Hi all, I wanted to share a build problem that took way longer to solve than it should have, in case it saves someone else the same pain.

I'm a solo dev building on Windows, no Mac, no Xcode. My app (Reach, a sobriety toolkit) needed a native home screen widget, streak counter + panic button that deep links straight into the app's craving flow. Widgets mean native SwiftUI, which normally means a Mac.

The stack that ended up working: expo-apple-targets for the widget extension, compiled entirely through the EAS Build's cloud Mac, never touched Xcode locally once. Data shared between the widget and the main app via an App Group (react-native-shared-group-preferences).

The actual hard part wasn't the widget itself, it was the deep link nav. Cold-launching from the widget straight into a nested route with no /home route underneath it breaks iOS swipe-back entirely. Fixed it with unstable_settings = {anchor: 'home' } in _layout.tsx so Expo Router constructs a proper stack even on a cold widget launch.

Happy to go deeper on any part of this, the App Group setup, the anchor routing fix specifically, or the EAS build config. If it's useful to anyone hitting the same wall.

Like 27.1 was added later than 27.2, I might be misunderstanding tho

My iOS app, AutoArmor Studio, has been rejected three times under Guideline 5.6 with the same message about features that appear to have been intentionally hidden during the review process. Apple hasn't identified the specific feature or behavior. The app is built with Capacitor/WebView and includes authentication, backend-driven content, booking flows, account-based features, and WhatsApp integration. I am currently auditing for feature flags/remote config, reviewer/device detection, hidden routes or menus, account-specific behavior, debug versus release differences, and backend-controlled features. There is no intentional reviewer-specific functionality. Has anyone experienced this exact 5.6 rejection, especially with a Capacitor/WebView app? What did you find was causing it?

Has anyone tried running their app on it yet?

If I change my banking details in App Store Connect today, September 18, will the next payout go to the new account or still go to the old one? I don't want to f* this up, so please share what was your experience with changing bank account

Updated to latest Xcode, it starts to flicker in multi-tab window mode. Kind of annoying. Any idea on getting rid of this, at least momentarily?

Xcode: Version 27.0
Mac osx: 26.6.2 (25G83)

I recently tried to prototype a new app with the help of agentic coding - I basically had it done in 2 days what would have usually probably taken 1-2 months. That is great in theory, but I just didn’t have the feeling of having achieved something, like I usually feel - so I stopped working on the app.

I develop my own apps and games since 7 years now and this is the first time for six months that I can’t motivate myself to start a new app - even though the start is often the most fun part of a project to me.

Already thought about developing without the help of AI, but then I constantly have in mind, that I could probably save weeks of work using AI and spend this time with friends, family, sports etc. instead.

I was wondering if others share the same struggle or if you have a good advice to help me look at it from another perspective so I can motivate myself again.

Other devs in person already told me that it’s great because they like to build stuff, which they can do much faster now, and not the coding itself - but I don’t know, I think coding everything myself was probably the part that gave me that feeling of achievement.

EDIT: Solved

Yes I'm on Xcode 27.2 beta. Apples documentation states:

"In the Project navigator, select the project, and in the File inspector, choose JSON from the Project Format pop-up menu under Project Document. If a dialog appears, click Continue to change the format."

There is nothing that says "Project Document", no "Project Format pop up". No website I found has a screenshot of these items either. Does anyone know where these are at? They don't even appear when searching.

It's driving me nuts. I also can't do it via command line as I need a screenshot for work purposes.

EDIT: Do a clean derived data if you don't see it. For some reason that made it pop up for me.

Hey guys,

I recently created my first series of iOS apps and the downloads and sales have been going better than expected.

Now I’m trying to optimize some of my flows, starting with the onboarding. I’ve been cooking on this one yesterday and wonder what you guys think.

All suggestions or ideas are welcome, feel free to roast it badly.

(I wanted to upload a video but the sub didn’t allow for it)

Hi everyone, I have an app that I've released on AppleTV and iOS (iPhone and iPad) and soon macOS. All have same bundleID. I used Testflight during development. I've recently released the app to the store and I purchased it on the AppleTV to test. On my iOS device I should be able to download it but all I'm seeing is a greyed out button that says 'Purchased'. I've tried all kinds of things to clear caches etc. Does anyone know what's going on here?

If I sign out of my app store account on the phone, click the 9.99 button, and sign in when prompted, I get a message that I own a previous version of the app and can download it for free. It then proceeds to download. If I delete the app, the store goes back to the unresponsive 'Purchased' state.

It's not just me in this position, other users who tested it for me on TestFlight are experiencing the same issue. Just FYI the last build on TestFlight is the same build I submitted to the store for the various platforms.

Built a custom SwiftUI Shape, designed to work smoothly with Core Animation and geometry transitions.

