Hello, We are facing an issue with performing a DTLS handshake when our iOS application is in the background. Our app (Vocera Collaboration Suite – VCS) uses secure DTLS-encrypted communication for incoming VoIP calls. Problem Summary: When the app is in the background and a VoIP PushKit notification arrives, we attempt to establish a DTLS handshake over our existing socket. However, the handshake consistently fails unless the app is already in the foreground. Once the app is foregrounded, the same DTLS handshake logic succeeds immediately. Key Questions: Is performing a DTLS handshake while the app is in the background technically supported by iOS? Or is this an OS-level limitation by design? If not supported, what is the Apple-recommended alternative to establish secure DTLS communication for VoIP flows without bringing the app to the foreground? Any guidance or clarification from Apple engineers or anyone who has solved a similar problem would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

While updating our test devices to iOS 26, we noticed that the connection between devices are flaky. Often when connecting to a Peer from a device running iOS 26 we can observe the invite coming through and when accepting said invite, both ends going to .connecting state and a while later going back to .notConnected within the peer(_ peerID: MCPeerID, didChange state: MCSessionState) function. This happens regularly and retrying the invitation process several times usually resolves it. Do anyone have any information or guidance on how to resolve this issue?

We have developed a DNS filter based on NEDNSProxyProvider. It works great for a minute, then it stops responding. Our logs indicate that during the outage our extension gets DNS requests and formulates DNS responses that it hands back to the OS, but from outside of our code it is as though our extension is not responding.

We currently supporting proxy app with Tunnel.appEx and PacketTunnelProvider. Some users report about constant error "The VPN session failed because an internal error occurred." on VPN start (which fails rapidly). This error occur mostly after user updated app with active VPN. Rebooting device solves the problem and it doesnt come again, but it is still very frustrating. I can provide any required info about app setup to solve this issue if you need. Thanks

We have an application which is written in Swift, which activates Transparent Proxy network extension. Our Transparent Proxy module is a system extension, which is exposing an app proxy provider interface (We are using NETransparentProxyProvider class and in extension’s Info.plist we use com.apple.networkextension.app-proxy key.) We are using JAMF MDM profile for installing our transparent proxy in customer environment. We are using VPN payload(https://developer.apple.com/documentation/devicemanagement/vpn) for this network system extension. This payload does not have any field for order. As per https://developer.apple.com/documentation/devicemanagement/vpn/transparentproxy-data.dictionary documentation there is another payload for TransparentProxy and we could create a Transparent Proxy profile using iMazingProfile Editor. Noticed that, if we add the Order attribute to the VPN/TransparentProxy payload, while installing the extension, the save to preferences fails with "Error in saving TP configuration in updateOnDemandRule permission denied" error. Can we use this Order field to ordering the installed Transparent Proxy extension in a machine? Customer devices will likely have other Transparent Proxy network extensions as well. We want to allow the Customer to control the order in which each Transparent Proxy network extension receives the network traffic. How can we set the order of the Transparent proxy extension that can be deployed using MDM profile with VPN/TransparentProxy payload? Attached the TransparentProxy payload profile for the reference. DGWebProxy_TransparentProxy_iMazing

Hi, I am building an app that depends on multiple iOS devices connecting to a designated "coordinator" iOS device. I am using MPC, and it works great when the devices are connected to the same WiFi AP, with virtually 100% connection success. My definition of success is a near instant detection of available devices, >95% connection success rate, and a stable ongoing connection with no unexpected disconnects. The issue arises when the devices are not connected to the same WiFi network (or connected to no network with WiFi and bluetooth still on). Devices detect each other immediately, but when initiating a connection, both devices initiate a handshake, but the connection is not successful. In the few times where the connection succeeds, the connection quality is high, stable, and doesn't drop. Is this a known limitation of the framework? Could I be doing something wrong in my implementation?

Hello, I have a .app that runs as LaunchDaemon and configured to be an Agent (LSUIElement) that is stored in /Applications. Installing network extensions works, but deactivation fails with OSSystemExtensionErrorDomain error 13 (authorization required). requestNeedsUserApproval is not called for deactivation, but it's called when being activated. Any ideas? Thank you! P.S. It works on Debug, just not on Release...

