Overview

Xcode / Claude Agent says "Approve the plan using the Exit Plan button when you're ready, and I'll start building." There is no Exit Plan button. How do I approve the plan?

App: Weight Tracker, BMI calculator App Apple ID: 1418885210 Version: 1.6.2 (4), iOS The previous build was rejected under Guideline 2.1 because the ATT prompt was not shown on a fresh install. We fixed it, replied with the requested screen recording, and resubmitted on September 23. The status changed to "In Review" on September 24 and has not changed since. The message thread is locked, so we cannot contact the reviewer. Could someone from App Review check whether the submission is stuck? Thank you.

My share extension accepts a shared location and I want to bring the user into the containing app at the corresponding map screen. I understandNSExtensionContext.open(_:completionHandler:) is restricted to Today widgets per the App Extension Programming Guide, and I observe it reporting success == false. The technique I am asking about is different: walking the extension's responder chain to obtain the UIApplication instance, then calling open(_:options:completionHandler:) on it. In a minimal sample this launches the containing app and the completion handler reports success == true, on both iOS 26 and iOS 27. What makes this worth asking rather than assuming: It never references UIApplication.shared, which is annotated NS_EXTENSION_UNAVAILABLE_IOS. open(_:options:completionHandler:) itself carries no extension-unavailable annotation in the SDK, so the call compiles cleanly even with APPLICATION_EXTENSION_API_ONLY = YES. I am aware of https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/773342, where an Apple Frameworks Engineer wrote that "There's no supported way for you to launch your app directly from App Extensions, except Today and Widgets." That thread does not cover the responder chain specifically, which is why I am asking. My questions: a) Is this permitted? Is obtaining UIApplication via the responder chain from a Share Extension and calling open(_:options:completionHandler:) considered a violation of App Store Review Guideline 2.5.1 (public APIs used as intended), independent of whether it currently functions? b) If it is not permitted, what is the recommended way for a Share Extension to hand a location to its containing app such that the user arrives at the relevant screen? The code in question, in its entirety: @objc private func openUsingResponderChain() { var responder: UIResponder? = self while let currentResponder = responder { if let application = currentResponder as? UIApplication { application.open(targetURL, options: [:]) { [weak self] success in self?.report("UIApplication via responder chain -> success = \(success)") } return } responder = currentResponder.next } report("No UIApplication found in the responder chain") } Full sample project: https://github.com/valtermak-voya/share-extension-open-url-repro A containing app registering opensample:// plus a share extension target built with APPLICATION_EXTENSION_API_ONLY = YES. The method above is the whole of the extension's logic. Filed with DTS as Case-ID 22452440.

Dear Apple Developer Support and Community, I am writing to bring attention to an unresolved enrollment issue that has persisted for over two months without any meaningful progress or communication from Apple. The Issue: My organization's Apple Developer Program enrollment has been stuck in "processing" status since July 27, 2026. Despite multiple contact attempts—including emails and a phone call on September 17, 2026—there has been no resolution or even proper explanation for the delay. Timeline: July 27, 2026: Organization enrolled and fee paid July 27, 2026: Documents uploaded after identity verification request September 17, 2026: Called Apple Developer Support (no concrete action taken) Today: Posting here as last resort Enrollment Details: Case ID: 20000152256511 Organization: M3 GLOBAL MEDICARE LLP Country: India Status: Processing (stuck for 64 days) Documents: All uploaded, no requests for additional info Key Questions I Need Answered: Why is there no communication from Apple regarding processing status? Have my documents been received and verified? What is the reason for this extended delay of over two months? When can I expect my account to be activated? Is there a senior support specialist who can look into this? Business Impact: This delay is critically impacting our organization's ability to: Launch applications on the App Store Meet business commitments Proceed with our product roadmap Request for Apple Staff: Please review case ID 20000152256511 and provide: Current status of my enrollment List of received and missing documents (if any) Specific date when account will be activated Direct contact person for escalation I appreciate the community's support and Apple's attention to this urgent matter. You can contact me through my Apple Developer account or via Apple Support channels. Thank you, Dinesh Kumar M3 GLOBAL MEDICARE LLP

