I spend a lot of time here on DevForums. Over the years I’ve read many posts, both good and bad. This page is my attempt at writing down what makes a good one. Hopefully some of you will find it useful.
Before you read this, read the official Apple Developer > Support > Developer Forums page.
If you have questions or feedback about any of the points raised here, start a new thread in the Developer Tools & Services > Developer Forums subtopic.
Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"
Quinn’s Top Ten DevForums Tips
Here are my top ten DevForums tips:
Is DevForums right for you?
Search before you ask
Keep your expectations realistic
Topic, subtopic, and tags
Craft a quality post
Prefer text over images
Include details with your questions
Crash reports
Cross posting courtesy
Resize screenshots
Include a Spinal Tap reference
Close your threads
Think about your title
Post URLs in the clear
Many of these boil down to one word: Empathy. Think about the person who’s reading your post. Can they read it? Will they understand it? Will it help them?
1. Is DevForums right for you?
To quote Apple Developer > Support > Developer Forums, the Apple Developer Forums (aka DevForums) are:
a great place to post questions, exchange knowledge, and connect with
fellow developers and Apple engineers on a variety of development
topics.
DevForums is focused on developer issues. That includes the APIs in Apple’s platform SDKs, Apple tools, developer-oriented Apple services like App Store Connect, and accessory development. If you have a user-level question, you’ll have more luck over in Apple Support Communities, run by Apple Support.
DevForums is focused on Apple technologies. If you’re using a third-party tool or library, feel free to ask questions about it here, but you’re more likely to find folks with relevant expertise in that technology’s dedicated support channel.
If you want to file a bug report, do that using Feedback Assistant. If you want to discuss a bug you’ve already filed, DevForums is a great place for that. Make sure to include your bug number in your post. For more hints and tips on the bug reporting process, see Bug Reporting: How and Why?.
2. Search before you ask
DevForums has a history stretching back to 2015. Many questions have been asked and answered here. Before you start a thread, search the forums for similar threads.
For details about the search syntax, see Apple Developer > Support > Developer Forums. For a quick summary, click in the search field.
Remember that DevForums is world readable and thus indexed by Internet search engines.
3. Keep your expectations realistic
DevForums is an informal support channel; no one is being paid to answer DevForums questions full time. Keep that in mind when you post.
Apple provides a number of formal support channels. To request formal support, go to the Apple Developer > Contact Us page.
One of those support channels is the code-level support provided by Apple Developer Technical Support (DTS). For more information about DTS, see Apple Developer > Support > Requesting Technical Support.
Asking about Apple’s unannounced plans is unlikely to yield useful results. Apple folks can’t discuss The Future™, and non-Apple folks can only speculate.
Apple folks can’t discuss Apple’s internal business practices. For example, we can’t answer why question — “Why did Apple do this?” or “Why hasn’t Apple done that?” — unless there’s existing documentation that offers an explanation. If you think Apple should do something differently, file a bug that explains what you’d like to see change and the rationale for that.
Not everyone works the same hours as you do. DevForums is a worldwide community, so there are time zones to consider, but there’s also just individual preferences. This is especially relevant around weekends, where your reply on Friday may not be seen by other folks until Monday.
Different folks use DevForums in different ways. Some folks lean in to the notification system, whereas others allocate certain times of the day, or the week, to help out.
4. Topic, subtopic, and tags
DevForums organises threads by two attributes:
A high-level topic and subtopic
A fine-grained set of tags
Folks willing to offer help often monitor a specific set of subtopics or tags, and only see threads with those attributes. To increase the odds of getting a response, choose your subtopic and tags carefully.
The list of subtopics is immediately visible on the top-level page. For a list of tags and their descriptions, go to Developer > Support > Forums Tags. That’s a lot of tags!
When choosing a subtopic, choose the most specific one. For example, if you have a question about SwiftUI, choose UI Frameworks > SwiftUI rather than Programming Languages > Swift. The latter is primarily focused on the Swift language itself.
When choosing a tag, read the description of that tag. With so many tags there are inevitably cases where a tag doesn’t mean what you think it means. For example, the Exception Handling tag is about the rarely used Exception Handling framework, not about exception handling in general, and the description makes that clear.
