We're developing an Electron app for MacOS App Store. When updating our app through TestFlight, TestFlight prompts "Close This App to Update", and when I click "Continue" our app would be "Terminated" for update. Now this is where things go wrong. On MacOS 15 our app seems to be gracefully terminating (We attached it with lldb and it shows that our app returns with 0 when we click "Continue") which is fine. However for MacOS 26 though, it seems that TestFlight just directly SIGKILLs our app (indicated by lldb), which means that all of our app's child processes are left orphaned. Even worse, our app is singleton, which means that when the app relaunches it fails, because the leftover child processes from the previously SIGKILLed session is still alive, and even if we want to kill those orphaned child processes we can't because our app is sandboxed thus cannot kill processes outside of the current sandbox. We captured output from log stream (app name redacted): 12-02 22:08:16.477036-0800 0x5452     Default     0x5a4a7              677    7    installcoordinationd: [com.apple.installcoordination:daemon] -[IXSCoordinatorProgress setTotalUnitsCompleted:]: Progress for coordinator: [com.our.app/Invalid/[user-defined//Applications/OurApp.app]], Phase: IXCoordinatorProgressPhaseLoading, Percentage: 99.454 123: Attempt to set units completed on finished progress: 214095161 2025-12-02 22:08:16.483056-0800 0x53ba     Default     0x5a5c9              167    0    runningboardd: (RunningBoard) [com.apple.runningboard:connection] Received termination request from [osservice<com.apple.installcoordinationd(274)>:677] on <RBSProcessPredicate <RBSProcessBundleIdentifierPredicate "com.our.app">> with context <RBSTerminateContext| explanation:installcoordinationd app:[com.our.app/Invalid/[user-defined//Applications/OurApp.app]] uuid:A3BC0629-124E-4165-ABB7-1324380FC354 isPlaceholder:N re portType:None maxTerminationResistance:Absolute attrs:[ 2025-12-02 22:08:16.488651-0800 0x53ba     Default     0x5a5c9              167    7    runningboardd: (RunningBoard) [com.apple.runningboard:ttl] Acquiring assertion targeting system from originator [osservice<com.apple.installcoordinationd(274)>:677] with description <RBSAssertionDescriptor| "installcoordinationd app:[com.our.app/Invalid/[user-defined//Applications/OurApp.app]] uuid:A3BC0629-124E-4165-ABB7-1324380FC354 isPlaceholder:N" ID:167-677-1463 target:system attributes:[ 2025-12-02 22:08:16.489353-0800 0x53ba     Default     0x5a5c9              167    0    runningboardd: (RunningBoard) [com.apple.runningboard:process] [app<application.com.our.app.485547.485561(501)>:2470] Terminating with context: <RBSTerminateContext| explanation:installcoordinationd app:[com.our.app/Invalid/[user-defined//Applications/OurApp.app]] uuid:A3BC0629-124E-4165-ABB7-1324380FC354 isPlaceholder:N reportType:None maxTerminationResistance:Absolute attrs:[ 2025-12-02 22:10:23.920869-0800 0x5a5a     Default     0x5a4c6              674    14   appstoreagent: [com.apple.appstored:Library] [A95D57D7] Completed with 1 result: <ASDApp: 0xc932a8780>: {bundleID = com.our.app; completedUnitCount = 600; path = /Applications/OurApp.app; installed = 0} 2025-12-02 22:10:32.027304-0800 0x5ae5     Default     0x5a4c7              674    14   appstoreagent: [com.apple.appstored:Library] [BEB5F2FD] Completed with 1 result: <ASDApp: 0xc932a8780>: {bundleID = com.our.app; completedUnitCount = 600; path = /Applications/OurApp.app; installed = 0} 2025-12-02 22:10:36.542321-0800 0x5b81     Default     0x5a4c8              674    14   appstoreagent: [com.apple.appstored:Library] [185B9DD6] Completed with 1 result: <ASDApp: 0xc932a8780>: {bundleID = com.our.app; completedUnitCount = 600; path = /Applications/OurApp.app; installed = 0} The line "Terminating with context" seems suspicious. This line is not seen on MacOS 15, only MacOS 26. Is this documented behavior? If so, how can we handle this?