Through log analysis, I found that the SQLite files generated after signing in to Game Center are located in: ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.gamecenter/Library/Caches com.apple.deleted automatically cleans up cache files. This causes the following problem: after I have been signed in for some time, when I check Game Center again, I find that the profile name has changed to Unknown. When I launch Apple Arcade games, I am always asked to sign in to Game Center, and “Show Profile” also shows the same symptoms as described in this post: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256053912 I believe they are caused by the same issue. I have to log out and then log back in to Game Center to temporarily resolve the problem, but once the cache is cleaned again, I have to repeat the same process. I also think that having less remaining free storage space may make system cache cleanup more likely to be triggered, although this is only my guess. https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/1l0f8i4/the_avatar_and_name_in_game_center_are_displayed My system is macOS 15.7.9. I have already submitted a complete Feedback Report. FB ID: FB24975495

We handle App Store Server Notifications V2 for an auto-renewable subscription. When we receive REFUND for the current period, we revoke the customer's access. We now want to reinstate access on REFUND_REVERSED, as the documentation says: "If your app revoked content or services as a result of the related refund, it needs to reinstate them." Before reinstating, our server verifies the transaction in signedTransactionInfo and rejects it if revocationDate is present or expiresDate is in the past. We'd like to confirm a few behaviors so that the reinstatement doesn't get rejected by our own checks: In a REFUND_REVERSED notification, does the signedTransactionInfo still contain revocationDate (and revocationReason), or are they removed? Likewise, after the reversal, does Get Transaction Info / Get All Subscription Statuses return the transaction without revocationDate? An App Store Commerce Engineer explained in thread/757119 that when a customer requests a refund, the subscription's auto-renew status is set to false. Does this apply to every refund path (for example, refunds initiated by Apple or via chargebacks), or only to refunds requested by the customer? After REFUND_REVERSED, does the auto-renew status stay off, or can it be turned back on automatically? If it stays off, is the customer expected to re-enable auto-renew themselves? We have seen reports that REFUND_REVERSED can arrive weeks after REFUND, even when expiresDate has already passed. In that case, is it correct to reinstate access only up to the original expiresDate (i.e. nothing to reinstate if it has already passed)? Thank you.

We are designing a bounded local macOS operation with a supervisor, controller and helper. All three must be unable to cause prohibited network effects, including attributable delegated requests, before admission and until quiescence. Unrelated applications must retain their normal network access. We are seeking an API contract clarification, not reporting a reproduced OS bug. No NetworkExtension provider has been activated for this design. Our reviewed SDK is MacOSX27.0.sdk; its presence is not a runtime qualification. Please identify the supported macOS versions for your answer. The design must tolerate provider crash, termination, disconnection and unresponsiveness, and operation lease expiry/revocation. Administrative filter disablement or privileged reconfiguration is a separate unresolved threat-model case, not something we assume ordinary failure handling covers. We reviewed content-filter deployment in TN3134 and the nullable/delegated audit tokens in NEFilterFlow. We understand that NEURLFilterManager.shouldFailClosed concerns URL-filter decisions, not an established guarantee for arbitrary content-filter traffic. EndpointSecurity AUTH deadlines are also a separate mechanism. The VPN routing article documents dropping during specific transitions, but has system exceptions; TN3120 excludes using a packet tunnel as a dropping content filter. We therefore have not adopted that workaround. For macOS NEFilterDataProvider / NEFilterPacketProvider, is there a supported configuration that keeps prohibited operation traffic denied when the provider crashes, is killed, disconnects, hangs or cannot deliver a decision? Please distinguish new flows, existing/previously permitted flows, queued data, restart intervals, and configuration disable/removal. What supported admission and teardown guarantees allow releasing the first protected process only after enforcement is effective, then retaining denial through lease revocation and shutdown? An enabled configuration alone would not demonstrate that barrier. How should this guarantee cover operation-caused DNS and delegated system-service traffic, including absent/ambiguous audit tokens, without denying unrelated host traffic? If content filters cannot meet that scope, can App Sandbox without network entitlements provide the independent denial boundary for these roles, and what documented exclusions or additional constraints apply? A reference to the supported contract, or a precise statement of the requirement that needs to change, would let us select an architecture before implementing and activating a native provider. We are not requesting private APIs or an unsupported packet-tunnel filter.