5. Craft a quality post
When replying, use a reply rather than a comment. Comments are best reserved for short messages, like “Thanks!” or “See this other thread.”
IMPORTANT If you reply in the comments, other folks on the thread may not be notified of your reply.
DevForums supports Markdown formatting, similar to that used on GitHub and by DocC. The editor UI has buttons for the most common things, like Bold and Italic, but don’t feel the need to limit yourself to that.
Correct formatting is particularly important for preformatted text:
Use the Inline Code button, which inserts single backquote delimiters (```), for inline text in code style: identifiers and so on.
Use the Code Block button, which inserts triple backquote delimiters (`````), for blocks of text in code style: code snippets, logs, and so on.
After submitting your post, look it over to make sure that it reads well. If not, you have a short window where you can edit the post to fix things.
6. Prefer text over images
Don’t use screenshots for data that’s essentially textual, like code snippets and logs. For example, if you want to post a log message, include that as text rather than adding a screenshot. That makes it much easier for your readers to work with the text.
Use the Code Block button, which inserts triple backquote delimiters (`````), to format blocks of text in code style.
Reserve screenshots for situations where the issue is visual, for example:
When discussing view layout problems
When posting instructions to achieve some task in a GUI app, like Xcode
7. Include details with your questions
When starting a thread, try to include all the relevant details in your post. If you skimp on these details, folks will have to reply asking for them, and that slows things down.
Specifically, anticipate the following questions:
What platform are you targeting? And what version of that platform?
What version of Xcode are you using?
What version of the OS are you testing on?
What specific API are you using?
What are the exact steps you took?
If something failed, what are the symptoms of that failure? If an API returned an error, what was that error?
If nothing failed, what results did you see? And what were you expecting?
If you filed a bug, what was the bug number?
Have you tried reproducing the issue in a small test project?
What else have you tried?
For more thoughts on this, see Tips on writing forums posts.
Oh, and if you’re having a build problem, consider attaching a full build log.
8. Crash reports
If you’re trying to get help with a crash, include a crash report. For advice on how to do that, see Posting a Crash Report.
9. Cross posting courtesy
Don’t start multiple threads for the same issue. That just wastes everyones time.
Sometimes this happens by accident. If that’s the case, add a comment to one of the threads redirecting folks to the other one.
If you find a bunch of old threads that might be related to your issue, don’t post full replies to all of them. Pick a lead thread and post your full reply there, then reply on the other threads with a link to the lead thread. Alternatively, start a new thread and reply on all the old threads with a link to that. That’ll help focus the discussion on your specific issue.
If you post your question to another support channel, provide a link to that in your DevForums question, and vice versa. That avoids folks working on a question that’s already been answered elsewhere.
10. Resize screenshots
If your post includes an image, make sure it renders well. Screenshots from Retina displays are often ridiculously large. Use Preview to crop the screenshot and, if necessary, downsample it by 50% (using Tools > Adjust Size).
11. Include a Spinal Tap reference
To be clear, this is a joke. While the occasional Spinal Tap reference is allowed, please don’t add one to all your posts (-:
12. Close your threads
If someone replies with the answer you need, mark that as accepted. That gives them some credit and helps other folks with similar questions find that answer.
If you find the answer by yourself, please post a short summary of what you did. Feel free to mark that as accepted.
There’s no way to change the accepted answer. See this thread for specific advice.
You can’t delete your own threads. If you accidentally post two copies of the same question, choose one as the primary and, in the other one, add a reply that links to it. Beyond that, see this thread for more advice.
13. Think about your title
When creating a thread, think carefully about your title. Your title is your thread’s ‘marketing statement’, a way to entice folks to read your post. Try to summarise your issue in 15 words or less.
Adding tags to your title makes it harder to read. Instead, add your tags with the tagging UI. See tip 4 for more on tags.
14. Post URLs in the clear
DevForums has a list of websites you can link to at will. For example, it places no restrictions on links to Swift Forums.
