We have an iOS companion app that talks to our IoT device over the device’s own Wi‑Fi network (often with no internet). The app performs bi-directional, safety-critical duties over that link. We use an NEAppPushProvider extension so the handset can keep exchanging data while the UI is backgrounded. During testing we noticed that if the user backgrounds the app (still connected to the device’s Wi‑Fi) and opens Safari, the extension’s stop is invoked with NEProviderStopReason.unrecoverableNetworkChange / noNetworkAvailable, and iOS tears the extension down. Until the system restarts the extension (e.g. the user foregrounds our app again), the app cannot send/receive its safety-critical data. Questions: Is there a supported way to stop a safety-critical NEAppPushProvider from being terminated in this “background app → open Safari” scenario when the device remains on the same Wi‑Fi network (possibly without internet)? If not, is NEAppPushProvider the correct extension type for an always-on local-network use case like this, or is there another API we should be using? For safety-critical applications, can Apple grant entitlements/exemptions so the system does not terminate the extension when the user switches apps but stays on the local Wi‑Fi? Any guidance on the expected lifecycle or alternative patterns for safety-critical local connectivity would be greatly appreciated.

Starting in iOS 26.4, PushKit has introduced a new "didReceiveIncomingVoIPPushWithPayload" delegate, making it explicit whether or not an app is required to report a call for any given push. The new delegate passes in a PKVoIPPushMetadata object which includes a "mustReport" property. We have not documented the exact criteria that will cause a mustReport to return false, but those criteria currently include: The app being in the foreground at the point the push is received. The app being on an active call at the point the push is received. The system determines that delivery delays have made the call old enough that it may no longer be viable. When mustReport is false, apps should call the PushKit completion handler (as they previously have) but are otherwise not required to take any other action. __ Kevin Elliott DTS Engineer, CoreOS/Hardware

I've been able to run this sample project with the PIRServer. But the urls are still not blocked. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/networkextension/filtering-traffic-by-url https://github.com/apple/pir-service-example I got this on the log Received filter status change: <FilterStatus: 'running'>

Have you ever encountered the issue where the Wi-Fi MAC address information can no longer be retrieved after I updated to iOS 26?

Hi everyone, I’m working with UDP Multicasting on iOS (iOS 15+) using Network.framework and facing a confusing issue. Setup: Multicast IP: 239.255.0.1 Port: 45454 Using NWConnectionGroup / NWMulticastGroup NSLocalNetworkUsageDescription is present in Info.plist Devices are on the same Wi-Fi network Problem: Receiving multicast packets works perfectly Sending multicast packets does NOT work No errors are thrown send() completion handler reports success stateUpdateHandler sometimes doesn’t transition to .ready No packets are actually transmitted on the network Observations: The app can receive data from other multicast senders Sending appears to be silently blocked Reinstalling the app fixes the issue This points to a Local Network permission problem If permission was denied once, iOS does not re-prompt Inbound multicast works, outbound multicast is blocked Questions: Is it expected on iOS that receiving multicast works even when sending is blocked? Is reinstalling the app the only way to recover if Local Network permission was denied? Is there any reliable runtime way to detect that outbound multicast is blocked? Is NWConnectionGroup the correct and only supported way to send multicast on iOS? Any clarification or official guidance would really help. Thanks in advance!

Description Our NETransparentProxyProvider system extension maintains a persistent TLS/DTLS control channel to a security gateway. To maintain this stateful connection the extension sends application-level "Keep Alive" packets every few seconds (example : 20 seconds). The Issue: When the macOS device enters a sleep state, the Network Extension process is suspended, causing our application-level heartbeat to cease. Consequently, our backend gateway—detecting no activity—terminates the session via Dead Peer Detection (DPD). The problem is exacerbated by macOS Dark Wake cycles. We observe the extension's wake() callback being triggered periodically (approx. every 15 minutes) while the device remains in a sleep state (lid closed). During these brief windows: The extension attempts to use the existing socket, finds it terminated by the backend, and initiates a full re-handshake. Shortly after the connection is re-established, the OS triggers the sleep() callback and suspends the process again. This creates a "connection churn" cycle that generates excessive telemetry noise and misleading "Session Disconnected" alerts for our enterprise customers. Steps to Reproduce Activate Proxy: Start the NETransparentProxyProvider and establish a TLS session to a gateway. Apply Settings: Configure NETransparentProxyNetworkSettings to intercept outbound TCP/UDP traffic. Initialize Heartbeat: Start a 20-second timer (DispatchSourceTimer) to log and send keep-alive packets. Induce Sleep: Put the Mac to sleep (Apple Menu > Sleep). Observe Logs: Monitor the system via sysdiagnose or the macOS Console. Observation: Logs stop entirely during sleep, indicating process suspension. Observation: wake() and sleep() callbacks are triggered repeatedly during Dark Wake intervals, causing a cycle of re-connections. Expected Behavior We seek to minimize connection turnover during maintenance wakes and maintain session stability while the device is technically in a sleep state. Questions for Apple Is it possible to suppress the sleep and wake callback methods of NETransparentProxyProvider when the device is performing a maintenance/Dark Wake, only triggering them for a full user-initiated wake? Is it possible to prevent the NETransparentProxyProvider process from being suspended during sleep, or at least grant it a high-priority background execution slot to maintain the heartbeat? If suspension is mandatory, is there a recommended way to utilize TCP_KEEPALIVE socket options that the kernel can handle on behalf of the suspended extension? How can the extension programmatically identify if a wake() call is a "Dark Wake" versus a "Full User Wake" to avoid unnecessary re-connection logic?

