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how accessible is enough for Accessibility Nutrition Labels?
My team has a robust digital accessibility program and processes for WCAG conformance in our apps. Because of this, there are definitely accessibility defects that get caught and addressed in order of impact and business priority like any other bug. Obviously we want to aim for 100% accessibility for our users, but it's a continual work in progress as new enhancements or changes are released. I'm stuck on the appropriate measurement to indicate support. If we have 50 common tasks and the most central 10 tasks are solid but some supporting (but also common) tasks have a contrast fail or accessibleLabel missing, does that make the whole app not supporting the feature? If "completing the task" is the rubric there are a whole range of interpretations for that. In a complex app, I anticipate that a group like ours will have strong support for many of the Accessibility Nutrition Labels accessibility features across tasks and devices, but realistically never be 100% free of defects for a given Apple Accessibility feature, even among core tasks. As I consider the next steps for Nutrition Labels, I do not see anything in the documentation that gives a sort of baseline or measurement for inclusion. We plan to test all steps to complete a task, and log defects accordingly with an assigned timeline for fixing them (as would be true for functional defects).
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App Store Policy for apps that allows users to unlock contact details of person who posted content.
We have an app under development which allows musicians to unlock contact details of people who posted about an upcoming event. The musician pays a fees to unlock this contact details. Both the musician & the post owner are registered users. We will reveal the same contact info that the post owner used for account signup verification. Questions: Is this allowed? (given that we obtain consent to share contact info to other people and clearly mention this in privacy policy) If yes, will we have to use App store in-app purchase to facilitate this transaction or are we free to use a payment processor such as Stripe.
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614
Feb ’25
18.3 Update
I did the 18.3 update over the weekend and every contact and their information (family names, addresses, photos etc) that was added to my phone over the last year is completely gone. I’ve spent hours on the phone with Apple and their “top” senior account employees with no resolution. I am told my case has been escalated to engineering and they will get back to me in one week. I have zero confidence my issue will be resolved. I’ve gone over and over every action done over the weekend and the only thing I did was erase some emails and do the update. There has to be a way they can see every action made on my phone to find the issue.
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569
Jan ’25
The brightness of the iPad Pro screen is gone after new ios26
After 26 IOS update, the colors on my new iPad Pro M4 have become extremely dull almost like those on a very old device. The screen brightness is significantly reduced, and it's now difficult to see UI elements clearly. This is very disappointing considering the device’s high display quality before the update. Please advise if this is a known issue or if there's a fix.
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Jun ’25
Guided Access Unresponsive After Period of Use
Hello, I'm observing a persistent and frustrating issue with an accessibility feature called Guided Access that seems to affect many users across different devices and iOS versions. Problem The triple-click gesture (side or home button) to activate Guided Access intermittently stops working after the device has been in normal use for a few days (typically 2-7 days) without a restart. I have done some debugging for Apple in FB16094026 but received no updates after 6 months. So I'm posting here in the hope that this will be solved sooner. A core accessibility feature shouldn't require daily device restarts to function reliably. Details: Guided Access is correctly enabled in Settings > Accessibility. Initially, the triple-click works perfectly. After a period of normal device use (2-7 days), the triple-click no longer triggers Guided Access in any app. Restarting the device temporarily resolves the issue, and Guided Access triple-click works again immediately after a reboot. However, the problem recurs after continued use. Simply toggling the Guided Access setting on/off does NOT fix it. Additional observation: Even trying to select Guided Access manually via the Accessibility Shortcut menu (if multiple shortcuts are enabled) sometimes fails to launch the feature when in this state. Affected: iPhones and iPads Observed on iOS/iPadOS 16, 17, and now 18, indicating it's a long-standing bug. Impact: Guided Access is a crucial accessibility feature for many users (for focus, special needs, parental controls, etc.). Its unreliable activation significantly disrupts daily workflows and reliance on this function. This issue appears to be widespread, with many reports across forums like Apple Support Communities and Reddit. For example, this post received over 1k upvotes. To see more examples please refer to FB16094026. Could Apple please investigate this bug urgently? Thanks.