macOS 26.6, 26.7, 27.0 and 27.2 beta 1/2. Reproduced with Apple's SimpleURLFilter sample ("Filtering traffic by URL", WWDC25 session 234), built and run as a macOS app. The sample never sets localizedDescription, so I added one line to ConfigurationModel.save(configuration:) before saveToPreferences(): sharedFilterManager.localizedDescription = "Sentinel Filter Name" The property holds the value in memory: after loadFromPreferences(), the logged LocalizedStringResource still has key: "Sentinel Filter Name". But the effective configuration the system starts the session with has no localizedDescription — the session is named after the app: name = SimpleURLFilter applicationName = SimpleURLFilter application = com.example.apple-samplecode.SimpleURLFilterTC3Q7MAJXF (the rest of the nesessionmanager dump is the urlFilter dictionary, and it has no localizedDescription key). System Settings > Network > Filters shows the filter as URLFilter, not "Sentinel Filter Name". The stored configuration (/Library/Preferences/com.apple.networkextension.plist) has no localizedDescription key either, and injecting one by hand does not survive a nesessionmanager restart. Re-saving, removing and re-creating the configuration, and rebooting the Mac do not change the displayed name. Expected: the docs describe localizedDescription as "A string containing a description of the URL filter", and WWDC25 session 234's code sample ("Configure and manage URL Filter") sets it this way (manager.localizedDescription = "Alice's URL Filter"). For comparison, a NETransparentProxyManager configuration on the same Mac persists localizedDescription as the configuration's Name in the same plist, while the URL filter configuration has no such field. Filed as FB24987420.

Hi, we have a bug report in Cholesky implementation of Accelerate on the LAPACK GitHub. See: https://github.com/Reference-LAPACK/lapack/issues/1408 This is to let you know. This might be a user error but I thought I'd let you know. I did not try out for myself. Julien.

Summary The Apple Developer Forums profile lets me enable push notification preferences, but Safari is never asked for permission. The profile still says that this browser has not opted in to receive pushes, so I cannot receive forum push notifications in Safari. Environment macOS 26.7 and Safari 26.6.2 on a Mac mini. Signed in to Apple Developer Forums at https://developer.apple.com/forums/profile/preferences. In Safari → Settings → Websites → Notifications, Allow websites to ask for permission to send notifications is enabled. developer.apple.com does not appear in the site list. Content blockers are disabled for developer.apple.com. Steps to reproduce Open the Apple Developer Forums profile preferences in Safari while signed in. Under Receive push notifications when, enable There's a response to my post or reply. Click Save Profile. Return to the profile preferences and check the browser opt-in status. I also turned this preference off and on again. Neither that action nor saving the profile displayed a Safari permission prompt. Expected result The forum offers a way to request Safari's notification permission and subscribe this browser to push notifications. Once permission is granted, the profile should show that this browser is opted in. Actual result No Safari notification permission prompt appears. The push preference remains checked after saving, but the profile says: “You haven’t opted in to receive pushes from Apple Developer Forums on this browser.” developer.apple.com remains absent from Safari's Notifications website list. In Safari Web Inspector on the forum profile page, Notification.permission returns "default", and (await navigator.serviceWorker.ready).pushManager.getSubscription() returns null. A service worker registration is present for the forums. This indicates that the browser has neither made a permission decision nor acquired a push subscription. I have not identified why the forum's opt-in flow does not reach the browser permission request.

Hi, I’m reaching out to see if anyone or Apple themself might be able to provide some guidance regarding my app submission. It has been in “Waiting for Review” for quite some time, and I’m hoping there may be a way to have it reviewed soon. The app is part of my submission for an ongoing competition, and the deadline is approaching. Having the app reviewed and available on the App Store before the deadline is important for my submission. I completely understand that review times can vary, but given the upcoming deadline and how long the submission has been waiting, I wanted to ask if there’s anything I can do or anyone I can contact to help get the review completed sooner. I have contacted Apple Support through email and have not received any response. Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Hello, Since I upgraded my iPad (iPad Pro 11" 2nd generation / A12z) to iPadOS 27 I have the following issue with SwiftPlayground. The preview no longer works and gets stuck on "Preview paused / Restart to continue". If I click on the refresh button, the button becomes disabled a few seconds but preview still remains on "Preview paused". It is quite easy to reproduce : Start SwiftPlayground Click "New playground" Click "App" When "My App n" appears on playground browser click on it I already tried to uninstall / reinstall SwiftPlayground and rebooting my iPad but it didn't help. Thanks for any help