To link to a site that’s not on the allowlist, skip the Markdown link syntax and post your link in the clear. So, this won’t work:
Apple is based in [Cupertino](https://www.cupertino.org).
but this will:
Apple is based in Cupertino.
https://www.cupertino.org
Revision History
2025-12-02 Tidied up and expanded tip 12.
2025-06-19 Made minor editorial changes.
2024-08-29 Added a link to Creating a test project.
2024-08-07 Add more hints to tip 7.
2024-05-27 Reworked tip 4 to account for the new topic and subtopic model. Made other minor editorial changes.
2023-11-16 Added a link to [Public and Private Tags][refPaPT].
2023-02-22 Expanded tip 3.
2023-02-10 Added a note about why questions to tip 3 (another great suggestion from Scott). Added a link to Bug Reporting: How and Why?.
2023-01-09 Added a note about tags to tip 13.
2022-12-09 Expanded tip 12.
2022-08-22 Expanded tip 5 to explain why you shouldn’t reply in the comments.
2022-08-11 Expanded tip 9.
2022-06-17 Added tip 14. Updated the preamble to include a link to the main DevForums page.
2022-06-04 Added a discussion of unannounced plans to tip 3 (thanks to Scott).
2022-06-03 Added tip 13.
2022-05-24 Added tips suggested by Claude31 and Scott.
2022-05-23 First posted.
Developer Forums
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I posted about this about 5 years ago, and now at last it's close to being finished.
The main problem that I now have is related to matching up DWARF debuginfo and global variables. This works fairly well on macOS 10.14. On 10.15 much less so, and I think that the reason is how the macho data is mmap'd.
When Valgrind runs it does the job of the OS and loads the guest exe into memory. It'll then load and run dyld in Valgrind.
I can get memory map debug traces. In one test with a problem I see 4 load segments. __DATA_CONST and __DATA both have prot 3 (RW) so we load them RW and not R then RW.
Then I think that dyld munmaps and re mmaps the _DATA_CONST segment as RO. Valgrind works based on mmaps triggering reading debuginfo. I don't think that it handles munmap correctly. I need to debug that a lot more - I can see the changed mappings in the debug output but I don't see exactly what is happening with munmap and mmap (unless dyld is doing that on a section by basis).
Does what I'm saying about the mappings make any sense?
Topic:
Developer Tools & Services
SubTopic:
Developer Forums
Hello, I am trying to build an AVP app for real-time "zero-latency" spatial video streaming. I am trying to figure out, on a high level, the best way to do this.
Currently this is my method:
Server sends stereo images via a WebRTC service (ie, livekit)
The WebRTC stream is converted to a CVPixelBuffer, writes them to file, plays via AVPlayer, and applies a VideoMaterial to a plane entity.
However, this is a bit hacky and it seems like this won't be compatible with Apple's spatial experinces. To my understanding, Apple supports HLS streaming for spatial experiences and APMP content. However, HLS (and even Low Latency HLS) introduces a second or more of latency, likely do to the segmentation nature of HLS. Thus, HLS will not work for us.
Some other alternatives I've thought of are streaming the live stream video via webrtc from the server to a local computer in the AVP's network, and then using LL-HLS to stream from the local computer to the vision pro. Still, it seems like this would introduce latency on the order of seconds.
Is my current approach the best way to implement this? Or could anyone suggest a better way, perhaps something compatible with AVP's spatial experiences
Topic:
Developer Tools & Services
SubTopic:
Developer Forums
I am using the WeatherKit REST API with hourlyStart/hourlyEnd parameters
to request up to 240 hours of forecast data.
However, when requesting later in the day, the API returns fewer than
240 hourly forecasts — e.g., 239 at 08:00, 238 at 09:00, etc. and goes up to 224 for 23:00
It appears the returned list is contiguous but truncated at the end
compared to the full 240-hour window. I have also tried getting the data after sometime, like 09:00 data at 09:45 but still was missing the same data at the end.
Is this expected WeatherKit behavior or a bug? If it’s expected, is
there documentation explaining how the “forecast horizon” is determined
and when it is updated?
Thank you.
