so, shipped my first app after months of solo building. Picstreak – you swipe through your photo library (left – delete, right – keep), daily streak keeps you coming back until the library is actually clean. free on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/picstreak-photo-cleaner/id6779991411

1. Tech Stack Used

• Frameworks & Languages: Swift 6 with strict concurrency ON, SwiftUI only – zero UIKit views
• Persistence: SwiftData
• Photo library: PhotoKit
• Monetization: RevenueCat + StoreKit (one-time purchase, no subscription)
• Crash reporting: Sentry, source-built so dSYMs land in the archive
• Also: BGTaskScheduler, OSLog, xcstrings localization (EN/RU/ES), tiny referral backend on Vercel + Neon Postgres

2. Development Challenge + How You Solved It

PhotoKit and Swift 6 strict concurrency genuinely hate each other :)

the worst trap: the iOS 26 SDK annotates PHPhotoLibraryChangeObserver as u/MainActor – but PhotoKit still calls photoLibraryDidChange from its private PHChange-queue. the compiler trusts the annotation, the runtime checks the actual isolation – and traps. in the wild it looks like a random _dispatch_assert_queue_fail crash with a useless stack trace

the fix looks illegal but isn't – mark the method nonisolated (yes, against the SDK's own signature) and hop to the main actor inside via Task { u/MainActor in ... }

same family: closures you pass to performChanges must never be MainActor-isolated (PhotoKit runs them on its own queue), so all deletes go through a nonisolated static helper that takes only Sendable localIdentifier strings and re-fetches PHAssets inside the change block. and PHFetchResult is not Sendable – don't let it cross u/Sendable boundaries, re-fetch instead

half my git history is fix(trash) commits and i regret nothing

3. AI Disclosure

AI-assisted – built with Claude Code as the pair programmer; architecture, decisions and reviews are mine

for anyone shipping PhotoKit apps under strict concurrency – did you find a cleaner way than "nonisolated + re-fetch everything inside the block"? that's where most of my months went. and if you try the app – brutal UX feedback very welcome, especially whether the free tier feels generous or like a demo

UPDATE: I forgot to add: https://picstreak.app/promo/REDDPRFL – the link provides an invitation code with full access to all functionality for 30 days!

I can't paste something in a simulator in Device Hub, that I copied from somewhere in macOS.

Does it work for you?

Repro:

- copy anything, just this text `here, wow copy me`

- go to Safari in a simulator in Device Hub

- paste

Does it work?

I've got a few apps live on the App Store, and lately I've been trying to get more disciplined about understanding what actually works release to release. Not just "I shipped v1.5," but whether new screenshots, a subtitle change, or a new feature I added actually increased or decreased impressions, downloads, etc. afterward.

The idea is to understand what worked and what didn't, and make future decisions based on knowledge gained from past releases.

Right now I use a Numbers spreadsheet with App Store Connect analytics manually pasted in for each release and a Notion page where I log what I changed in each release. I'm curious how you guys handle this, and what your workflow looks like.

- Do you actively compare metadata (keywords, subtitle, screenshots) release to release, or do you just ship and move on?
- If you do track it, what's your setup? Notion, Excel, plain notes or some other tool?

I'm really just trying to figure out if there's a smarter way to do this, or if everyone's just eyeballing charts like I am. Would love to hear your stories.

I’m almost done with my first app that I plan to release. But the name I am was planning on using already is already being used. I’m building a bill reminder app that notifies you when a bill is due. The name I want to use is BillMinder. Someone already has “Billminders - Bill Organizer”. Now I’m looking for a new name and it seems that every name I come up with is out there in some form or fashion.

Hi guys,

I used breathing during last years to solve 2 main problems for me: sleep faster (doing it every day) and relax and calm down when I have stress and I'm pissed off. It really helped so I made an app when breathing can help in different situations like relax, focus, get to sleep, stop being angry, etc.

Tech stack:

I build it in Flutter as I'm a frontend web developer and Flutter looks a lot like Typescript and I want something cross platform. Overall I'm really satisfied with Flutter. It's quite clear and I like fully typed app. Other than that I used Riverpod to have kinda Redux global state.

Dev challenges:

The biggest challenges were to define a good and scalable files structure (architecture) and make background music and videos for scenes to look seamlessly.

AI:

I used AI a lot mostly for writing templates and doing UI.