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Apr ’25
Imessage and Facetime error
Yesterday I installed iOS 26 on my iPhone as a beta tester. At first there was no problem, but during the afternoon I noticed that neither FaceTime nor IMessage worked... I tried to go through the settings as described by Apple Support, but my phone number would not activate. Sometimes I was even asked to activate iCloud. I always get a REG-RESP message. Does anyone have any ideas what the problem could be?
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148
Jun ’25
How to Implement Dynamic Type for UITextFields Without Resetting Data
Hello! I was doing some accessibility testing for my app and found out that when the user switches the text size, all of the data in the text fields is reset, which causes major disruption. I've tried looking for documentation, but all I've found is information on how to dynamically scale the UI for different text sizes, which I've already implemented. My guess is that every time Dynamic Type registers a change, it redraws my UI instead of just updating it. How can I make sure the data is not reset when the text size changes?
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Unable to set dialect of Chinese of AVSpeechSynthesisVoice in iOS 18
The AVSpeechSynthesizer on some iOS 18 device has a bug that it will read always read Chinese of: AVSpeechUtterance(string: "中文") // Any Chinese Content in the dialect specified by: Settings > Accessibility > Spoken Content > Voices > Chinese > Spoken Language instead of the dialect that I specified in AVSpeechUtterance.voice: AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(language: "zh-HK") // Cantonese AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(language: "zh-TW") // Mandarin However, setting Chinese dialect of AVSpeechSynthesisVoice by "zh-HK" or "zh-TW" has been working on iOS 17 and below. My app has a feature that requires reading sentences in Mandarin followed by Cantonese, i.e., both dialects is needed every time. Therefore, setting the dialect in Spoken Language of Settings is not a workaround to make my app to function correctly in iOS 18. Further to the above, I've also discovered that, if iOS 18 (in my case, 18.5 is tested) is freshly installed (not upgrading from iOS 17 or below, nor restoring backup after fresh installation of iOS 18), the bug above will not happen. However, if it was an upgrade from iOS 17 or below, or backup is restored (in my case, I freshly installed iOS 18.5 on a new iPhone and then restored a backup from another iPhone on iOS 16.2), the bug above happens. This bug puzzled me because I need both dialect of Chinese to be read aloud one by one, but as reported by many users, on most iOS 18 devices (since a fresh installation of latest iOS without upgrading or restoring is uncommon nowadays), my app will read Cantonese two times or Mandarin two times (depending on Spoken Language in Settings). It is the iOS 18 bug which made my app unable to perform the expected behavior. Would Apple developers look into this and advise if there are any possible workaround within the code of app to overcome this bug, or please fix this bug with an iOS 18 update. Thank you.
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Jun ’25
VoiceOver and currency - high amounts
I’ve noticed that the VoiceOver reads currency amounts correctly when they are below thousand. Then, for higher amounts, for example 12.225,34 € VoiceOver reads ‘twelve point two two five thirty four euros’ If the amount is formatted without the thousand separator (12225,34 €) this problem doesn’t exist. (VO reads twelve thousand two hundred and twenty five euros and thirty four cents) Why is the thousand separator a problem for VoiceOver if this formatting is coming from the currency and locale? This issue exists in English. I changed my device language to Italian and German and in both cases the number was read correctly even with the separator. Is there a way to make it work in English?
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Jun ’25
Feature Idea: Autonomous, Motion-Powered Clock Display on iPhone.