We would be creating N NWListener objects and M NWConnection objects in our process' communication subsystem to create server sockets, accepted client sockets on server and client sockets on clients. Both NWConnection and NWListener rely on DispatchQueue to deliver state changes, incoming connections, send/recv completions etc. What DispatchQueues should I use and why? Global Concurrent Dispatch Queue (and which QoS?) for all NWConnection and NWListener One custom concurrent queue (which QoS?) for all NWConnection and NWListener? (Does that anyways get targetted to one of the global queues?) One custom concurrent queue per NWConnection and NWListener though all targetted to Global Concurrent Dispatch Queue (and which QoS?)? One custom concurrent queue per NWConnection and NWListener though all targetted to single target custom concurrent queue? For every option above, how am I impacted in terms of parallelism, concurrency, throughput &amp; latency and how is overall system impacted (with other processes also running)? Seperate questions (sorry for the digression): Are global concurrent queues specific to a process or shared across all processes on a device? Can I safely use setSpecific on global dispatch queues in our app?

I understand that GCD and it's underlying implementations have evolved over time. And many things have not been shared explicitly in Apple documentation. The most concepts of DispatchQueue (serial and concurrent queues), DispatchQoS, target queue and system provided queues: main and globals etc. I have some doubts & questions to clarify: [Main Dispatch Queue] [Link] Because the main queue doesn't behave entirely like a regular serial queue, it may have unwanted side-effects when used in processes that are not UI apps (daemons). For such processes, the main queue should be avoided. What does it mean? Can you elaborate? [Global Concurrent Dispatch Queues] Are they global to a process or across processes on a device. I believe it is the first case but just wanted to be sure. [Global Concurrent Dispatch Queues] Does system create 4 (for each QoS) * 2 (over-commiting and non-overcommiting queues) = 8 queues in all. When does which type of queue comes into play? [Custom Queue][Target Queue concept] [swift-corelibs-libdispatch/man/dispatch_queue_create.3] QUOTE The default target queue of all dispatch objects created by the application is the default priority global concurrent queue. UNQUOTE Is this stil true? We could not find a mention of this in any latest official apple documentation (though some old forum threads (one more) and github code documentation indicate the same). The official documentation only says: [dispatch_set_target_queue] QUOTE If you want the system to provide a queue that is appropriate for the current object UNQUOTE [dispatch_queue_create_with_target] QUOTE Specify DISPATCH_TARGET_QUEUE_DEFAULT to set the target queue to the default type for the current dispatch queue.UNQUOTE [Dispatch>DispatchQueue>init] QUOTE Specify DISPATCH_TARGET_QUEUE_DEFAULT if you want the system to provide a queue that is appropriate for the current object. UNQUOTE What is the difference between passing target queue as 'nil' vs 'DISPATCH_TARGET_QUEUE_DEFAULT' to DispatchQueue init? [Custom Queue][Target Queue concept] [dispatch_set_target_queue] QUOTE The system doesn't allocate threads to the dispatch queue if it has a target queue, unless that target queue is a global concurrent queue. UNQUOTE The system does allocate threads to the custom dispatch queues that have global concurrent queue as the default target. What does that mean? Why does targetting to global concurrent queues mean in that case? [System / GCD Thread Pool] that excutes work items from DispatchQueue: Is this thread pool per queue? or across queues per process? or across processes per device?