On macOS 27.2 beta 1/2 our URL filter never starts: the session loops starting -> stopping. The same build works on macOS 27.0 (26A428). Both our TestFlight and notarized standalone builds fail. Prefilter and PIR registration succeed. The PIR status request then fails: NWPath is satisfied, the connection is configured proxy fail closed, proxy strict fail closed, the proxy fails (event: proxy:children_failed), and the error is NSURLErrorDomain -1009 / POSIX 50 "Network is down" with _NSURLErrorPrivacyProxyFailureKey=true. NEMembershipCheckerErrorDomain Code=3 -> NEAgentURLFilterErrorDomain Code=3; the app sees serverSetupIncomplete. The privacy-proxy allow-list entry is identical on macOS 27.0 and 27.2 beta (com.adguard). Disabling the VPN, rebooting, and recreating the URL filter configuration do not help. Log excerpt: neagent: updatePrefilterWithCompletionHandler - result 1 neagent: <NEPIRChecker> - Register with PIR Server (group <com.adguard.safari.AdGuard> ... PrivacyProxyFailOpen <0> ...) -> completed registration ciphermld: [C3 ...] proxy fail closed, proxy strict fail closed ciphermld: [C3.1.1 ... failed proxy (satisfied (Path is satisfied), interface: en0[802.11], ipv4, dns, uses wifi, flow divert agg: 2, LQM: good)] event: proxy:children_failed ciphermld: queryStatus: NSURLErrorDomain -1009 / POSIX 50 "Network is down", _NSURLErrorPrivacyProxyFailureKey=true, NWPath=satisfied neagent: Failed to startFilter <Error Domain=NEMembershipCheckerErrorDomain Code=3 "(null)"> nesessionmanager: NEURLFilterPlugin(com.adguard.safari.AdGuard[url-filter][inactive]): setStatus:error: - err Error Domain=NEAgentURLFilterErrorDomain Code=3 Filed as FB24933164.

Hi all, we are building a custom controller for ATDECC, which is a layer 2 protocol standardized by IEEE in 1722.1. Our controller can work on multiple network interfaces at the same time . It uses the interface's MAC address to identify, on which interface a certain AVB / ATDECC device was discovered. It then sends replies for this device only to this interface. This controller worked fine up to and including macOS 26, but when running the same code on macOS 27, we cannot get the MAC addresses for the local interfaces anymore, but we receive 02:00:00:00:00:00 for each of them. This seems to indicate that the MAC address was redacted (looks like the same MAC address, that is being returned since iOS 11 due to privacy reason). Is this a bug or is macOS going to redact the MAC addresses also in the final release? If MAC addresses are being redacted, would it help to request access to the new entitlement called com.apple.developer.networking.topology-observation? I attached a little code snippet, that returns actual MAC addresses on macOS 26, but redacted ones on macOS 27. Build with clang++ -std=c++23 -o ifprobe ifprobe.cpp and then run it with ./ifprobe. ifprobe.cpp

