UICloudSharingController is broken and needs Apple's attention

The problem

When the UICloudSharingController is invoked on an existing share with participants, the controller should be showing the row/button to "Add people" but it doesn't.

This problem is (still) present in iOS 15.1 beta 3 released Oct 6th 2021. The problem first manifested in one of the early betas of iOS 15.0 (possibly beta4).

I have previously filed this as FB9648211 and I am getting desperate because “Recent similar reports:“ is always “None”, and this thing never gets on the Known issues list on the iOS/iPadOS beta Release Notes.

What this means

This means that you can only invite 1 person to a CKShare (even though the theoretical max is 100) until Apple fixes this. The problem affects any app that uses this controller, even those that have been in the App Store for a long time.

Side info

Apple's Notes also use UICloudSharingController but it is customized beyond capabilities of the public API, and that one does show "Add People", while the “public API” one does not. So just checking this controller within "Notes" is not indicative of the problem.

To test and verify

To test and verify, you can use any app that uses UICloudSharingController that is not produced by Apple. You can even use Apple's sample code from github: https://github.com/apple/cloudkit-sample-sharing

Steps:

  1. Share a record with someone (makes them a participant with the role “user“, does not matter if they accept the invite or not)
  2. After UICloudSharingController dismisses, share that record again. You will see the controller show with the title "People", it will list you as the Owner if the first row, then the original invitee, but no “Add people“ button below them

This screenshot shows the UICloudSharingController not displaying the "Add people" button below the list of share participants:

Answered by iOSDevDaniel in 697402022

No regressions in 15.2 beta 3 and beta 4 (= STILL WORKS!) so I'm going to close this

I have the same issue, which i posted about here: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/691268

I have the same problem. Has anyone found any workarounds for this? For example if you roll back your deployment target to iOS 14?

@jonjudelson the controller is provided by the currently installed OS, no matter what your minimum deployment target is. So, no workarounds. We just have to find a way for Apple to hear us.

Still no joy with iOS 15.1 beta 4 (Oct 13th 2021). Issue not fixed, or listed under known issues in release notes.

Ok, I have also reached out to Developer Technical Support and they recommend I file a bug so I did as well. My app is dependent on this functionality so I am stuck until they can resolve.

iOS 15.1 RC, build 19B74 (Oct 18th 2021): Issue still not fixed, nor listed under known issues in release notes.

Same issue here. Filed feedback report back in September. App release also depending on the resolution of this critical issue.

SO MUCH JOY: 15.2 b2 issue is fixed

While we're waiting for 15.2, can anyone tell me if they also see this behavior? I've still got a client on 14.x who sees the "Add people" option and can send an invitation via iMessage. However when I click on that invitation in iMessage on an iOS 15 device it tries "Retrieving..." and then says "Item Unavailable: The owner stopped sharing, or you don't have permission to open it.". If I copy the link and open it in Safari I see "iCloud has stopped responding." and inside the details "ShareRecord: Unable to find applicationIdentifier for containerId = [my container id] and fileExtension = undefined" among other things.

I'd like to try and understand this issue is related to the other iOS 15 issue and I should wait, or whether I need to be tracking down a separate bug.

Same issue here.

Accepted Answer

No regressions in 15.2 beta 3 and beta 4 (= STILL WORKS!) so I'm going to close this

Is it possible to subclass UICloudSharingController?

UICloudSharingController is broken and needs Apple's attention
 
 
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