Swift Concurrency Resources: Forums tags: Concurrency The Swift Programming Language > Concurrency documentation Migrating to Swift 6 documentation WWDC 2022 Session 110351 Eliminate data races using Swift Concurrency — This ‘sailing on the sea of concurrency’ talk is a great introduction to the fundamentals. WWDC 2021 Session 10134 Explore structured concurrency in Swift — The table that starts rolling out at around 25:45 is really helpful. Swift Async Algorithms package Swift Concurrency Proposal Index DevForum post Why is flow control important? forums post Dispatch Resources: Forums tags: Dispatch Dispatch documentation — Note that the Swift API and C API, while generally aligned, are different in many details. Make sure you select the right language at the top of the page. Dispatch man pages — While the standard Dispatch documentation is good, you can still find some great tidbits in the man pages. See Reading UNIX Manual Pages. Start by reading dispatch in section 3. WWDC 2015 Session 718 Building Responsive and Efficient Apps with GCD [1] WWDC 2017 Session 706 Modernizing Grand Central Dispatch Usage [1] Avoid Dispatch Global Concurrent Queues forums post Waiting for an Async Result in a Synchronous Function forums post Share and Enjoy — Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com" [1] These videos may or may not be available from Apple. If not, the URL should help you locate other sources of this info.

I have an app that uses background audio recording. From what others say, I have enabled the audio background mode to keep the audio session active, and this worked. But when submitting the app to the app store, the app was rejected because the audio background mode is only supposed to be used for audio playback. How do I create this background mode while following Apple's guidelines?

Hi, I have a couple questions about background app refresh. First, is the function RefreshAppContentsOperation() where to implement code that needs to be run in the background? Second, despite importing BackgroundTasks, I am getting the error "cannot find operationQueue in scope". What can I do to resolve that? Thank you. func scheduleAppRefresh() { let request = BGAppRefreshTaskRequest(identifier: "peaceofmindmentalhealth.RoutineRefresh") // Fetch no earlier than 15 minutes from now. request.earliestBeginDate = Date(timeIntervalSinceNow: 15 * 60) do { try BGTaskScheduler.shared.submit(request) } catch { print("Could not schedule app refresh: \(error)") } } func handleAppRefresh(task: BGAppRefreshTask) { // Schedule a new refresh task. scheduleAppRefresh() // Create an operation that performs the main part of the background task. let operation = RefreshAppContentsOperation() // Provide the background task with an expiration handler that cancels the operation. task.expirationHandler = { operation.cancel() } // Inform the system that the background task is complete // when the operation completes. operation.completionBlock = { task.setTaskCompleted(success: !operation.isCancelled) } // Start the operation. operationQueue.addOperation(operation) } func RefreshAppContentsOperation() -> Operation { }

Currently I am trying to find a work around to fetch data from server and update user defaults when app is forced quit. Can anyone suggest for this ?

I implemented BGContinuedProcessingTask in my app and it seems to be working well for everyone except one user (so far) who has reached out to report nothing happens when they tap the Start Processing button. They have an iPhone 12 Pro Max running iOS 26.1. Restarting iPhone does not fix it. When they turn off the background processing feature in the app, it works. In that case my code directly calls the function to start processing instead of waiting for it to be invoked in the register block (or submit catch block). Is this a bug that's possible to occur, maybe device specific? Or have I done something wrong in the implementation? func startProcessingTapped(_ sender: UIButton) { if isBackgroundProcessingEnabled { startBackgroundContinuedProcessing() } else { startProcessing(backgroundTask: nil) } } func startBackgroundContinuedProcessing() { BGTaskScheduler.shared.register(forTaskWithIdentifier: taskIdentifier, using: .main) { @Sendable [weak self] task in guard self != nil else { return } startProcessing(backgroundTask: task as? BGContinuedProcessingTask) } let request = BGContinuedProcessingTaskRequest(identifier: taskIdentifier, title: title, subtitle: subtitle) request.strategy = .fail if BGTaskScheduler.supportedResources.contains(.gpu) { request.requiredResources = .gpu } do { try BGTaskScheduler.shared.submit(request) } catch { startProcessing(backgroundTask: nil) } } func startProcessing(backgroundTask: BGContinuedProcessingTask?) { // FIXME: Never called for this user when isBackgroundProcessingEnabled is true }

Our app will launch automatically in the background，Doubt is the result of background fetch ，so we cancel the background modes setting of the background fetch,but we still can see the performFetchWithCompletionHandler method called when app launch in the background。Background launch will cause some bugs in our app. We don't want the app to start in the background. We hope to get help