macOS guest (Virtualization.framework) freezes with all vCPUs halted right after a macOS update reboot - 3/3 on a macOS 26.7.1 (25G309) M4 host, seen with both UTM and Parallels Summary On a macOS 26.7.1 (25G309, beta/seed build) host with an Apple M4, every macOS guest that runs an in-place macOS update freezes at the same point: the in-OS phase of the update completes and reports success, the guest requests a reboot, records a shutdown stall 9 seconds later, reboots twice, shows the update progress screen for about a minute, and then stops. All four vCPUs enter WFI and never wake, paravirtualized graphics stops submitting, no I/O is pending on the host side, and no host service logs an error. The VM never recovers and has to be killed. Reproduced 3 out of 3 times, under two different front-ends (UTM and Parallels Desktop) and two guest versions (15.7.x and 26.6.2). Environment Host: iMac (Mac16,3), Apple M4, 16 GB RAM, macOS 26.7.1 build 25G309 (seed channel), installed the evening before the first failure. Primary guest: macOS 15.7.9 (24G830), hardware model VirtualMac2,1, 4 vCPUs, 6 GB RAM, 90 GB raw disk image (virtio-blk) stored on an external USB SSD. Networking bridged to the built-in Ethernet port. Devices enabled: memory balloon, audio, entropy, clipboard sharing; display 1920x1200 with dynamic resolution. Front-end for the primary case: UTM [version], Apple Virtualization backend. Guest was the only VM running, cold-booted, window open. Update being applied: MSU_UPDATE_24H23_patch_15.8_minor (15.7.9 -> 15.8). Other cases: a macOS 26.6.2 guest under UTM; a macOS 15.7.7 -> 15.8 guest under Parallels Desktop 26.4.2 (57518). Steps to reproduce Cold-boot a macOS 15.7.9 guest under Virtualization.framework, as the only VM on the host. In the guest: System Settings > Software Update > install macOS 15.8. Let it reboot. Expected The guest installs the update and boots into 15.8. Actual — timeline of the primary case (R = the moment Software Update requested the reboot; absolute timestamps are in the attached logs) R-23 min to R-5 min: UpdateBrainService prepares the update inside the guest, writing about 25 GB (two "disk writes" resource reports: 16.5 GB then 8.5 GB). No errors. R-1:56: post-logout install configured; disk space check passes (5.7 GB required, 40.7 GB free). R-1:44: "SUOSUPostLogoutInstallOperation: Applying MSU update". R: "Applied MSU update"; FileVault stash committed ("kAppleFDEKeyStore_commitStash success"); "Rebooting (success = 1, displayAsleep = 0, shutdown = 0)". This is the last line the guest ever writes to install.log. R+9 s: the guest writes a shutdown_stall diagnostic report. R+10 s: host sees ParavirtualizedGraphics "Device reset" / "PGDisplayNub[0]: Destroyed" (reboot #1). R+1:20: second device reset (reboot #2), 70 s after the first. On the host, the vmnet interface is torn down and recreated with no error, the AppleVirtualPlatformIdentity service completes boot attestation with no error, and the guest's graphics driver renegotiates ("Guest requested binary version: 209"). R+1:38: host logs "PGDisplay[0]: Change display mode to 3606x2254" — the guest is on the update progress screen. R+1:41 to R+2:25: the guest's six PGFifoThreads go idle one at a time. The progress bar stops partway. No further activity of any kind. R+11:35: spindump of the VM host process (com.apple.Virtualization.VirtualMachine): 0.042 s of CPU over a 5 s sample all four com.apple.virtualization.thread.cpu-N threads in Hv::Vcpu::run() -> HvCore::Hypervisor::VcpuStateManager::wait_for_interrupt() -> __psynch_cvwait cpu-0/cpu-1 wake on a ~20 ms timer tick and return to WFI; cpu-2/cpu-3 had not run for seconds no thread in any file read, write or fsync (no host I/O outstanding) PGFifoThreads last ran 550–614 s earlier process state Ss (sleeping), not U Host kernel log for the window: no USB, APFS, I/O error, timeout or reset entries. No hardware video decoder (AppleAVD) errors. The VM was left for over an hour with no change, then killed. Second case (same host, same day, UTM, guest macOS 26.6.2) Identical signature: two graphics device resets 69 s apart, display mode set 3 s after the second one, last graphics activity about a second later, then all vCPUs idle in WFI for ~6.5 hours until the VM was killed. Third case (same host, same day, Parallels Desktop 26.4.2, guest 15.7.7 -> 15.8) The guest was suspended in the middle of its update and resumed later. On resume ("-[_PGDevice willResumeWithSuspendState:error:]: Begin resume", preceded by "[VirtualMachineParameterBuilder] Failed to get auxiliary file identifier"), paravirtualized graphics never came back — its FIFO threads ran once and never again — and the guest's vCPUs sat in WFI. This may be a separate save/restore defect, but the end state is the same. What I believe is ruled out The in-OS phase of the update: it completed and reported success. Guest kernel panic: vCPUs are halted, not spinning, and there is no panic report on the guest's data volume. Disk space: 40.7 GB free in the guest at install time. Host storage stall: no uninterruptible wait, no I/O frames in the spindump, no kernel storage errors. Host hardware video decoder: no AppleAVD errors in the primary case. Host services: vmnet and AppleVirtualPlatformIdentity completed normally seconds before the hang. Guest memory: 6 GB allocated. Not yet isolated The VM images live on an external USB SSD; not yet reproduced from internal storage. The memory balloon, audio and clipboard-sharing devices were enabled; not yet reproduced with them disabled. A third-party VPN client was running on the host (guest networking is bridged, so guest traffic bypasses the host tunnel, but host firewall rules could still affect bridged frames). I don't have a confirmed-good in-place guest update on this machine from before 26.7.1, so I can't state with certainty that this is a regression. Frequency 3 of 3 attempts on this host. Attachments / available on request spindumps of the hung VM host process (primary case and second case) host unified-log excerpts for both hang windows the guest's full install.log the guest's shutdown_stall report and the two UpdateBrainService disk-writes reports sysdiagnose captured while hung, if obtained Has anyone seen macOS guests stop at this point on the 26.7.x seeds? If you can reproduce, your host build, hypervisor, and whether the VM image is on internal or external storage would be useful to compare.