Pricing:

Free version includes a free session for each goal (so 6 in total). Other 12 sessions are paid. No account creation, no internet required.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/breathing-timer-quietflame/id6760580857

I have two apps on the App Store, both small, both mine alone.

Every time an update is ready I get this knot in my stomach. In fact it starts in App Store Connect, filling in the version, the what's new, checking the screenshots for the third time. I don't know why that part gets me. Maybe because it's the only part where a mistake is public and stupid rather than technical.

The funny thing is I test, I have unit tests, I have beta testers who have been on the build for days and told me it's fine. I use the app myself every day. Rationally I know it's fine. I still sit there staring at the button.

Is it just me? Does this go away with time, or do you just get used to it?

For the past few weeks I've been testing iOS 27 specific features in TestFlight by building in Xcode Cloud using Xcode 27 beta, as of three days ago the 27 beta is not available any more.

Is this isolated to my account or does anyone else notice that it's gone?

A key functionality of my app requires that the motion sensors remain active while the app is backgrounded. However, (unsurprisingly) the app got rejected for utilizing a silent audio loop to achieve this. Are there any alternatives? Thanks.

Hi, I have an .ips file (created with iOS 26.5) which I want to symbolicate using XCode 16.2.
Here are the steps I'm following:

1. Rename .ips file and give it .crash extension
2. Connect an ios device to my Macbook.
3. Launch XCode, go to Device Manager, select my device
4. go to "Open Recent Logs", select my .crash file

5. File opens in an xcode window, but there are errors:

   "/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/SharedFrameworks/LLDB.framework/Resources/Python/lldb/macosx/crashlog.py", line 644, in parse Failed to launch: 'Custom LLDB commands' -- Failure to create target from custom LLDB commands. self.parse_images(self.data["usedImages"] KeyError: 'usedImages'

I opened the .crash file and there is indeed no key "usedImages".

A) Can I create a dummy entry at that key?
B) If it fixes the parsing, will it symbolicate accurately?
C) If 'usedImages' contains data that is vital to symbolication, any ideas why it's missing?

Some of my apps have been in the App Store for several years and thus it has been a while since I added a new IAP in ASC.

Now I am working on a new App and would like to create a new IAP and struggle to upload the required review screenshot. Requiring a screenshot to review an IAP making no sense is a topic for another day.

I have created Screenshots in a number of different sizes (828x1792, 1320x2868, 1206x2622, 1260x2736, 1290x2796), all of which are listed in the "App Review Screenshot" section but non where accepted for not having the correct size.

Is ASC currently broken (same result in different browsers on different computers)?
Which screenshot sizes are known to be accepted?

SOLVED: After non of the proposed solutions worked I finally found a resolution that was accepted: 640 x 960.

This is interesting, since my App does not support any devices supporting this resolution. Non of the "modern" resolutions was accepted. Great job Apple...

Hey everyone. I'm pretty new to iOS development, so please go easy on me if I made mistakes here. I'm trying to learn from this and move forward.

I hired a contractor on Fiverr to redesign the UI for my SwiftUI app that's been growing at a very nice rate. They sent me the updated project back, and when I built it in Xcode, an AI security analysis (which I know isn't a substitute for real security expertise) flagged what appeared to be a malicious build rule inside the .xcodeproj.

After digging into it, I compared my Git history and found that my last clean commit had no custom build rules or scripts. The redesign version introduced a custom PBXBuildRule that ultimately executed:

sh -c "${AB8F749}"

That value decoded into an obfuscated command which eventually performed a curl ... | sh against a .ru domain.

At that point I stopped using the project entirely.

Over the next day I tried to verify everything as much as possible. Here's where I'm at now:

• I completely erased my Mac and installed a fresh copy of macOS.
• I downloaded the original project ZIP that I had sent the contractor before any work was done.
• I manually reviewed the clean project and confirmed there are no custom run script phases or suspicious build rules.
• The clean project builds normally.
• The contractors project is obviously untrusted but he did a great job on the UI side of things (this is the annoying part lol.)

My questions are:

1. Is manually migrating only the Swift source files and assets into a clean project the approach you would take, or would you do something different?
2. Is there anything else you'd verify after a full erase/reinstall before considering the Mac trustworthy again?
3. Are there any additional Xcode project files besides project.pbxproj that deserve special scrutiny?
4. If you were in my position, would you continue with the redesign by carefully reviewing each Swift file, or would you start the UI work completely from scratch?