Hello everybody! I'm currently working on a Bluetooth Low Energy Sync that is using BGTaskScheduler & successfully running periodically in the Background on iOS 26. I did watch this years WWDC Session 227 (Finish tasks in the background) & follow the recommendations as suggested. Currently, the App is only using 37 Mb (iPhone 12 mini) & no Location or other services are running in Background. However, when opening Safari & scrolling through some webpages, the App is killed because of "Terminated due to memory issue". I profiled the App & followed advice when it comes to reducing the memory footprint of the App. Are there any additional steps I can take to prevent the App being killed? Are there any recommendations for periodically scheduled Tasks when it comes to the Interval? Do more frequent Tasks (30min compared to one or two hours) have any impact? I tried many different schedules but none seem to make a difference. From my observation, the App is first suspended & eventually killed because of the Memory Pressure. Any hints, suggestions or recommendations are highly appreciated! Thanks a lot for the support!

I've tuned my task to be decently resilient, but I found a few issues that caused it to expire regularly. excessive CPU usage -> I'm actually running it behind ReactNative, and I found an issue where I was still updating ReactNative and thus it was keeping it alive the entire time the task was running. Removing this update helped improve stability not updating progress frequently enough ( see https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/809182?page=1#868247022) My feature request is, would it be possible to get a reason the task was expired in task.expirationHandler? That would be helpful for both the user and for debugging why the task was expired. Thanks!

I posted here https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/805554?page=1#867766022 but posting again for visibility (and let me know how I can file a bug) There was a response in that thread that said you could use the childProgress system to help updating progresses to keep the backgroundTask alive. What I've found is that using childProgresses results in more terminations than if you just updated the progress directly. Here is my setups to test this A BGContinuedProcessingTask that uses URLSessions to upload, and registers the task.progress with the Urlsession Progress Same, but the task.progress gets updated via a UrlSession Callback The second is MUCH more stable out in the field in cellular settings, the first fails extremely frequently. My suspicion is that in the documentation here https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/progress#Reporting-Progress-for-Multiple-Operations it explicitly states The completedUnitCount property for a containing progress object only updates when the suboperation is 100% complete. The fractionCompleted property for a containing progress object updates continuously as work progresses for all suboperations. I wonder if BGContinuedProcessingTask is only looking at completedUnitCount for progress, and not fractionCompleted? In either case, I would love to use the childProgresses because there are bugs with retries by updating the progress manually, so would love some help resolving this, Thanks!

Testing Environment: iOS: 26.0 Beta 7 Xcode: Beta 6 Description: We are implementing the new BGContinuedProcessingTask API introduced in iOS 26. We have followed the official documentation and WWDC session guidance to configure our project. The Background Modes (processing) and Background GPU Access capabilities have been added in Xcode. The com.apple.developer.background-tasks.continued-processing.gpu entitlement is present and set to in the .entitlements file. The provisioning profile details viewed within Xcode explicitly show that the "Background GPU Access" capability and the corresponding entitlement are included. Despite this correct configuration, when running the app on supported hardware (iPhone 16 Pro), a call to BGTaskScheduler.supportedResources.contains(.gpu) consistently returns false. This prevents us from setting request.requiredResources = .gpu. As a result, when the BGContinuedProcessingTask starts without the GPU resource flag, our internal Metal-based exporter attempts to access the GPU and is terminated by the system, throwing an IOGPUMetalError: Insufficient Permission (to submit GPU work from background). We have performed extensive debugging, including a full reset of the provisioning profile (removing/re-adding capabilities, toggling automatic signing, cleaning build folders, and reinstalling the app), but the issue persists. This strongly suggests a bug in the iOS 26 beta where the runtime is failing to correctly validate a valid entitlement. Additionally, we've observed inconsistent behavior across devices. On an A16-based iPad, the task submits successfully (BGTaskScheduler.submit does not throw an error), but the launch handler is never invoked by the system. On the iPhone 16 Pro, the handler is invoked, but we encounter the supportedResources issue described above. This leads us to ask for clarification on the exact hardware requirements for this feature. We hypothesize that it may be limited to devices that support Apple Intelligence (A17 Pro and newer). Could you please confirm this and provide official documentation on the device support criteria? Steps to Reproduce: Create a new Xcode project. In Signing & Capabilities, add "Background Modes" (with "Background processing" checked) and "Background GPU Access". Add a permitted identifier (e.g., "com.company.test.*") to BGTaskSchedulerPermittedIdentifiers in Info.plist. In application(_:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:) or a ViewController's viewDidLoad, log the result of BGTaskScheduler.shared.supportedResources.contains(.gpu). Build and run on a physical, supported device (e.g., iPhone 16 Pro). Expected Results: The log should indicate that BGTaskScheduler.shared.supportedResources.contains(.gpu) returns true. Actual Results: The log shows that BGTaskScheduler.shared.supportedResources.contains(.gpu) returns false.