When updating our Developer ID Application certificate, we encountered an issue where the Apple Developer portal consistently returns the exact same certificate file, regardless of the CSR submitted. Observed Behavior & Test Steps: We generated multiple new CSRs using both OpenSSL in the command line and Keychain Access (Certificate Assistant) on macOS following Apple's official guide: https://developer.apple.com/help/account/certificates/create-a-certificate-signing-request We uploaded these distinct CSRs to the Developer Portal (Certificates -> Add New -> Developer ID Application) on separate attempts. After downloading the issued .cer files, we performed a binary comparison (diff/checksum) across all of them. The comparison confirmed that the downloaded certificate files are 100% binary identical across all attempts. Key Pairing Verification: To further verify the key pairing, we checked the public key modulus hashes of the local Private Key and the downloaded .cer file via OpenSSL: Check local Private Key Modulus Hash: openssl rsa -noout -modulus -in new_developer_id.key | openssl md5 Check downloaded Certificate Modulus Hash: openssl x509 -noout -modulus -in developer_identity.cer -inform DER | openssl md5 The resulting MD5 hashes do not match. Attempting to export them to PKCS#12 (.p12) consistently fails with the error: no certificate matches private key. Question: Could this be related to a profile caching or binding issue on our team account, or is there a recommended way to clear this state and obtain a newly issued certificate? Any guidance or advice would be greatly appreciated.

In the process of updating several Apple devices to OS 27.0.1, I accidentally updated my main workstation from Sequoia to Golden Gate. I had intended to do this, but not this soon. Now I find that the Keychain Access App no longer takes my login password to unlock items. Unfortunately, the Passwords App does not allow me to see a number of things that are stored in the Keychain Access App: e.g. Secure Notes. But in this case the problem is an application password for an IRC client. I have no way of recovering my IRC account unless I can supply the password to Keychain Access.

