cycle by it. [sample of an our source] class LocalPushProvider: NEAppPushProvider { let activeQueue: DispatchQueue = DispatchQueue(label: "com.myapp.LocalPushProvider.ActiveQueue", autoreleaseFrequency: .workItem) var activeSchecule: Cancellable? override func start(completionHandler: @escaping (Error?) -&gt; Void) { : self.activeSchecule = self.activeQueue.schedule( after: .init(.now() + .seconds(10)), // start schedule after 10sec interval: .seconds(10) // interval 10sec ) { self.activeTimerProc() } completionHandler(nil) } } However In this App that we are confirming that when the iPhone goes into sleep mode, self.activeTimerProc() is not called at 10-second intervals, but is significantly delayed (approximately 30 to 180 seconds). What factors could be causing the timer processing using GCD not to be executed at the specified interval when the iPhone is in sleep mode? Also, please let us know if there are any implementation errors or points to note. I apologize for bothering you during your busy schedule, but I would appreciate your response.