DeviceActivityCenter - couldn’t communicate with a helper application.

Question

_anteloper OP

Created Feb ’23

Replies 3

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Hi there,

In rare cases (about 0.2% of the time?), I'm seeing calls to startMonitoring on an instance of DeviceActivityCenter throw an error with localizedDescription "couldn’t communicate with a helper application."

I am certain I am passing valid parameters to the startMonitoring call because sometimes a naive retry after a few seconds succeeds. Similarly, I am certain that FamilyControls permissions have been granted by the user.

Was hoping to get more color from the systems team on what some causes of this error are and if it is avoidable by the programmer.

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Answer 1

Frameworks Engineer OP

Apple

Feb ’23

This sounds like a bug in the API. Please file a bug report using Feedback Assistant. When you file the report, make sure to attach a sysdiagnose collected shortly after reproducing the issue. Thanks in advance!

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Answer 2

fuzi-ohana OP

Mar ’23

@Kmart @_anteloper - this happens a lot of times on production users: FB11983206

1

Answer 3

eljojorojo OP

Mar ’24

+1, same issue here. Reported in Feedback Assistant with ID 13691566

To not let users be impacted by this, you can call startMonitoring again 1 second after you receive the error; this worked consistently for our users, but obviously is a bit of a clunky workaround

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