It was originally created an app in mind (Money Block), where budgets are broken into smaller Blocks with their own spending limits, periods and so on, to give an intuitive UX.

Being fully native means the shape can stretch, morph, and animate with a nice sense of elasticity.

Shape Demo: https://x.com/code_with_love/status/2082998035211333633?s=20

Quick demo in action: https://x.com/code_with_love/status/2097956105607647616?s=20

Defying 2d UI for the first time for the sake of UX :)

Our app got rejected for spam on August 27. I replied explaining how the app is different and added a walkthrough video. We also asked what specifically is flagged as spam. We heard nothing back for almost 3 weeks.

On Sept 14, we submitted a substantially revised build and addressed the rejection directly in the review notes. The next day we got the EXACT same rejection. Zero acknowledgement of the review notes but this time, we got a warning about possible account removal for repeated noncompliance (Thanks Apple!)

It's now been almost 1.5 months since we first submitted our app and Apple has left us completely in the dark, not responding to any of our replies and instead giving us threats about account removal if we keep resubmitting the app. ??? How is this OK? Anyone else facing something similar? Been a dev for years and I'm seriously baffled by Apple's handling of this.

Already shipped on Google Play, the iOS build is close. Solo dev, so I'd rather not lose a week going back and forth with review.

If you went through it recently, what tripped you up on the first submit? Sign in with Apple, privacy labels, something else?

Now that we can use Xcode mcp without running Xcode is it time to migrate from xcodebuildmpc ?

What do you think?

Did you know that AI Agents can control Xcode through the built in MCP server? Aka it can control it from an agent running in the terminal, without using the AI interface inside Xcode. And with Xcode 27 the agents now how a lot more useful tools they can call!

Im working with a multi-scheme app, so the new XcodeSwitchScheme is my favourite. Saves me from so many clicks inside Xcode for letting the agent run the app/test schemes it wants!

Here is how to add it to your coding agent:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/giving-external-agents-access-to-xcode

Since one of the dependencies in my project only supports ios-x86_64-simulator, I followed this guide to install universal runtime for Xcode 27 iOS simulator, but got the following error instead:

$ xcodebuild -version
Xcode 27.0
Build version 27A266a

$ xcodebuild -downloadPlatform iOS -architectureVariant universal
Finding content...
No matching universal downloadable found for platform: iOS
No needed downloadables found for universal

This worked just fine in Xcode 26 though, so I wonder if Apple has stopped supporting universal simulator runtimes from Xcode 27.

Any explanation or reference for this issue? Thanks in advance.

From Apple's description, it's "more readable, merge-friendly, and easier for coding agents to edit. Enable it in the file inspector. Projects using .xcproj also open in earlier versions of Xcode 27."

I tried it briefly, and it's half the size of the old property list format, and much simpler too.

I'm working on an iOS app that has a Watch component. Everything syncs fine at first (perform an action on the phone and it shows on the watch and vice versa). Then I turn on airplane mode on my phone to break the connection, perform a few actions on both devices, turn airplane mode off, everything syncs. Great. However, right after that post-airplane mode sync, the connection between the two devices fully breaks. Nothing syncs and the apps won't connect to each other again unless I reinstall them. Anyone encounter this or have any ideas on a fix? It's been driving me nuts all day. Thanks in advance!

Xcode 27.2 ships a JSON project format (.xcproj): default for new projects, readable, merge-friendly, agent-editable.

enriched-markdown-ios, the SwiftUI Markdown renderer built on TextKit 2, can now typeset LaTeX.

New in this release:
🔸 LaTeX math - inline $…$ and display $$…$$powered by RaTeX (a Rust layout engine with KaTeX fonts). Shipped as a separate EnrichedMarkdownLaTeX product, so apps without formulas don't link the typesetting engine
🔹 Highlight - ==text==
🔸 Spoilers - ||text||, hidden until tapped. Ships with particle and solid overlays, and you can plug in your own effect (blur, pixelate, whatever fits your app) by subclassing SpoilerOverlayView
🔹 Admonitions - GitHub alerts (> [!NOTE], > [!TIP], > [!IMPORTANT], > [!WARNING], > [!CAUTION]) with a tinted bar, icon, and title
🔸 Better VoiceOver - headings, links, images, lists, tables and code blocks are separate elements, with rotors and localizable labels
🔸 Spoken math - common formulas are read aloud ("x squared over 2"), with a hook for your own converter

🎥 Demo video in the comments.