Hey everyone, I've been thinking about a truly innovative way to enhance iPhone battery life and user convenience, drawing inspiration from kinetic energy harvesting. What if we could have a clock display on the main iPhone screen that's powered purely by user motion, and activates only when you look at it, without touching your main battery? The Core Idea Imagine this: Kinetic Energy Harvesting: Your iPhone would have a tiny, integrated kinetic energy generator. This generator would capture the energy from your everyday movements – walking, picking up the phone, putting it in your pocket. Independent Power Source: This harvested energy would be stored in a small, dedicated capacitor or micro-battery, completely separate from your iPhone's main battery. Acelerometer-Activated Display: Instead of relying on power-hungry facial recognition, the phone's accelerometer (a very low-power sensor) would detect specific "raise to wake" or "tap to look" gestures. On-Demand, Ultra-Low Power Clock: Only when the accelerometer detects one of these specific gestures would the stored kinetic energy be used to illuminate just the necessary pixels on the main OLED/AMOLED screen to display the time. The rest of the screen stays completely black (consuming no power on OLED). Automatic Shut-Off: As soon as the gesture ends or the phone is put down, the clock display would turn off, conserving the limited harvested energy. Why This Matters This isn't just a cool gimmick; it offers significant benefits: True Battery Independence: Get the time at a glance, anytime, without touching your main battery or even the power button. This means more main battery life for apps, calls, and everything else. Ultimate Convenience: A "magical" interaction – just pick up your phone, and the time instantly appears. No taps, no button presses. Sustainable & Innovative: Showcases practical "energy harvesting" in a consumer device, pushing boundaries for self-sufficient tech. Extreme Energy Efficiency: By using a low-power accelerometer as the trigger and only lighting a few pixels on demand, the system is designed for minimal power draw, making kinetic power a viable source. This concept combines existing low-power sensing (accelerometer), efficient display technology (OLED/AMOLED's true blacks), and cutting-edge energy harvesting, creating a genuinely innovative user experience.
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Jun ’25
Implementing App Clips with .NET MAUI
We have an iOS App built in .NET MAUI (Multi-platform App UI). This is a web view App. We wish to integrate APP Clips into this App. But we are unable to do it, due to less available resources online on such implementation. We do not wish to share code between .NET MAUI App and App clips. We understand it is not possible to add APP Clips without a parent swift/Xcode app. As an alternative solution we were thinking to Create a new APP in APP Store Connect using XCode/swift and integrate app clips to it. This parent app when downloaded by users will only redirect users to our MAIN .NET MAUI app to app store connect. We need to know if such apps will be approved by APPSTORE Connect? Please guide us on this. Also please do let us know if you have any other solution to integrate App clips to a .NET MAUI App
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Jun ’25
Haptics seem to stop working in iOS 18.3 (22D5055b)
I checked the latest release notes for latest beta, and there doesn't seem to be a fix for this. But basically, the vibrations that you receive for when you long press a message to react, or hold down on an app in Home Screen, seem to stop working after a while. This issue is reoccurring randomly. Steps to repro: Not fully sure on this, but I'm on iPhone 16 pro max and running the iOS 18.3 dev beta described in the title. I have the default haptics enabled in which you receive a vibration when you long press on a message in iMessage or Messenger, and also when you long press on an app on the Home Screen. These seem to stop working, along with any other vibrations apart from calls and notifications) after a while. The only workaround is to restart the iPhone entirely. anyone else face the same?