I’m looking for an authoritative answer on how BGAppRefreshTask behaves after a user force-quits an app (swipes it away in the App Switcher). My app relies on early-morning background refresh to prepare and schedule notifications based on user-defined thresholds and weather forecasts. Behavior across devices seems inconsistent, however: sometimes a scheduled background refresh still runs, and other times it appears completely blocked. Apple’s documentation doesn’t clearly state what should happen, and developer discussions conflict. Could someone from Apple please clarify: Will a previously scheduled BGAppRefreshTask run after the user force-quits the app? If not, is there a recommended alternative for time-sensitive updates that must schedule user alerts? What is the expected system behavior regarding the predictability of background refresh after a force-quit? A definitive answer would help ensure the app aligns with intended system behavior. Thanks!

Hi there, I'm trying to work on an architecture where one app exposes an API (Extension Host) that other apps can plugin to. I've been reading all I can from the docs and whatever I can find online. It seemed like iOS26 added the ability to do such a thing (at least in early builds). Is that the case? Has the functionality been walked back such that extensions can only be loaded in iOS from within the single app bundle? My use case is the following: I'm working on an agent app that desires to have 3rd party developers add functionality (think how MCP servers add functionality to LLMs). The 3rd party plugins would be provided in their own app bundles vetted by the AppStore review team, of course, and would only provide hooks, basically, the main app can use to execute functions or get state. This is the best thread I found on the topic, and the subtext is that it needs to be in the same bundle. https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/803896?answerId=865314022#865314022 Let's say for the moment that this isn't possible using ExtensionKit. What's the best way to achieve this? Our current best alternative idea is a hidded WebKit window that runs JS/WASM but that's so hackish. Please let me know, thanks!

It looks like ExtensionKit (and ExtensionFoundation) is fully available on iOS 26 but there is no mention about this in WWDC. From my testing, it seems as of beta 1, ExtensionKit allows the app from one dev team to launch extension provided by another dev team. Before we start building on this, can someone from Apple help confirm this is the intentional behavior and not just beta 1 thing?

I've adopted the new BGContinuedProcessingTask in iOS 26, and it has mostly been working well in internal testing. However, in production I'm getting reports of the tasks failing when the app is put into the background. A bit of info on what I'm doing: I need to download a large amount of data (around 250 files) and process these files as they come down. The size of the files can vary: for some tasks each file might be around 10MB. For other tasks, the files might be 40MB. The processing is relatively lightweight, but the volume of data means the task can potentially take over an hour on slower internet connections (up to 10GB of data). I set the totalUnitCount based on the number of files to be downloaded, and I increment completedUnitCount each time a file is completed. After some experimentation, I've found that smaller tasks (e.g. 3GB, 10MB per file) seem to be okay, but larger tasks (e.g. 10GB, 40MB per file) seem to fail, usually just a few seconds after the task is backgrounded (and without even opening any other apps). I think I've even observed a case where the task expired while the app was foregrounded! I'm trying to understand what the rules are with BGContinuedProcessingTask and I can see at least four possibilities that might be relevant: Is it necessary to provide progress updates at some minimum rate? For my larger tasks, where each file is ~40MB, there might be 20 or 30 seconds between progress updates. Does this make it more likely that the task will be expired? For larger tasks, the total time to complete can be 60–90 mins on slower internet connections. Is there some maximum amount of time the task can run for? Does the system attempt some kind of estimate of the overall time to complete and expire the task on that basis? The processing on each file is relatively lightweight, so most of the time the async stream is awaiting the next file to come down. Does the OS monitor the intensity of workload and suspend the task if it appears to be idle? I've noticed that the task UI sometimes displays a message, something along the lines of "Do you want to continue this task?" with a "Continue" and "Stop" option. What happens if the user simply ignores or doesn't see this message? Even if I tap "Continue" the task still seems to fail sometimes. I've read the docs and watched the WWDC video, but there's not a whole lot of information on the specific issues I mention above. It would be great to get some clarity on this, and I'd also appreciate any advice on alternative ways I could approach my specific use case.