Description: We are investigating an issue where running a specific e-commerce iOS app inside the Xcode Simulator intermittently disrupts the Mac’s network connectivity. When the app is launched in the Simulator, our NETransparentProxyProvider and NEFilterDataProvider extensions occasionally stop receiving traffic correctly, and shortly afterward the entire macOS DNS resolution fails. Once this happens, all apps on the Mac lose internet access until mac is restarted. Disabling extensions also fixing the issue. This issue only appears when the app runs in the Xcode Simulator. I would like to confirm: Is it possible for traffic patterns or network behavior inside the Simulator to interfere with system-level Network Extension providers on macOS? Are there known limitations or conflicts between the Simulator’s virtual networking interfaces and Network Extensions? Any recommended debugging steps or best practices to isolate this behavior? Any guidance, known issues, or suggestions would be appreciated.

On my iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max devices, running iOS 26.0, 26.0.1, and 26.1, Wi-Fi raw socket communication works flawlessly. Even after keeping the connection active for over 40 minutes, there are no disconnections during data transmission. However, on the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro, the raw socket connection drops within 20 seconds. Once it disconnects, the socket cannot reconnect unless the Wi-Fi module itself is reset. I believe this issue is caused by a bug in the iPhone 17 series’ communication module. I have looked into many cases, and it appears to be related to a bug in the N1 chipset. Are there any possible solutions or workarounds for this issue?

Crash within com.apple.CFNetwork.Connection , specifically due to EXC_BAD_ACCESS KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS. The crash occurred within the nghttp2_session_del() function indicating a problem with the nghttp2 library, which is commonly used for HTTP/2 communication. This points towards a memory management issue. EXC_BAD_ACCESS generally signifies that the application attempted to access memory it didn't have permission to access, often caused by using a pointer after it has been freed or pointing to an invalid memory address. ** Crashed: com.apple.CFNetwork.Connection 0 libapple_nghttp2.dylib 0xa6ec nghttp2_session_del + 124 1 CFNetwork 0xace4c + 428 2 CFNetwork 0xacc80 + 36 3 libdispatch.dylib 0x2370 _dispatch_call_block_and_release + 32 4 libdispatch.dylib 0x40d0 _dispatch_client_callout + 20 5 libdispatch.dylib 0xb6d8 _dispatch_lane_serial_drain + 744 6 libdispatch.dylib 0xc214 _dispatch_lane_invoke + 432 7 libdispatch.dylib 0xd670 _dispatch_workloop_invoke + 1732 8 libdispatch.dylib 0x17258 _dispatch_root_queue_drain_deferred_wlh + 288 9 libdispatch.dylib 0x16aa4 _dispatch_workloop_worker_thread + 540 10 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x4c7c _pthread_wqthread + 288 11 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x1488 start_wqthread + 8 ** The stack trace does not point to any code within our product codebase, hence making it difficult to pinpoint the root cause of the issue as there are multiple network calls running concurrently during the app's runtime.

Hello, Since the release of iOS 26.0, we are seeing DNS traffic being blocked from within our NEPacketTunnelExtension on some devices. We have not isolated exact reproduction steps, but DNS resolves successfully for a period of time after enabling "iCloud Private Relay" (varying from 1-day to 2-weeks), until it then fails as MDNSResponder then returns: mDNSResponder [Q37046] DetermineUnicastQuerySuppression: Query suppressed for <mask.hash: 'REDACTED'> Addr (blocked by policy) DNS resolution continues to fail for all domains with the above until the device is rebooted. The Packet Tunnel intentionally does not have a DNS server set and this occurs for traffic from the Extension yet off-tunnel, which needs resolution from the system DNS server (and this configuration works perfectly for a period of time before being "blocked by policy"). The following do not resolve the issue once DNS queries are being "blocked by policy" on affected devices: disconnecting then reconnecting the vpn; toggling airplane mode for 10+ seconds; switching connection between WiFi & cellular data; disabling iCloud Private Relay. We have currently only seen this on unmanaged devices running iOS 26.0 or 26.1 beta and with iCloud Private Relay enabled. We did not see this issue on iOS 16,17 nor 18. We also have not yet seen this when iCloud Private Relay is disabled nor on iOS 26.0.1, however we cannot confirm whether they too are also affected. Is there a known a bug with iOS 26.0 & 26.1 Beta 1 that could cause this? How can we prevent DNS requests from NEPacketTunnelExtension being sporadically "blocked by policy" until the device is rebooted? Many thanks in advance.