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Jan ’25
Medication data insert from third party app
I want to insert the medication data which is available from ios 26 from my app to apple health kit. I have tried to get the permission to read and write data but app got crashed while I tried to request that permission. Does apple allow to insert the medication data to apple health kit likewise we are able to add other health and fitness data or not? let healthStore = HKHealthStore() @available(iOS 26.0, *) @objc func requestAuthorization(_ resolve: @escaping RCTPromiseResolveBlock, rejecter reject: @escaping RCTPromiseRejectBlock) { guard HKHealthStore.isHealthDataAvailable() else { print("not available ") return } let doseType = HKObjectType.medicationDoseEventType() let medType = HKObjectType.userAnnotatedMedicationType() healthStore.requestAuthorization(toShare: [doseType], read: [doseType]) { success, error in if let err = error { reject("auth_error", err.localizedDescription, err); return } self.healthStore.requestPerObjectReadAuthorization(for: medType, predicate: nil) { s, e in if let err2 = e { reject("per_obj_auth", err2.localizedDescription, err2); return } resolve(["ok": success && s]) } } }
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Oct ’25
iOS 26 Voice Over is reporting an extra tab
Feedback number: FB20451665 When building with Xcode 26, Voice Over is reporting an extra tab when swiping through tabs. Please see the sample project below: /* This is a Sample project to show that I believe there is a Voice Over bug in iOS 26. When swiping through tabs with Voice Over active, there always appears to be an extra tab. Here I have 5 tabs, when on tab one VO reads out tab 1 of 6, then tab 2 of 6, all the way to the last tab, when voice over reads out tab 5 of 6. Never tab 6 of 6. Is there a possibility that voice over is picking up the underlying `more` tab and reading that out? This has also been reportedly found in the Files app here: https://www.applevis.com/comment/195441#comment-195441 */ struct ContentView: View { var body: some View { TabView { /// Activating this has Voice over telling us there are 6 Tabs. Tab(RootTab.home.title, systemImage: "circle.fill") { Text("This is the \(RootTab.home.title.capitalized) screen") } .accessibilityLabel("\(RootTab.home.title.capitalized) tab") .accessibilityHint("Double tap to open the \(RootTab.home.title.capitalized) tab") Tab(RootTab.diary.title, systemImage: "circle.fill") { Text("This is the \(RootTab.diary.title.capitalized) screen") } .accessibilityLabel("\(RootTab.diary.title.capitalized) tab") .accessibilityHint("Double tap to open the \(RootTab.diary.title.capitalized) tab") Tab(RootTab.meals.title, systemImage: "circle.fill") { Text("This is the \(RootTab.meals.title.capitalized) screen") } .accessibilityLabel("\(RootTab.meals.title.capitalized) tab") .accessibilityHint("Double tap to open the \(RootTab.meals.title.capitalized) tab") Tab(RootTab.knowledge.title, systemImage: "circle.fill") { Text("This is the \(RootTab.knowledge.title.capitalized) screen") } .accessibilityLabel("\(RootTab.knowledge.title.capitalized) tab") .accessibilityHint("Double tap to open the \(RootTab.knowledge.title.capitalized) tab") Tab(RootTab.profile.title, systemImage: "circle.fill") { Text("This is the \(RootTab.profile.title.capitalized) screen") } .accessibilityLabel("\(RootTab.profile.title.capitalized) tab") .accessibilityHint("Double tap to open the \(RootTab.profile.title.capitalized) tab") /// Activating this also has Voice over telling us there are 6 Tabs. // ForEach(RootTab.allCases, id: \.self) { tab in // // Text("This is the \(tab.title.capitalized) screen") // .tabItem { // Label(tab.title.capitalized, systemImage: "circle.fill") // } // .accessibilityLabel("\(tab.title.capitalized) tab") // .accessibilityHint("Double tap to open the \(tab.title.capitalized) tab") // } } } enum RootTab: CaseIterable { case home case diary case meals case knowledge case profile var title: String { switch self { case .home: "home" case .diary: "diary" case .meals: "meals" case .knowledge: "knowledge" case .profile: "profile" } } } } I'm curious if anyone else can see this issue, or if anyone knows of a workaround for it.