Hi there, How can I best understand the changes on the eSIM Installation wizard, i.e. on iOS 18 and later after an eSIM installation you used to get steps such as labeling the eSIM, deciding what to use for iMessage & FaceTime, what to use for mobile data, main voice line, etc. Whereas on iOS 26 you are not prompted for these steps.

It works when one device is only a publisher and the other is only a subscriber. However, when both devices act as both publisher and subscriber simultaneously—which Apple’s documentation (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/wifiaware/adopting-wi-fi-aware#Declare-services) indicates is valid—the connection never establishes. After timing out, both NetworkListener and NetworkBrowser transition to the failed state. This appears to be a race condition in Network framework. Task.detached { try await NetworkListener( for: .wifiAware( .connecting( to: .myService, from: .allPairedDevices, datapath: .defaults ) ), using: .parameters { Coder( sending: ..., receiving: ..., using: NetworkJSONCoder() ) { TCP() } } ).run { connection in await self.add(connection: connection) } } Task.detached { try await NetworkBrowser( for: .wifiAware( .connecting( to: .allPairedDevices, from: .myService ) ), using: .tcp ).run { endpoints in for endpoint in endpoints { await self.connect(to: endpoint) } } }

Are the network relays introduced in 2023 and https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10002/ the same thing as the Private Relay introduced in 2021? https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2021/10096/ We are considering verifying the relay function, but we are not sure whether they are the same function or different functions. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/devicemanagement/relay?language=objc

Hello to all I have coded in swift a headless app, that launches 3 go microservices and itself. The app listens via unix domain sockets for commands from the microservices and executes different VPN related operations, using the NEVPNManager extension. Because there are certificates and VPN operations, the headless app and two Go microservices must run as root. The app and microservices run perfectly when I run in Xcode launching the swift app as root. However, I have been trying for some weeks already to modify the application so at startup it requests the password and runs as root or something similar, so all forked apps also run as root. I have not succeeded. I have tried many things, the last one was using SMApp but as the swift app is a headless app and not a CLI command app it can not be embedded. And CLI apps can not get the VPN entitlements. Can anybody please give me some pointers how can I launch the app so it requests the password and runs as root in background or what is the ideal framework here? thank you again.

After dropping an A-record TTL to 60 secs (it was previously no higher than 600 secs for several weeks) and making an IP change for a small business website on Monday, I took down the old web service just over 24 hours later on Tuesday evening. We then had reports of some customers not being able to access the website on Wednesday morning. On investigation using my iPhone it would appear that Apple Private Relay is still directing clients to the old IP address. It's just as well I have iCloud+ as I would never have seen this issue otherwise and would have been none the wiser as to why some customers were having problems. Has anyone else seen this and/or have a fix other than waiting longer? Do you know how long it takes for Apple Private Relay to update? This isn't expected behaviour of DNS? I spoke to someone at Apple yesterday and there wasn't much they can do. I hope they're escalating internally as almost 3 days later it's still pointing users to the old IP address despite having ample time for proper DNS propagation.

Hello, How long does it usually take for a URL Filter request to be reviewed? It's been 2.5 weeks since we submitted the request form but we haven't received any feedback yet. Just in case, the request ID is D3633USVZZ

Hi, I'm experiencing intermittent delays with URLSession where requests take 3-4 seconds to be sent, even though the actual server processing is fast. This happens randomly, maybe 10-20% of requests. The pattern I've noticed is I create my request I send off my request using try await urlSession.data(for: request) My middleware ends up receiving this request 4-7s after its been fired from the client-side The round trip ends up taking 4-7s! This hasn't been reproducible consistently at all on my end. I've also tried ephemeral URLSessions (so recreating the session instead of using .shared so no dead connections, but this doesn't seem to help at all) Completely lost on what to do. Please help!

