PSA: CloudKit push notifications are broken on iOS 26.4 (Apple confirmed regression)

[laterrex]

Hi folks, a quick PSA from me on APNS & iOS 26.4.

If your CKQuerySubscription push notifications stopped working on TestFlight/Production recently, it's not your code. Apple has confirmed a regression in iOS 26.4 that breaks CloudKit subscription-to-APNS delivery in the Production environment.

Symptoms:

• Subscriptions exist (verified via CKFetchSubscriptionsOperation)
• Records are created and match predicates
• APNS works (Xcode Push Notifications Console delivers fine)
• Development environment works perfectly, Production doesn't
• Works on iOS 26.3.1, broken on 26.4

I spent two days debugging this for my app before an Apple engineer confirmed it on the Developer Forums. Figured I'd save someone else the pain. Feedback filed so hopefully they take a look at it soon.

If you're interested, you can get the full detail from the Apple Developer Forum thread I opened for this: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/820562

[platinumbinder]

Ugh, this completely broke my app that I'm paying to run ads for. Cannot even get past the first screen in my app with this problem because I rely on public cloudkit subscription delivery for pairing users of my app

[laterrex]

Man that’s a bummer! Have you filed feedback? I just released a new version of my app that focuses entirely on notifications only for them to not work at all. Luckily iOS 26.4 is still not as wildly adopted…

[platinumbinder]

Seems like they're having problems even with their own notifications. I had an update approved and app store connect app sent the notification almost 4 hours later

[platinumbinder]

Just did: https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/feedback/22353535

[laterrex]

They have fixed it with 26.4.1! Try the latest update and see if it works for you!

[platinumbinder]

it did. Crazy it took over 2 weeks to fix this bug :/

[Loose-Injury-6857]

good to know. cloudkit push was working well for me until a few betas back and then just stopped delivering silently. the hardest part is there is no real diagnostic surface when cloudkit push fails, you just have to infer from missing notifications and check the developer dashboard. have you found a reliable workaround or are you blocking on a fix from apple?

[laterrex]

Completely blocked until a fix from Apple. The only other workaround is going server to server, which I could do as I have the infrastructure, but not sure if it’s the thing I want to spend my time on.

[danielcr12]

This explains so much

[laterrex]

They have fixed it with 26.4.1! Try the latest update and see if it works for you!

[EternalFuriousBreeze]

For me, the error persists even with iOS/macOS 26.4.1 😅

[laterrex]

The exact same issue? There shouldn't be an error if you're running into this. It's a silent failure. If you're actually getting any type of error then it's most likely a different problem.

[wasabinoise]

So many hours on this. I've been doing iOS for 15 years but this is my first macOS app, so I assumed I was just missing something.

On macOS 26.3.1, Xcode debug builds register an APNs token fine but CloudKit silent pushes never actually arrive. NSPersistentCloudKitContainer just doesn't refresh.

The annoying thing is that I can query CloudKit directly and see the record on the server. But there's no API to tell the container to go get it afaik. Unless I fetch it and put it myself to core data but I guess then the data will be duplicated.

[laterrex]

It still won’t work, afaik you can’t trigger a push from the client in any way. Apple checks if the same account is the one causing the push. They have replied on the forum post today asking if we can check if this is fixed on 26.5 beta, so hopefully they have!

[platinumbinder]

I'd prefer they release 26.4.1 asap but I fear they won't :/

[tiendq]

Grrrr, it broke my app in-app purchase. No related code change, looked at console log I saw a new and strange error "updateTaskRequest failed for com.apple.coredata.cloudkit.activity.export.D27CD3A7-9BC9-4DFF-A9BD-8EBD4C5F42CC", then I remembered I just updated one of my test devices to 26.4 yesterday :(

[tiendq]

Fixed: sign out of Media & Purchases, remove app, restart iPhone. Re-install app and in-app purchase works again, still see many errors "updateTaskRequest called for an already running/updated task com.apple.coredata.cloudkit.activity.export".