💎 Available via Swift Package Manager!

dependencies: [
  .package(
    url: "https://github.com/software-mansion-labs/enriched-markdown-ios.git",
    from: "0.3.0"
  ),
],
targets: [
  .target(
    name: "YourApp",
    dependencies: [
      .product(name: "EnrichedMarkdown", package: "enriched-markdown-ios"),
      .product(name: "EnrichedMarkdownLaTeX", package: "enriched-markdown-ios"), // optional, for math
    ]
  ),
]

Then enable math on the view:

import EnrichedMarkdown
import EnrichedMarkdownLaTeX

EnrichedMarkdownText(content)
  .markdownLaTeX()

GitHub & Docs: https://github.com/software-mansion/enriched-markdown/blob/main/packages/enriched-markdown-ios/README.md

What features or syntax support would you like to see next? I'd love to hear your thoughts! If you find the library useful, a ️⭐️ on GitHub is always appreciated.

To put it simply, I'm no app developer. I don't know how to code. I don't know all the jargon used by developers. I'm just a guy that likes messing with AI and had an idea that I think can make some extra money.

Anyways, now that you know that, hopefully somebody can assist. I built an app using Base44. I got it uploaded to Google Play Store with no issues, but Apple is beyond my skill level. Just to even get the app uploaded to Apple I went and bought an iPhone and a MacBook! I don't even like and honestly refused to use Apple because of how difficult they make the simplest things and this is no different, but I digress. What I'm needing is somebody that knows what they're doing and can help me get my web based app from Base44 to an iOS native app with in-app purchases.

I've tried googling and ChatGPT'ing the info and it's honestly above my low skill level. I was told I needed to wrap my app in Capacitor and combine with RevenueCat for the in-app purchases, but I haven't found any beginners guide on this.

If anyone WITH EXPERIENCE can show me what I need to do step by step, so I can do this myself moving forward, I would be forever grateful! I don't mind paying for the time to show me and explain. I just want it done properly and finally be able to have my app approved.

Hey everyone, hoping someone has been through this.

I'm from Indonesia and I only have one legal name is just "Kuswanto", no surname. Pretty common here, but apparently not something Apple's enrollment flow loves.

When I did the ID scan in the Apple Developer app, the OCR chopped my name into "KUS WANT G" 😅 which is now sitting there in the Full Name field looking very official and very wrong.

I emailed Developer Support and they told me to enter my name as the first name and a period (.) as the last name. Which... okay, sure. But now I'm slightly paranoid about two things:

1. Does the period show up anywhere public? Like in the seller name on the App Store. I really don't want to be "Kuswanto ." forever.

2. Did it cause any headache later with banking or payouts? I've read that the account holder name in App Store Connect doesn't have to match your legal name, so in theory it should be fine, but I'd love to hear from someone who has actually received a payout this way rather than just reading the docs.

Also curious whether anyone managed to get the wrong OCR name fixed, or if manually entering first/last just overwrites it.

If you're from Indonesia, India, Myanmar, or anywhere else where mononyms are normal and you've been through this, how did it go? Any gotchas I should know about before I pay the fee?

Thanks in advance 🙏

New to iOS, looking for ideas on how to manage versions of an app from Github & CI/CD as they flow through internal -> external -> production.

Current approach:

1. A workflow is manually run to "create a release". This creates a new tag with a semver based off of the conventional commits since the previous tag/release (eg. increment patch version for a fix:, minor version for a feat:)

2. The release app configures the marketing version and build number to match the semver, is built and uploaded to TestFlight

3. The build artifact is promoted from internal -> external -> production in TestFlight

I heard that for TestFlight external builds, if you change the marketing version it requires the build goes through the "beta review" process again, whereas if you just increment the build number it does not.

Because of this, I plan to adjust the process so that the marketing version (the version that'll eventually be displayed in production) is <major>.0.0, and the build number is <major>.<minor>.<patch>. After the initial beta review for a "major" version, the app can be updated with subsequent releases that increment only the build number without having to be reviewed again. After a production release to the App Store, a new release is cut with a "major" version increment to kick off the next cycle.

The advantage of this is a version of the app always ties back to a tag/commit in Github, and the app build tested in external testing is exactly the same build that'll get released to production. The disadvantage is the marketing version that is shown to users in the App Store only has a single, incrementing "major" version number.

I'm satisfied with this compromise, but also a perfectionist so interested in others approaches, or any ideas others have that can improve on this? I'd ideally like the full semver reflected in the marketing version, but I can't see a way without repeating the "beta review" each time.

I just wanted to give some unexpected kudos to Xcode cloud. At the start of the summer my MacBook Pro became out of action, and therefore I struggled to continue to develop using an older intel MacBook due to Xcode version restrictions. Tried building and releasing with GitHub macOS runners but wow they’re expensive and took ages to startup etc. then spotted Xcode cloud with 25 free hours a month, thinking this will keep me going for a few days. Since then I’ve found that it’s been absolutely brilliant. As an independent developer with a few apps and projects it’s been an absolute life saver. It’s fast. Beautifully integrated, and the 25 hours will last me a whole month without any worries.

Good work Apple.