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Oct ’25
kAXSelectedTextChangedNotification not received after restart, until launching Accessibility Inspector
I'm facing a bizarre issue with the Apple's Accessibility APIs. I am registering an AXObserver that listens for, among other things, the kAXSelectedTextChangedNotification. For many new users, the kAXSelectTextChangedNotification is not triggered, even though they have enabled Accessibility permission for the app. Other notifications are getting through (kAXWindowMovedNotification, kAXWindowResizedNotification, kAXValueChangedNotification etc - full list here), just not the kAXSelectedTextChangedNotification! We've found that we can reproduce the error by removing accessibility permission for the app and rebooting our computers. After restarting and reenabling accessibility permissions, the kAXSelectedTextChangedNotification was not received, even though other notifications were fine. Strangely, the issue can be resolved by launching Apple's Accessibility Inspector app on an impacted computer. Once the Accessibility Inspector is loaded, the kAXSelectedTextChangedNotifications start coming through as expected. This implies to me that either: We are missing some needed setup when starting the observers. Accessibility Inspector gets it right, thus ‘starting’ the system properly. Accessibility Inspector is using some Apple private APIs that we don’t have access to. Things I’ve tried: I've tried subscribing the AXSelectedTextChangedNotification to different AXUIElements, including the SystemWide element, the Application element, and children elements from the AXApplication. None of these received the kAXSelectedTextChangedNotification, until Accessibility Inspector is booted up. No surprises here, as Apple's documentation confirms that you should add the notification to the root Application AXUIElement if you want to receive notifications for all its children. I had a theory that the issue might be due to my code calling AXUIElementCreateApplication multiple times, possibly creating multiple "Applications" in Apple's Accessibility implementation. If that’s the case, the notifications might be sent to the wrong application AXUIElement. However, refactoring my code to only call AXUIElementCreateApplication once didn't resolve the issue. I thought the issue may be caused by subscribing the AXSelectedTextChangedNotification on the high-level application element (at odds with Apple's documentation). I've tried traversing the child AXUIElements until we find one with the kAXSelectedTextAttribute and then subscribing to that. This did not resolve the issue. I don’t think it's the correct path to continue exploring, given that the notifications are received correctly after AccessibilityInspector is launched. There is one exception to the above: if I add the kSelectedTextChangedNotification listener to a specific text field AXUIElement, I do receive the notification on that text field. However, this is not practical; I need a solution that will work for all text fields within an app. The Accessibility Inspector appears to be doing something that causes the selected-text-changed notifications to be correctly passed up to the high-level application AXUIElement. Another thought is that I could traverse the entire Accessibility hierarchy and add listeners to every subview that has the kAXSelectedTextAttribute. However, I don’t like this long-term solution. It will be slow and incomplete: new elements get added and removed frequently. I just want the kAXSelectedTextChangedNotification to be received by the high-level Application AXUIElement, which the documentation suggests it should be. I also have evidence that this can work, since notifications start coming through after Accessibility Inspector is launched. It’s just a matter of discovering how to replicate whatever Accessibility Inspector is doing. An interesting wrinkle: I implemented the 'traverse' strategy above, but was surprised by how few elements were in the hierarchy. Most apps only go down ~2-3 levels, which didn't seem right to me. Perhaps the Accessibility tree isn't fully initialized? I tried adding a 5-second delay to allow more initialization time, but it didn't change anything. Does anyone have any ideas? Here's our file.
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144
May ’25
Your app's binary includes references to HealthKit components, but the app still does not appear to include any primary features that require health or fitness data.
Your app's binary includes references to HealthKit components, but the app still does not appear to include any primary features that require health or fitness data. Next Steps To resolve this issue, please remove any HealthKit functionality from the app, as well as any references to this app’s interactivity with HealthKit from the app or its metadata. This includes removing any HealthKit-related keys in the app's Info.plist or InfoPlist.strings files, as well as removing any calls to HealthKit APIs, including those from third-party platforms, from the app.
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257
Oct ’25
Subpath for access to Silence Unknown Callers
Hi, Our app has a section where, we show to users how to activate "Silence Unknown Callers", because is a crucial feature for our app. But, we saw that 30% of users drop the process here, because we can't open directly that setting option in phone app. We are using this url scheme to open phone settings in iOS 18: if let url = URL(string: "App-prefs:com.apple.mobilephone") { UIApplication.shared.open(url) } But, we don't see other way to open directly the path "silence", like in iOS 17, with this url scheme: prefs:root=Phone&path=SILENCE_CALLS So, do you know if is possible open that option directly? We want to improve our accessibility. Thank you!
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354
Mar ’25
Autocomplete Select not working with VoiceOver in iOS 18.6.2
Hey folksI, I would like to ask for help on this topic: I think this is exactly the same problem Combobox not working with VoiceOver after… - Apple Community. VoiceOver also breaks the combobox from the official ARIA W3C website https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/combobox/examples/combobox-autocomplete-list/. When VO is turned off, I can use the up/down arrow to go through the menu items from the dropdown, but when VO is turned on, the up/down arrows cannot access the dropdown menu items. Is there an official tutorial on how to control it using voice over? Kind regards, Jakub
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Sep ’25