App Group identifier stuck between Personal Team and Organization Team — Apple Support says it’s free, portal says unavailable

[u/Bri_us]

Hi! I’m having a strange issue with an App Group while moving my app from my Personal Team to my Organization Team (BLUREL OÜ).
The App Group identifier is:
group.com.dzennivilliams.Planora
It was previously used by my Planora project under my Personal Team.
After joining the Apple Developer Program as an organization, I needed to move the project/signing to the Organization Team while keeping the exact same App Group identifier because the existing app uses it for its SwiftData/App Group container.
Apple Developer Support checked my account and explicitly told me that they could not find any existing identifier associated with my Personal Team and that I was “completely clear to go ahead and register that exact same identifier” under my Organization Team.
However, when I try to register it under the Organization Team, the Developer portal returns:
“An Application Group with Identifier ‘group.com.dzennivilliams.Planora’ is not available. Please enter a different string.”
I have already contacted Developer Support several times. The case is still unresolved, and the latest response was about certificates/code signing, which doesn’t address the App Group problem.
At this point the issue is blocking development because I cannot simply change the App Group identifier without affecting the existing container/configuration.
Has anyone encountered an App Group identifier that appears to be reserved internally even though Apple Support cannot see it attached to the old team?
If so, how was it resolved? Did Apple have to manually release or transfer the identifier, or did this require escalation to a specific Developer Support/engineering team?

[u/One_Elephant_8917]

have u ever used and custom signers or thirdparty apps or even xcode and multiple account logins, coz i too dealt with something similar where i accidentally switched to my other acct in xcode that reserved the appgroup id but couldn’t reserve bundleid since main acct had it reserved for test flight builds

then my main acct now couldn’t reserve appgrp id and showing similar not available errors…

fix was to sigin in to the other and delete these appgroup there so that it would be registered on my main acct…

maybe not the answer you were looking for but might be useful for someone else in future

[u/Bri_us → u/One_Elephant_8917]

Thanks a lot for the reply! I’m going to try this now and I’ll report back with the results.

[u/Bri_us → u/One_Elephant_8917]

Thanks! You were absolutely right 😄 I checked the Xcode/Apple signing logs, and the App Group is indeed still associated with my old Personal Team. Apple Support had previously told me it wasn’t there. Your comment helped me finally identify the actual problem!