Our application uses NEFilterPacketProvider to filter network traffic and we sometimes get a wired crash when removing/updating the network extension. It only happens on MacOS 11-12 . The crashing thread is always this one and it shows up after I call the completionHandler from the stopFilter func Application Specific Information: BUG IN CLIENT OF LIBDISPATCH: Release of a suspended object Thread 6 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.network.connections 0 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff2039cc35 _dispatch_queue_xref_dispose.cold.1 + 24 1 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff20373808 _dispatch_queue_xref_dispose + 50 2 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff2036e2eb -[OS_dispatch_source _xref_dispose] + 17 3 libnetwork.dylib 0x00007fff242b5999 __nw_queue_context_create_source_block_invoke + 41 4 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff2036d623 _dispatch_call_block_and_release + 12 5 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff2036e806 _dispatch_client_callout + 8 6 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff203711b0 _dispatch_continuation_pop + 423 7 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff203811f4 _dispatch_source_invoke + 1181 8 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff20376318 _dispatch_workloop_invoke + 1784 9 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff2037ec0d _dispatch_workloop_worker_thread + 811 10 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff2051545d _pthread_wqthread + 314 11 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff2051442f start_wqthread + 15 I do have a DispatchSourceTimer but I cancel it in the stop func. Any ideas on how to tackle this?

Getting -10985 error from urlSession while attempting to make a connection. Not sure why this is happening if anyone is aware please help

Hi all, I work on a smart product that, for setup, uses a captive portal to allow users to connect and configure the device. It emits a WiFi network and runs a captive portal - an HTTP server operates at 10.0.0.1, and a DNS server responds to all requests with 10.0.0.1 to direct "any and all" request to the server. When iOS devices connect, they send a request to captive.apple.com/hotspot-detect.html; if it returns success, that means they're on the internet; if not, the typical behavior in the past has been to assume you're connected to a captive portal and display what's being served. I serve any requests to /hotspot-detect.html with my captive portal page (index.html). This has worked reliably on iOS18 for a long time (user selects my products WiFi network, iOS detects portal and opens it). But almost everyone who's now trying with iOS26 is having the "automatic pop up" behavior fail - usually it says "Error opening page - Hotspot login cannot open the page because the network connection was lost." However, if opening safari and navigating to any URL (or 10.0.0.1) the portal loads - it's just the iOS auto-detect and open that's not working iOS18 always succeeds; iOS26 always fails. Anybody have any idea what changes may have been introduced in iOS26 on this front, or anything I can do to help prompt or coax iOS26 into loading the portal? It typically starts reading, but then stops mid-read.

Hi there, We have been trying to set up URL filtering for our app but have run into a wall with generating the bloom filter. Firstly, some context about our set up: OHTTP handlers Uses pre-warmed lambdas to expose the gateway and the configs endpoints using the javascript libary referenced here - https://developers.cloudflare.com/privacy-gateway/get-started/#resources Status = untested We have not yet got access to Apples relay servers PIR service We run the PIR service through AWS ECS behind an ALB The container clones the following repo https://github.com/apple/swift-homomorphic-encryption, outside of config changes, we do not have any custom functionality Status = working From the logs, everything seems to be working here because it is responding to queries when they are sent, and never blocking anything it shouldn’t Bloom filter generation We generate a bloom filter from the following url list: https://example.com http://example.com example.com Then we put the result into the url filtering example application from here - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/networkextension/filtering-traffic-by-url The info generated from the above URLs is: { "bits": 44, "hashes": 11, "seed": 2538058380, "content": "m+yLyZ4O" } Status = broken We think this is broken because we are getting requests to our PIR server for every single website we visit We would have expected to only receive requests to the PIR server when going to example.com because it’s in our block list It’s possible that behind the scenes Apple runs sporadically makes requests regardless of the bloom filter result, but that isn’t what we’d expect We are generating our bloom filter in the following way: We double hash the URL using fnv1a for the first, and murmurhash3 for the second hashTwice(value: any, seed?: any): any { return { first: Number(fnv1a(value, { size: 32 })), second: murmurhash3(value, seed), }; } We calculate the index positions from the following function/formula , as seen in https://github.com/ameshkov/swift-bloom/blob/master/Sources/BloomFilter/BloomFilter.swift#L96 doubleHashing(n: number, hashA: number, hashB: number, size: number): number { return Math.abs((hashA + n * hashB) % size); } Questions: What hashing algorithms are used and can you link an implementation that you know is compatible with Apple’s? How are the index positions calculated from the iteration number, the size, and the hash results? There was mention of a tool for generating a bloom filter that could be used for Apple’s URL filtering implementation, when can we expect the release of this tool?