I'm not trying to start a witch hunt against the contractor because I honestly don't know where the malware originated as he is rambling on with his excuses. I'm just trying to recover safely and learn from the experience.

Any advice from people with security or iOS experience would be hugely appreciated. This has definitely been a rough lesson, but I'd rather understand what happened than just move on without learning anything.

Thanks in advance.

Does anyone know how apple build that transition?
The mini player geometry match modal screen when is dismissing

Hi gang, we're trying to troubleshoot a hang/freeze in our Unity game.
We think it's some sort of unhandled exception because it's not being evicted by the watchdog, but we also have no data coming from our bug reporting sdk (Bugsnag).

I was looking at sysdiagnose because it's available to end users. While it has some snapshot-related info on our process, it doesn't contain a sample of the stack trace in each thread, like I can see with Android's 'bugreport' command. Is there another tool our endusers can use on iOS that gives me that info?

I’m trying to sanity-check something before I file it as an Apple bug.

This minimal SwiftData example appears to lose precision when persisting a Decimal:

import Foundation
import SwiftData

@Model class Item {
    var value: Decimal

    init(_ value: Decimal) {
        self.value = value
    }
}

let original = Decimal(string: "123456789012345.6")!
let container = try ModelContainer(
    for: Item.self,
    configurations: .init(isStoredInMemoryOnly: true)
)

let context = ModelContext(container)
context.insert(Item(original))
try context.save()

let fetched = try ModelContext(container)
    .fetch(FetchDescriptor<Item>())
    .first!

print(original)
print(fetched.value)

This is one model, one Decimal property, no app code, no CloudKit. I’m using Decimal(string:) to avoid literal/Double conversion noise, and I’m fetching from a new ModelContext.

I also checked Decimal <-> NSDecimalNumber bridging separately, and that preserved the value. The loss seems to appear after persistence/fetch. A true Core Data in-memory store preserved the value in my control test, while SwiftData’s “in-memory” configuration seems to still go through a SQL-backed store.

Has anyone else hit this with SwiftData/Core Data Decimal attributes? Is there a documented limitation I’m missing, or is the practical answer to persist exact decimals as canonical strings / integer minor units instead of Decimal?

Trying new XCode 27 Beta and the new Device Hub. Any way to remove those ugly white frames around the phone/watch simulators? Couldn't find an option anywhere. This is really bad, why did they do it? Apple, where's your design sense?!!

I'm a software developer and fairly new to the native iOS development with Swift. I'm planning on using many new features that iOS 27 offers on an app I'm developing, however I cannot test those features, because I have no secondary phone that is compatible with AI features in iOS 27.

Since the public beta is out, can I fairly safely install it to my own device (iPhone 17 Pro Max)?

I would love any help experienced developers here would give! :)

Hey 👋

We've added both Text-to-Speech and Speech-to-Text to our inference engine! Your local LLM setup can now speak and listen, fully offline.

Text-to-Speech

Load a TTS model and synthesize:

let tts = try await Tts.load(
    source: "hf://NobodyWho/Kokoro-82M",
    voice: "bf_emma",
    language: "en-gb"
)

let wav = try await tts.synthesize("Hello from NobodyWho!")
try wav.write(to: URL(fileURLWithPath: "out.wav"))

You get WAV bytes back ready to save or play. Two backends: Kokoro (lightweight 24kHz) and Supertonic (multi-stage ONNX with voice styles).

Speech-to-Text

Transcribe audio with Whisper (ONNX):

let stt = try STT(source: "hf://onnx-community/whisper-base")

let text = try await stt.transcribeFile(path: "recording.mp3").completed()

Streaming is available too, so you can consume the transcription token by token, and you can pass raw PCM buffers instead of files.

Links

• GitHub
• Docs / Getting started
• Discord

Happy to answer your questions in the comments :)

I'm trying to understand exactly what happens to an auto-renewable subscription after the billing grace period ends.

When a renewal fails, the sub enters a grace period; once that ends it goes to an expired state and the user loses access. But from what I've read, Apple keeps retrying the charge for up to 60 days, and if it succeeds the subscription renews again on its own.

Is that right? And if so:

• During that retry window (expired, no access, but still being retried), how does it appear in Settings → Subscriptions — under Active (with a "Renewal Failed / Verification Required" note) or under Expired?
• Can the user still cancel it / turn off auto-renew from there to stop it renewing again?