I regularly see folks run into problems with their Developer ID signing identities. Historically I pointed them to my posts on this thread, but I’ve decided to collect these ideas together in one place. If you have questions or comments, start a new thread here on DevForums and tag it with Developer ID so that I see it. IMPORTANT Nothing I write here on DevForums is considered official documentation. It’s just my personal ramblings based on hard-won experience. There is a bunch of official documentation that covers the topics I touch on here, including: Xcode documentation Xcode Help Developer Account Help Developer > Support > Certificates For a lot more information about code signing, see the Code Signing Resources pinned post. Share and Enjoy — Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com" The Care and Feeding of Developer ID Most Apple signing assets are replaceable. For example, if you accidentally lose access to your Apple Development signing identity, it’s a minor inconvenience. Just use the Developer website to revoke your previous certificate and create a replacement. Or have Xcode do that for you. IMPORTANT If you don’t understand the difference between a certificate and a digital identity, and hence signing identity, read Certificate Signing Requests Explained before reading this post. Some signing assets are precious. Losing access to such assets has significant consequences. Foremost amongst those are Developer ID signing identities. These allow you to sign Mac products that ship independently. Anyone with access to your Developer ID signing identity can sign code as you. This has a number of consequences, both for you and for your relationship with Apple. Identify a Developer ID Signing Identity A Developer ID signing identity consists of two parts: the certificate and the private key. There are two different flavours, identifiable by the subject name in the certificate: Developer ID Application — This is named Developer ID Application: TTT, where TTT identifies your team. Use this to sign code and disk images. Developer ID Installer — This is named Developer ID Installer: TTT, where TTT identifies your team. Use this to sign installer packages. Note If you do KEXT development, there’s a third flavour, namely a KEXT-enabled Developer ID Application signing identity. For more details, see KEXT Code Signing Problems. This post focuses on traditional signing identities, where you manage the private key. Xcode Cloud introduced cloud signing, where signing identities are “stored securely in the cloud”. These identities have the Managed suffix in Certificates, Identifiers, and Profiles. For example, Developer ID Application Managed is the cloud signing equivalent of Developer ID Application. To learn more about cloud signing, watch WWDC 2021 Session 10204 Distribute apps in Xcode with cloud signing. To identify these certificates ‘in the wild’, see Identifying a Cloud Managed Signing Certificate. Limit Access to Developer ID Anyone with your Developer ID signing identity can sign code as you. Given that, be careful to limit access to these signing identities. This is true both for large organisations and small developers. In a large organisation, ensure that only folks authorised to ship code on behalf of your organisation have access to your Developer ID signing identities. Most organisations have some sort of release process that they use to build, test, and authorise a release. This often involves a continuous integration (CI) system. Restrict CI access to only those folks involved in the release process. Even if you’re a small developer with no formal release process, you can still take steps to restrict access to Developer ID signing identities. See Don’t Leak Your Private Key, below. In all cases, don’t use your Developer ID signing identities for day-to-day development. That’s what Apple Development signing identities are for. Create Developer ID Signing Identities as the Account Holder Because Developer ID signing identities are precious, the Developer website will only let the Account Holder create them. For instructions on how to do this, see Developer Account Help > Create certificates > Create Developer ID certificates. For more information about programme roles, see Developer > Support > Program Roles. IMPORTANT In an Organization team it’s common for the Account Holder to be non-technical. They may need help getting this done. For hints and tips on how to avoid problems while doing this, see Don’t Lose Your Private Key and Don’t Leak Your Private Key, both below. Limit the Number of Developer ID Signing Identities You Create Don’t create Developer ID signing identities unnecessarily. Most folks only need to create one. Well, one Developer ID Application and maybe one Developer ID Installer. A large organisation might need more, perhaps one for each sub-unit, but that’s it. There are two reasons why this is important: The more you have, the more likely it is for one to get into the wrong hands. Remember that anyone with your Developer ID signing identity can sign code as you. The Developer website limits you to 5 Developer ID certificates. Note I can never remember where this limit is actually documented, so here’s the exact quote from this page: You can create up to five Developer ID Application certificates and up to five Developer ID Installer certificates using either your developer account or Xcode. Don’t Lose Your Private Key There are two standard processes for creating a Developer ID signing identity: Developer website — See Developer Account Help > Create certificates > Create Developer ID certificates. Xcode — See Xcode Help > Maintaining signing assets > Manage signing certificates. Both processes implicitly create a private key in your login keychain. This makes it easy to lose your private key. For example: If you do this on one Mac and then get a new Mac, you might forget to move the private key to the new Mac. If you’re helping your Organization team’s Account Holder to create a Developer ID signing identity, you might forget to export the private key from their login keychain. It also makes it easy to accidentally leave a copy of the private key on a machine that doesn’t need it; see Don’t Leak Your Private Key, below, for specific advice on that front. Every time you create a Developer ID signing identity, it’s a good idea to make an independent backup of it. For advice on how to do that, see Back Up Your Signing Identities, below. That technique is also useful if you need to copy the signing identity to a continuous integration system. If you think you’ve lost the private key for a Developer ID signing identity, do a proper search for it. Finding it will save you a bunch of grief. You might be able to find it on your old Mac, in a backup, in a backup for your old Mac, and so on. For instructions on how to extract your private key from a general backup, see Recover a Signing Identity from a Mac Backup. If you’re absolutely sure that you previous private key is lost, use the Developer website to create a replacement signing identity. If the Developer website won’t let you create any more because you’ve hit the limit discussed above, talk to Developer Programs Support. Go to Apple > Developer > Contact Us and follow the path Development and Technical > Certificates, Identifiers, and Provisioning Profiles. Don’t Leak Your Private Key Anyone with your Developer ID signing identity can sign code as you. Thus, it’s important to take steps to prevent its private key from leaking. A critical first step is to limit access to your Developer ID signing identities. For advice on that front, see Limit Access to Developer ID, above. In an Organization team, only the Account Holder can create Developer ID signing identities. When they do this, a copy of the identity’s private key will most likely end up in their login keychain. Once you’ve exported the signing identity, and confirmed that everything is working, make sure to delete that copy of the private key. Some organisations have specific rules for managing Developer ID signing identities. For example, an organisation might require that the private key be stored in a hardware token, which prevents it from being exported. Setting that up is a bit tricky, but it offers important security benefits. Even without a hardware token, there are steps you can take to protect your Developer ID signing identity. For example, you might put it in a separate keychain, one with a different password and locking policy than your login keychain. That way signing code for distribution will prompt you to unlock the keychain, which reminds you that this is a significant event and ensures that you don’t do it accidentally. If you believe that your private key has been compromised, follow the instructions in the Compromised Certificates section of Developer > Support > Certificates. IMPORTANT Don’t go down this path if you’ve simply lost your private key. Back Up Your Signing Identities Given that Developer ID signing identities are precious, consider making an independent backup of them. To back up a signing identity to a PKCS#12 (.p12) file: Launch Keychain Access. At the top, select My Certificates. On the left, select the keychain you use for signing identities. For most folks this is the login keychain. Select the identity. Choose File > Export Items. In the file dialog, select Personal Information Exchange (.p12) in the File Format popup. Enter a name, navigate to your preferred location, and click Save. You might be prompted to enter the keychain password. If so, do that and click OK. You will be prompted to enter a password to protect the identity. Use a strong password and save this securely in a password manager, corporate password store, on a piece of paper in a safe, or whatever. You might be prompted to enter the keychain password again. If so, do that and click Allow. The end result is a .p12 file holding your signing identity. Save that file in a secure location, and make sure that you have a way to connect it to the password you saved in step 9. Remember to backup all your Developer ID signing identities, including the Developer ID Installer one if you created it. To restore a signing identity from a backup: Launch Keychain Access. Choose File > Import Items. In the open sheet, click Show Options. Use the Destination Keychain popup to select the target keychain. Navigate to and select the .p12 file, and then click Open. Enter the .p12 file’s password and click OK. If prompted, enter the destination keychain password and click OK. Recover a Signing Identity from a Mac Backup If you didn’t independently backup your Developer ID signing identity, you may still be able to recover it from a general backup of your Mac. To start, work out roughly when you created your Developer ID signing identity: Download your Developer ID certificate from the Developer website. In the Finder, Quick Look it. The Not Valid Before field is the date you’re looking for. Now it’s time to look in your backups. The exact details depend on the backup software you’re using, but the basic process runs something like this: Look for a backup taken shortly after the date you determined above. In that backup, look for the file ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain. Recover that to a convenient location, like your desktop. Don’t put it in ~/Library/Keychains because that’ll just confuse things. Rename it to something unique, like login-YYYY-MM-DD.keychain, where YYYY-MM-DD is the date of the backup. In Keychain Access, choose File > Add Keychain and, in the resulting standard file panel, choose that .keychain file. On the left, select login-YYYY-MM-DD. Chose File > Unlock Keychain “login-YYYY-MM-DD“. In the resulting password dialog, enter your login password at the date of the backup. At the top, select My Certificates. Look through the list of digital identities to find the Developer ID identity you want. If you don’t see the one you’re looking for, see Further Recovery Tips below. Export it using the process described at the start of Back Up Your Signing Identities. IMPORTANT If the original Mac was running macOS 26.4 or later, you might also need to recover this keychain’s protected entropy file. For more about that, see TN3137 On Mac keychain APIs and implementations Once you’re done, remove the keychain from Keychain Access: On the left, select the login-YYYY-MM-DD keychain. Choose File > Delete Keychain “login-YYYY-MM-DD”. In the confirmation alert, click Remove Reference. The login-YYYY-MM-DD.keychain is now just a file. You can trash it, keep it, whatever, at your discretion. This process creates a .p12 file. To work with that, import it into your keychain using the process described at the end of Back Up Your Signing Identities. IMPORTANT Keep that .p12 file as your own independent backup of your signing identity. Further Recovery Tips If, in the previous section, you can’t find the Developer ID identity you want, there are a few things you might do: Look in a different backup. If your account has more than one keychain, look in your other keychains. If you have more than one login account, look at the keychains for your other accounts. If you have more than one Mac, look at the backups for your other Macs. The login-YYYY-MM-DD keychain might have the private key but not the certificate. Add your Developer ID certificate to that keychain to see if it pairs with a private key. Revision History 2026-09-29 Added a link to the protected entropy file discussion in TN3137. 2025-03-28 Excised the discussion of Xcode’s import and export feature because that was removed in Xcode 16. 2025-02-20 Added some clarification to the end of Don’t Leak Your Private Key. 2023-10-05 Added the Recover a Signing Identity from a Mac Backup and Further Recovery Tips sections. 2023-06-23 Added a link to Identifying a Cloud Managed Signing Certificate. 2023-06-21 First posted.