I observed the following crash: Code Type: ARM-64 (Native) Parent Process: launchd [1] User ID: 0 Date/Time: 2025-10-07 13:48:29.082 OS Version: macOS 15.6 (24G84) Report Version: 12 Anonymous UUID: 8B651788-4B2E-7869-516B-1DA0D60F3744 Crashed Thread: 3 Dispatch queue: NEFlow queue Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV) Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000054 ... Thread 3 Crashed: Dispatch queue: NEFlow queue 0 libdispatch.dylib 0x000000019af6da34 dispatch_async + 192 1 libnetworkextension.dylib 0x00000001b0cf8580 __flow_startup_block_invoke.216 + 124 2 com.apple.NetworkExtension 0x00000001adf97da8 __88-[NEExtensionAppProxyProviderContext setInitialFlowDivertControlSocket:extraValidation:]_block_invoke.90 + 860 3 libnetworkextension.dylib 0x00000001b0cf8140 __flow_startup_block_invoke.214 + 172 4 libdispatch.dylib 0x000000019af67b2c _dispatch_call_block_and_release + 32 5 libdispatch.dylib 0x000000019af8185c _dispatch_client_callout + 16 6 libdispatch.dylib 0x000000019af70350 _dispatch_lane_serial_drain + 740 7 libdispatch.dylib 0x000000019af70e2c _dispatch_lane_invoke + 388 8 libdispatch.dylib 0x000000019af7b264 _dispatch_root_queue_drain_deferred_wlh + 292 9 libdispatch.dylib 0x000000019af7aae8 _dispatch_workloop_worker_thread + 540 10 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x000000019b11be64 _pthread_wqthread + 292 11 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x000000019b11ab74 start_wqthread + 8 ... It appears that the crash is caused by the flow director queue becoming NULL when dispatch_async is called (accessing address 0x0000000000000054). Meanwhile, my transparent proxy was still running. I'm wondering if this is a known issue or if anyone else has encountered the same problem. @eskimo

Hello, I’ve run into some strange behavior with the macOS System Extension using a Packet Tunnel. The issue showed up after the device went to sleep while the VPN was running. When I woke the computer, the VPN tried to reconnect but never succeeded — it just stayed stuck in the “connecting” state. I was able to turn the VPN off, but every attempt to turn it back on failed and got stuck at “connecting” again. Even removing the VPN configuration from Settings didn’t help. The only thing that worked was disabling the system extension completely. While checking the logs, I noticed thousands of identical log messages appearing within just a few seconds: nesessionmanager(562) deny(1) system-fsctl (_IO "h" 47) 17:11:52.481498+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: got On Demand start message from pid 5454 com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.481568+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: got On Demand start message from pid 5454 com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.481580+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: got On Demand start message from pid 5454 com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.481587+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: got On Demand start message from pid 5454 com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.481646+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: got On Demand start message from pid 5446 com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.481664+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: got On Demand start message from pid 5446 com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.481671+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: got On Demand start message from pid 5446 com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.481676+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: got On Demand start message from pid 5446 com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.481682+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: got On Demand start message from pid 5446 com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.481687+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: got On Demand start message from pid 5446 com.apple.networkextension After the burst of these repeated messages, I started seeing logs like the following: 17:11:52.481759+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: Received a start command from Spotify Helper[69038] com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.481790+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: Skip a start command from Spotify Helper[69038]: session in state connecting com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.481949+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: Received a start command from Spotify Helper[69038] com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.481966+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: Skip a start command from Spotify Helper[69038]: session in state connecting com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.481986+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: Received a start command from Spotify Helper[69038] com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.481992+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: Skip a start command from Spotify Helper[69038]: session in state connecting com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.482003+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: Received a start command from Spotify Helper[69038] com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.482011+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: Skip a start command from Spotify Helper[69038]: session in state connecting com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.482022+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: Received a start command from Spotify Helper[69038] com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.482028+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: Skip a start command from Spotify Helper[69038]: session in state connecting com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.482039+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: Received a start command from Spotify Helper[69038] com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.482049+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: Skip a start command from Spotify Helper[69038]: session in state connecting com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.482060+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: Received a start command from Slack Helper[84828] com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.482069+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: Skip a start command from Slack Helper[84828]: session in state connecting com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.482079+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: Received a start command from sharingd[764] com.apple.networkextension 17:11:52.482086+0200 NESMVPNSession[Primary Tunnel:Secure DNS: Skip a start command from sharingd[764]: session in state connecting com.apple.networkextension It is clear that the connection is in a loop of submitting request to start and then failing. This problem occured only after sleep on macOS 26.0 and 15.6. This issue only occured after the system woke up from sleep. macOS 15.6 and 26.0. Is this a known problem, and how should I go about troubleshooting or resolving it?

How often do we see control filter start and stop? I read somewhere that data filter is long lived and control Filter is short lived. When does the operating system kills the control filter process?