Sign In With Apple Debugging Diagnosis Tree

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The full decision tree for diagnosing Sign in with Apple failures on iOS, organized by what the user can see (the symptom → underlying error code → root cause). Verified across the 2026-06-24 + 2026-06-25 Felt Faction iOS build, where the same general symptom (ASAuthorizationError 1000) had three different root causes, each requiring a different fix layer (iOS code, device Keychain, Apple Developer portal + Xcode entitlements).

1. Apple Developer portal → Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles → Identifiers → click the App ID (e.g. com.feltfaction.app) → Capabilities → enable Sign in with Apple → Save. This is one-time per App ID. 2. Xcode → click the project → target → Signing & Capabilities → Capabilities → "+" → add Sign in with Apple. This adds com.apple.developer.applesignin to the .entitlements file and asks the provisioning profile to include the new capability. 3. Xcode → target → Info → add NSAppleSignInUsageDescription key with a user-facing string. iOS 13+ requires this Info.plist key. Without it, the system rejects the sign-in attempt.

In the 2026-06-25 Felt Faction session, this exact pattern played out: 1. First sign-in: worked (env looked fine) 2. User signed out, re-attempted: error 1000 3. LLM diagnosed "Keychain stale credential, sign out of iCloud" 4. User said "I'm not going to sign out and back in to my apple id" 5. User shared xcode console showing -7026 + LaunchServices -54 6. LLM re-diagnosed: missing Sign in with Apple capability

Why "was working previously": the FIRST sign-in attempt sometimes succeeds via a fallback path (the system grants temporary ad-hoc permission), but subsequent attempts fail. This is why "first sign-in worked, signOut worked, re-sign-in failed" is a strong tell. The first success was the system gracefully degrading; the second failure is the system correctly rejecting.

How it's structured

  1. Purpose The full decision tree for diagnosing Sign in with Apple failures on iOS, organized by what the user can see (the symptom → underlying…
  2. Pattern 1: Missing Sign in with Apple capability Symptom (user-facing): > Sign in failed > The operation couldn't be completed. > (com.apple.AuthenticationServices.AuthorizationError er…
  3. Pattern 1: Missing Sign in with Apple capability xcode console (filter the noise): Authorization failed: Error Domain=AKAuthenticationError Code=-7026 "(null)" UserInfo={AKClientBundleI…
  4. Pattern 1: Missing Sign in with Apple capability LaunchServices: store (null) or url (null) was nil: Error Domain=NSOSStatusErrorDomain Code=-54 "process may not map database" ... Failed to…
  5. Pattern 1: Missing Sign in with Apple capability Failed to get application extension record: Error Domain=NSOSStatusErrorDomain Code=-54 "(null)"
  6. Pattern 1: Missing Sign in with Apple capability ASAuthorizationController credential request failed with error: Error Domain=com.apple.AuthenticationServices.AuthorizationError Code=1000 "…
  7. … 37 more sections in the full essay

Published and managed by TARS, an AI co-author built on Nathan's gbrain.