We have an application which is written in Swift, which activates two network extensions (Content Filter, Transparent Proxy). We want to use MDM deployment for these network system extensions. For Content Filter, we already have Jamf Profile which has Web Content Filter payload and it works fine. Our Transparent Proxy module is a system extension, which is exposing an app proxy provider interface (We are using NETransparentProxyProvider class and in extension’s Info.plist we use com.apple.networkextension.app-proxy key.) We don’t have any remote server setup to forward the traffic, instead we open a connection with a certain localhost:port to redirect the traffic which is received in our transparent proxy. We have another module that listens to the particular localhost:port to process the traffic further. We are unable to find the appropriate payload in any of the Profile Editor applications like Apple Configurator, iMazing Profile Editor and Jamf Pro that correctly describes our setup. As per https://developer.apple.com/documentation/devicemanagement/vpn/transparentproxy documentation, we noticed that we can use the VPN payload with app-proxy as Provider Type for Transparent Proxy. Here are the list of issues encountered with different MDM solutions. **AppleConfigurator: ** We were able to install the profile created via Apple Configurator. However when we install our product (which has the above mentioned system extensions), the Transparent Proxy added by our product fails to map with the installed profile. User has to provide the credentials and follow the steps while installing the extension via the product. Attached the screenshot of "Network-&gt;Filters" screen and the profile for reference. Profile Created using Apple Configurator iMazing Profile Editor: Unable to install the profile created using iMazing Profile Editor. Attached the screenshot of error and the profile for reference: Profile Created Using iMazing Profile Editor Jamf Pro: We were able to install the profile created via Jamf Pro and also while in stalling our product the Transparent Proxy gets mapped with the one which is installed via profile. However after that the network is broken and hence unable to browse anything. Attached the profile for reference. Profile Created using Jamf Pro What should be the correct profile payload to use for our Transparent Proxy?

Summary NetworkConnection<WebSocket> in iOS 26 Network framework throws POSIXErrorCode(rawValue: 22): Invalid argument when receiving WebSocket ping (opcode 9) or pong (opcode 10) control frames. This prevents proper WebSocket keep-alive functionality. Environment iOS 26.0 (Simulator) macOS 26.1 Xcode 26.0 Note: This issue was initially discovered on iOS 26 Simulator. The same behavior was confirmed on macOS 26, suggesting a shared bug in the Network framework. The attached sample code is for macOS for easier reproduction. Description When using the new NetworkConnection<WebSocket> API introduced in iOS 26 or macOS 26, the receive() method throws EINVAL error whenever a ping or pong control frame is received from the server. This is a critical issue because: WebSocket servers commonly send ping frames to keep connections alive Clients send ping frames to verify connection health The receive callback never receives the ping/pong frame - the error occurs before the frame reaches user code Steps to Reproduce Create a WebSocket connection to any server that supports ping/pong (e.g., wss://echo.websocket.org): import Foundation import Network // MARK: - WebSocket Ping/Pong EINVAL Bug Reproduction // This sample demonstrates that NetworkConnection<WebSocket> throws EINVAL // when receiving ping or pong control frames. @main struct WebSocketPingPongBug { static func main() async { print("=== WebSocket Ping/Pong EINVAL Bug Reproduction ===\n") do { try await testPingPong() } catch { print("Test failed with error: \(error)") } } static func testPingPong() async throws { let host = "echo.websocket.org" let port: UInt16 = 443 print("Connecting to wss://\(host)...") let endpoint = NWEndpoint.hostPort( host: NWEndpoint.Host(host), port: NWEndpoint.Port(rawValue: port)! ) try await withNetworkConnection(to: endpoint, using: { WebSocket { TLS { TCP() } } }) { connection in print("Connected!\n") // Start receive loop in background let receiveTask = Task { var messageCount = 0 while !Task.isCancelled { do { let (data, metadata) = try await connection.receive() messageCount += 1 print("[\(messageCount)] Received frame - opcode: \(metadata.opcode)") if let text = String(data: data, encoding: .utf8) { print("[\(messageCount)] Content: \(text)") } else { print("[\(messageCount)] Binary data: \(data.count) bytes") } } catch let error as NWError { if case .posix(let code) = error, code == .EINVAL { print("❌ EINVAL error occurred! (POSIXErrorCode 22: Invalid argument)") print(" This is the bug - ping/pong frame caused EINVAL") // Continue to demonstrate workaround continue } print("Receive error: \(error)") break } catch { print("Receive error: \(error)") break } } } // Wait for initial message from server try await Task.sleep(for: .seconds(2)) // Test 1: Send text message (should work) print("\n--- Test 1: Sending text message ---") try await connection.send("Hello, WebSocket!") print("✅ Text message sent") try await Task.sleep(for: .seconds(1)) // Test 2: Send ping (pong response will cause EINVAL) print("\n--- Test 2: Sending ping frame ---") print("Expecting EINVAL when pong is received...") let pingMetadata = NWProtocolWebSocket.Metadata(opcode: .ping) try await connection.ping(Data()) { pingMetadata } print("✅ Ping sent, waiting for pong...") // Wait for pong response try await Task.sleep(for: .seconds(2)) // Cleanup receiveTask.cancel() print("\n=== Test Complete ===") print("If you saw 'EINVAL error occurred!' above, the bug is reproduced.") } } } The receive() call fails with error when pong arrives: ❌ EINVAL error occurred! (POSIXErrorCode 22: Invalid argument) Test Results Scenario Result Send/receive text (opcode 1) ✅ OK Client sends ping, receives pong ❌ EINVAL on pong receive Expected Behavior The receive() method should successfully return ping and pong frames, or at minimum, handle them internally without throwing an error. The autoReplyPing option should allow automatic pong responses without disrupting the receive loop. Actual Behavior When a ping or pong control frame is received: The receive() method throws NWError.posix(.EINVAL) The frame never reaches user code (no opcode check is possible) The connection remains valid, but the receive loop is interrupted Workaround Catch the EINVAL error and restart the receive loop: while !Task.isCancelled { do { let received = try await connection.receive() // Process message } catch let error as NWError { if case .posix(let code) = error, code == .EINVAL { // Control frame caused EINVAL, continue receiving continue } throw error } } This workaround allows continued operation but: Cannot distinguish between ping-related EINVAL and other EINVAL errors Cannot access the ping/pong frame content Cannot implement custom ping/pong handling Impact WebSocket connections to servers that send periodic pings will experience repeated EINVAL errors Applications must implement workarounds that may mask other legitimate errors Additional Information Packet capture confirms ping/pong frames are correctly transmitted at the network level The error occurs in the Network framework's internal processing, before reaching user code