I am facing a severe audio routing instability issue when using CallKit and the Zego Express SDK on iOS. The problem is that the audio route immediately reverts from the Speaker back to the Earpiece, effectively disabling the Speaker button functionality.📝 Observed BehaviorWhen the user taps the native CallKit Speaker Button, the audio route is correctly changed to the Speaker, but then instantly flips back to the Receiver (Earpiece), as shown in the system log captured via AVAudioSession.routeChangeNotification monitoring.🧾 Log Evidence (Flapping Occurs in 0.4 seconds)The following log snippet clearly illustrates the system overriding the user's action (reason: 4) with an unexpected CategoryChange (reason: 3) event:
TimestampComponentReason CodeDescriptionRouteIs
Speaker16:31:18.009[CallKitManager]4Override (CallKit/ControlCenter)Loa ngoài
(Speaker)true16:31:18.411[CallKitManager]3CategoryChangeThiết bị nhận (Receiver)false
I'm using Vision framework (DetectFaceLandmarksRequest) with the same code and the same test image to detect face landmarks. On iOS 18 everything works as expected: detected face landmarks align with the face correctly.
But when I run the same code on devices with iOS 26, the landmark coordinates are outside the [0,1] range, which indicates they are out of face bounds.
Fun fact: the old VNDetectFaceLandmarksRequest API works very well without encountering this issue
How I get face landmarks:
private let faceRectangleRequest = DetectFaceRectanglesRequest(.revision3)
private var faceLandmarksRequest = DetectFaceLandmarksRequest(.revision3)
func detectFaces(in ciImage: CIImage) async throws -> FaceTrackingResult {
let faces = try await faceRectangleRequest.perform(on: ciImage)
faceLandmarksRequest.inputFaceObservations = faces
let landmarksResults = try await faceLandmarksRequest.perform(on: ciImage)
...
}
How I show face landmarks in SwiftUI View:
private func convert(
point: NormalizedPoint,
faceBoundingBox: NormalizedRect,
imageSize: CGSize
) -> CGPoint {
let point = point.toImageCoordinates(
from: faceBoundingBox,
imageSize: imageSize,
origin: .upperLeft
)
return point
}
At the same time, it works as expected and gives me the correct results:
region is FaceObservation.Landmarks2D.Region
let points: [CGPoint] = region.pointsInImageCoordinates(
imageSize,
origin: .upperLeft
)
After that, I found that the landmarks are normalized relative to the unalignedBoundingBox. However, I can’t access it in code. Still, using these values for the bounding box works correctly.
Things I've already tried:
Same image input
Tested multiple devices on iOS 26.2 -> always wrong.
Tested multiple devices on iOS 18.7.1 -> always correct.
Environment:
macOS 26.2
Xcode 26.2 (17C52)
Real devices, not simulator
Face Landmarks iOS 18
Face Landmarks iOS 26
Dragging and dropping images to forum posts doesn't work. It just inserts text with the image file path.
FB21252859
https://github.com/feedback-assistant/reports/issues/726
It would be helpful to be able to upload short videos to the Developer Forums.
FB21241023
https://github.com/feedback-assistant/reports/issues/725
The "Remind me later" button doesn't work on the "Customize your experience with Apple Developer" page on the Developer Forums. It just redirects me back to the same page.
https://github.com/feedback-assistant/reports/issues/723
In a completely different thread mungbeans wrote:
[quote='865903022, mungbeans, /thread/806960?answerId=865903022#865903022, /profile/mungbeans']
the forum only seems to archive posts from 2021 onwards.
[/quote]
I didn’t want to hijack that thread so I’ve started this thread for it.
AFAICT forums hasn’t lost any content since we moved to a world-readable platform back in 2015. See here for more about that.
A quick search suggests that your earliest thread was this: importing Contacts fails with "Cannot import module being compiled". (I’m not sure why I didn’t reply at the time.)
What is interesting is that your profile page is only showing threads back to 2021. I see two parts to that:
You have to choose Created as the sort order. That’ll show threads you created back to Jul 2016.
However, there are still a few threads before Jul 2016 that aren’t showing up.
I’m not sure what’s going on there, but I’ve reported it internally (i. 99636235).
Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"
Topic:
Developer Tools & Services
SubTopic:
Developer Forums
I've tried several times to post a reply to a message, but I got an error message instead, telling me to try again in a few minutes. I just found out that it did post my replies, without telling me. So now there's many duplicates of the same reply, one for each of my attempts.
I'm using Firefox 144.0.2 (aarch64) on macOS 26.1 (25B78).
My original thread ID was:
https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/805350
This was a technical post with no links to products or services, but directly to native code designed to solve the problem I was posting about.
I believe a single unhappy user may be abusing the flagging/reporting feature.
I am contesting what this single user has alleged, namely that my content is “advertising.”
Under my rights as per the Apple Developer Forums Agreement, I am requesting a review per Apple’s right to monitor and correct moderation actions. Thank you.
This is supposed to be a photo of a screen shot I took of this site and this box saying there is no text it is empty when I tried to post my previous post And the box was not empty and the character counter was backwards it was in the negative -. Was -6870/7000 characters. The original post was for a force reset analytic that I found suspicious and malicious towards my device and apple.
will not let me post the image
Topic:
Developer Tools & Services
SubTopic:
Developer Forums
It appears that on older posts the code blocks are completely broken. For example https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/678075 show the code block as a single inline value. Looking at the HTML this is what I see generated
<code class="hljs block shell language-shell">Code Block shell#!/bin/bashrm -rf output/rm -rf simulator_fat/mkdir simulator_fatlibs=( "lib_static" ) #Add for i in "${libs[@]}"do lipo -create arm64_simulator/$i.a x86_64/$i.a -output simulator_fat/$i.a xcodebuild -create-xcframework -library simulator_fat/$i.a -library arm64/$i.a -output output/$i.xcframeworkdone</code>
Obviously newer code blocks seem to be working (as long as the one above is) but it wreaks havoc trying to look at older posts.
Topic:
Developer Tools & Services
SubTopic:
Developer Forums
Hello,
I notice the link on top of this site is incorrect: https://developer.apple.com/forums/tags/sign-in-with-apple-rest-api
Its target (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sign_in_with_apple/sign_in_with_apple_rest_api) does not exist.
It should probably be https://developer.apple.com/documentation/signinwithapplerestapi
Topic:
Developer Tools & Services
SubTopic:
Developer Forums
Tags:
Forums Feedback
Sign in with Apple REST API
Helllo, I'd like to change my username. Is there a way I can do that? The one I have is one I made by accident and I would prefer not to create an entirely new apple account.
Topic:
Developer Tools & Services
SubTopic:
Developer Forums
There seems to be some kind of problem with the forum software incorrectly redacting certain words.
It's even censoring Apple employees when they use the word "s i g n a l" in this post, which is now titled, "iOS Network ****** Strength"
So, no, Apple employees are not complaining about iOS Network strength.
Topic:
Developer Tools & Services
SubTopic:
Developer Forums
Is this place just for customers of the "developer program" to help each other, or is there any apple employees here able to help, with privileged access?
Seems to me that not, but i prefer to ask anyway, it's not clear to me
Because if there are some employees here, can you please do your job
regards
Topic:
Developer Tools & Services
SubTopic:
Developer Forums
Hello,
I tried posting about an issue I'm experiencing with HCE, and no matter the text I type, I get error "This post contains sensitive language. Please revise it in order to continue."
Is there any option to resolve it?
Topic:
Developer Tools & Services
SubTopic:
Developer Forums
Hi,
Developer Support answered my original question by email telling me that I should ask my question here, because I have reached the wrong Support team...
Here is my question:
I have asked for some help in the forum about SF Symbols, but at last the solution I have found by myself was much more general than the original title of my post suggested.
Now, In order to better share my foundings and better help the community about the subject, I think that a more general title would be appropriate. It's about using Affinity Designer to create custom SF Symbols, where my original title only mentions my difficulties about creating such symbols.
https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/788403
Can I modify the title of my post by myself (if yes, how?) or should a Forum admin do that for me?
Thank you in advance for your help,
Marc
Issue solved. Retracting question.