Hi, My app Duo Queue has been in "Waiting for Review" since September 22, about 160 hours now, with no status change since then. App: Duo Queue: Game Tracker Apple ID: 6809453548 Version: 1.1 (build 21), submitted with the in-app purchase com.adgames.duoqueue.full_shelf Submission ID: 3ff2dc7d-2435-43a3-bc3f-33b1ae3478d2 Submitted: Sep 22, 2026, 09:05 UTC An earlier submission was rejected under Guideline 4.3(a). For 1.1 I rebuilt the core of the app. Users now photograph a game box and the app identifies it, and game detail pages include trailers where available. I also renamed Swift types that shared names with types in my other apps, and attached a demo video for the reviewer. I withdrew the previous submissions for this app, so this is its only active submission in the queue. I know the team has a lot of apps to get through. I'd just like to confirm that the submission isn't stuck somewhere, or find out if I need to do anything on my side. Thank you.

Hi everyone, My app, QuitIt, has been waiting for review for quite some time after my appeal was accepted. I’m keen to get it through the review process and released, but I haven’t received an update on what happens next or whether anything else is needed from me. Has anyone experienced a similar delay following a successful appeal? Is there a recommended way to follow up with App Review and confirm that my submission is moving forward? I understand review times can vary, and I’d appreciate any guidance. Thank you!