I can develop a PacketTunnelProvider on Mac with xcode. I work with my self codesign. But when I sign it with Developer ID after read https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/737894 , it still fail when I turn on the vpn .

Hi everyone, I'm currently working on a project where I need to send multicast packets across all available network interfaces using Apple Network Framework's NWConnectionGroup. Specifically, the MacBook (device I am using for sending multicast requests, MacOS: 15.1) is connected to two networks: Wi-Fi (Network 1) and Ethernet (Network 2), and I need to send multicast requests over both interfaces. I tried using the .requiredInterface property as suggested by Eskimo in this post, but I’m running into issues. It seems like I can't create an NWInterface object because it doesn't have any initializers. Here is the code which I wrote: var multicast_group_descriptor : NWMulticastGroup var multicast_endpoint : NWEndpoint multicast_endpoint = NWEndpoint.hostPort(host: NWEndpoint.Host("234.0.0.1"), port: NWEndpoint.Port(rawValue: 49154)!) var connection_group : NWConnectionGroup var multicast_params : NWParameters multicast_params = NWParameters.udp var interface = NWInterface(NWInterface.InterfaceType.wiredEthernet) I get following error: 'NWInterface' cannot be constructed because it has no accessible initializers I also experimented with the .requiredInterfaceType property. Even when I set it to .wiredEthernet and then change it to .wifi, I am still unable to send requests over the Wi-Fi network. Here is the code I wrote: var multicast_params : NWParameters multicast_params = NWParameters.udp multicast_params.allowLocalEndpointReuse = true multicast_params.requiredInterfaceType = .wiredEthernet var ip = multicast_params.defaultProtocolStack.internetProtocol! as! NWProtocolIP.Options ip.disableMulticastLoopback = true connection_group = NWConnectionGroup(with: multicast_group_descriptor, using: multicast_params) connection_group.stateUpdateHandler = { state in print(state) if state == .ready { connection_group.send(content: "Hello from machine on 15".data(using: .utf8)) { error in print("Send to mg1 completed on wired Ethernet with error \(error?.errorCode)") var params = connection_group.parameters params.requiredInterfaceType = .wifi connection_group.send(content: "Hello from machine on 15 P2 on Wi-Fi".data(using: .utf8)) { error in print("Send to mg1 completed on Wi-Fi with error \(error?.errorCode)") } } } } Is this expected behavior when using NWConnectionGroup? Or is there a different approach I should take to ensure multicast requests are sent over both interfaces simultaneously? Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance, Harshal