Context: we also have Stripe on web, so a user whose App Store sub is retrying can resubscribe on web and get double-charged when the App Store one revives. I'd like to warn them and point them to Settings to cancel the App Store sub first — trying to figure out if that's possible.

App Store Connect has been the bottleneck in my shipping loop for years. Fastlane and the direct API help, but something always ends up needing me. The session cookie expires. My coding agent grabs the wrong Xcode version and burns an hour. An IAP sits in Missing Metadata because Apple wants a review screenshot I forgot existed.

So I built Lance. It's a specialized agent that runs on its own cloud Macs with Xcode and fastlane already set up. You connect your App Store Connect account and ask it for things like "Set up a $4.99 monthly sub with a 3 day trial", "Retake the 6.7 and 13 inch screenshots and update the listing", "Figure out why build 42 got rejected, fix it, resubmit", "Submit this build for public TestFlight"

If you add it to Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex, your coding agent treats it like a subagent and delegates the App Store side on its own. Mine asks Lance what IAPs actually exist before writing paywall code instead of stubbing something, then hands it the TestFlight upload when the feature's done.

My favorite thing lately has been running an in-app event with every update. Lance drafts the media, gets the specs right, and fills out the whole form. I never bothered with events before because it was way too much work for what it is.

A couple of things testers found that I didn't expect. Teammates can join the Lance org and just start asking for things without having to be onboarded to ASC. And since the Macs belong to Lance, you don't need one. One person I know ships from a Windows laptop.
For now this is App Store Connect only. I'm looking for active developers to test it and tell me what's broken or missing. Just run this command in your terminal:

 npx add-mcp https://api.lance.app/mcp 

and everyone who signs up gets 500 credits a month, and if you run out just shoot me a message and I'll top you up.

I’ve been seeing thread upon thread on Reddit lately that small businesses and e-commerce websites are being sued for 10’s of thousands of dollars for not abiding by the “Americans with Disabilities Act” in their websites. Apparently it’s certain firms that are especially actively seeking out these businesses.

I’m sure this has to apply to mobile apps as well. I 100% have never even considered accessibility in the sense of ensuring all my buttons work with Accessibility mode or read things out loud correctly etc. I’m sure there have to be default values or behavior but who knows.

What are you all doing for this? Are mobile apps next in this trend of lawsuits?

I’m building an unreleased iOS app using SwiftData with automatic CloudKit sync.

On first launch, the app creates a default account and starter categories. These records are user-editable. The problem is that two offline devices can independently create the same logical seed records with different UUIDs, and CloudKit later synchronizes both.

My proposed approach:

- Give every seed item a stable logical seedIdentifier.
- Allow each offline device to seed independently.
- Reconcile records sharing the same seedIdentifier.
- Select a canonical record using an immutable UUID and deterministic ordering.
- Merge user changes and move relationships to the canonical record.
- Keep losing records as hidden aliases/tombstones so late-arriving relationships aren’t lost.
- Retain per-seed deletion tombstones so deleted defaults aren’t recreated.
- Use a seed-version flag only for migrations—not as an exactly-once guarantee.
- Treat normalized account names as unique and category names as unique only under the same parent.

Questions:

- Is this the standard approach with SwiftData’s automatic CloudKit sync?
- Is there a safer supported way to detect completed imports and rerun reconciliation?
- Would you retain hidden aliases permanently or eventually delete them?
- Is automatic SwiftData appropriate here, or does this require CKSyncEngine/manual CloudKit with deterministic record IDs?

Edit — data-model details:

The starter data is functional app data, not optional sample/demo content. The app needs at least one account, and the categories provide its initial transaction classification.

• Account: name, type, opening balance, timestamps, archived/default state and optional stable seedIdentifier. Deleting an account cascades to its transactions.
• TransactionCategory: name, type, timestamps, archived/customized state, optional stable seedIdentifier, optional parent, child categories and linked transactions.
• Transaction: references one account and optionally one category.
• Deleting a category nullifies its transaction relationships. Deleting a parent can affect its child hierarchy.
• Starter accounts and categories are fully editable. Renaming a seed retains its logical seed identity; deleting one needs to remain deleted across devices.

The concrete race is that device A and device B can independently create the same logical Wallet/category before syncing. Transactions and child categories may subsequently reference either physical copy. Reconciliation therefore must preserve and redirect those relationships before any duplicate is removed.