Hello, I'm trying to adopt the new BGContinuedProcessingTask API, but I'm having a little trouble imagining how the API authors intended it be used. I saw the WWDC talk, but it lacked higher-level details about how to integrate this API, and I can't find a sample project. I notice that we can list wildcard background task identifiers in our Info.plist files now, and it appears this is to be used with continued tasks - a user might start one video encoding, then while it is ongoing, enqueue another one from the same app, and these tasks would have identifiers such as "MyApp.VideoEncoding.ABCD" and "MyApp.VideoEncoding.EFGH" to distinguish them. When it comes to implementing this, is the expectation that we: a) Register a single handler for the wildcard pattern, which then figures out how to fulfil each request from the identifier of the passed-in task instance? Or b) Register a unique handler for each instance of the wildcard pattern? Since you can't unregister handlers, any resources captured by the handler would be leaked, so you'd need to make sure you only register immediately before submission - in other words register + submit should always be called as a pair. Of course, I'd like to design my application to use this API as the authors intended it be used, but I'm just not entirely sure what that is. When I try to register a single handler for a wildcard pattern, the system rejects it at runtime (while allowing registrations for each instance of the pattern, indicating that at least my Info.plist is configured correctly). That points towards option B. If it is option B, it's potentially worth calling that out in documentation - or even better, perhaps introduce a new call just for BGContinuedProcessingTask instead of the separate register + submit calls? Thanks for your insight. K Aside: Also, it would be really nice if the handler closure would be async. Currently if you need to await on something, you need to launch an unstructured Task, but that causes issues since BGContinuedProcessingTask is not Sendable, so you can't pass it in to that Task to do things like update the title or mark the BGTask as complete.

Regarding the Background Assets capability on iOS: In the install scenario, resources defined as the "install" type are incorporated into the App Store download progress. Do resources of the "update" type in the update scenario also get incorporated into the App Store download progress in the same way? If an exception occurs during the download of install-type resources and the download cannot proceed further, will the system no longer actively block users from launching the app and instead enable the launch button? Currently, if a user has enabled automatic updates on their device, after the app is updated and released on the App Store, will the Background Assets download start immediately once the automatic update completes? Or does Background Assets have its own built-in scheduling logic that prevents it from running concurrently with the automatic update?

Hi All, In continuation of this thread https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/804439 I want to perform data upload after getting it from the BLE device. As state restoration wake should not deal with data upload i though of using a processing task to perform the data upload. So the flow will be something like: Connect to device -> listen to notification -> go to background -> wake from notification -> handle data download from ble device -> register processing task for data upload -> hopefully get the data uploaded From reading about processing task i understand that the task execution is completely handled by the OS and depends on user behaviour and app usage. I even saw that if the user is not using the app for a while, the OS might not even perfoirm the task. So my quesiton is: does state restoration wakeup and perfroming data dowloads in the backgound considered app usage that will increase the likeluhood the task will get execution time? Can we rely on this for a scenario that the user opens the app for the first time, register, onboard for ble, connect to devie and then put it in the background for days or weeks and only relying on state restoration and processing tasks to do their thing? Sorry for the long read and appreciate your support! Shimon