On macOS 15, if a program installed in /Applications is allowed to connect to a PostgreSQL server on another machine on the local network, a program launched in debug mode from Xcode is not allowed to connect to the local network, and no prompt appears. Although it is possible to turn off registered programs in Local Network Privacy in Beta 2, permissions for programs launched from Xcode cannot be obtained at all. Does anyone know how to solve this problem?

We are developing an enterprise app that connects to a local server. It uses simple URLSessions. There is a view in the app where you enter the server url (IP address) and a connection check is made. iOS asks for permission to access the local network. Everything works. If the server is reachable, the connection info is saved. Recently we encountered a very strange issue: We also have a beta version of this app. If we first install the normal version on a device, enter the server IP, save, and then install the beta version and do the same there: It does not get a connection (it waits for the timeout). The strange part is: If I try to configure the connection in the normal version again, it also does not work, it just waits for the timeout. The really strange part: When I delete the beta version, while the normal version is waiting for its connection, the connection succeeds immediately. Both versions have a different display name, bundle id. I also tried using a device that is not in our MDM: same problem. Even the iOS version seems to have no impact: I tried on iOS 15, 18 and 26. Is there an explanation and hopefully also a solution to this problem?

we use the api as NEHotspotConfigurationManager.shared.apply(hotspotConfig) to join a wifi, but we find that in in iphone 17+, some user report the time to join wifi is very slow the full code as let hotspotConfig = NEHotspotConfiguration(ssid: sSSID, passphrase: sPassword, isWEP: false) hotspotConfig.joinOnce = bJoinOnce if #available(iOS 13.0, *) { hotspotConfig.hidden = true } NEHotspotConfigurationManager.shared.apply(hotspotConfig) { [weak self] (error) in guard let self else { return } if let error = error { log.i("connectSSID Error while configuring WiFi: \(error.localizedDescription)") if error.localizedDescription.contains("already associated") { log.i("connectSSID Already connected to this WiFi.") result(["status": 0]) } else { result(["status": 0]) } } else { log.i("connectSSID Successfully connected to WiFi network \(sSSID)") result(["status": 1]) } } Normally it might only take 5-10 seconds, but on the iPhone 17+ it might take 20-30 seconds.

We found there is a significant crash reports (most of them are from iOS 17, the rest are iOS 16 and 15) comes from network loader from CFNetwork. Apparently it seems there are two types of crashes if we checked from the stack trace, the one we found from both Xcode organizer and 3rd party crash reporter is referring to URLConnectionLoader::loadWithWhatToDo and the other one from our 3rd party crash reporter (didn’t found the report from Xcode organizer) referring to _CFURLResponseCreateFromArchiveList (this one only happened on iOS 17.5 and later devices). It seems that they are both kinda similar which might point to the same root cause. From what I’ve seen, we never touch the lower level API directly, we usually use the URLSession to manage our API request. The crashed stack trace also didn’t give any indication about which of our app code that triggered the crash, it only shows calls to Apple’s internal SDKs so we are unsure how to approach this issue meanwhile the crash event already reached 800+ in the last 30 days. Unfortunately, we cannot reproduce the issue as the stack trace itself seems unclear to us. I have submitted a report through feedback assistant with number: FB14679252. Would appreciate if anyone can give any advice on what we can do to avoid this in the future and probably any hint on why it could happened. Hereby I attached the crash reports that we found each from Xcode crash report and our 3rd party crash reporter (the report said it crashed on com.apple.CFNetwork.LoaderQ) so you could get a glimpse of the similarity. Xcode crash report xcode crash report.crash 3rd party crash report 3rd party crash report.txt

Hey, our app is host for system extension and since macOS 15.3 there is an error when user tries delete an app pop with missing permission appears Is it intentional? Is it a bug? if not how in correct way should we handle removing of SE when app is being to removed?