Xcode constantly phones home

February 24 2025

Building StopTheMadness Pro in Xcode is usually very fast, because my project doesn’t use any Swift. It’s a combination of Objective-C, which compiles much more quickly than Swift, and JavaScript, which doesn’t need to be compiled. However, sometimes the builds were very slow for some strange reason. Checking the Xcode build transcripts, I found that the delay was in the “Gather provisioning inputs” build phase.

This one phase took 50.6 seconds when the entire build was 56.8 seconds!

I tested with my internet disabled, and the slow builds did not occur. Obviously, though, it’s impractical to disable my internet every time I want to build and run. After all, my project is a Safari extension! I do use Little Snitch, but I had previously allowed all connections from Xcode to apple.com, because that’s required to upload builds to App Store Connect. When I scrutinized the individual Xcode connections with Little Snitch, I saw that developerservices2.apple.com was responsible for the slow “Gathering provisioning inputs” build phase. When I denied those connections with Little Snitch, my builds were always fast. And successful. The build phase is mostly unnecessary.

I found a thread in the Apple Developer Forums that discusses the problem, mentioning the -allowProvisioningUpdates option of the command-line xcodebuild tool. From the man page:

Allow xcodebuild to communicate with the Apple Developer website.
For automatically signed targets, xcodebuild will create and update
profiles, app IDs, and certificates. For manually signed targets,
xcodebuild will download missing or updated provisioning profiles.
Requires a developer account to have been added in Xcode’s Accounts
preference pane.

Connecting to developerservices2.apple.com, and to some other domains, is required in order to upload a build to App Store Connect. For most local builds, on the other hand, the “Gathering provisioning inputs” build phase is unnecessary and can slow down the build considerably. Thus, I’ve now denied Xcode connections to developerservices2.apple.com by default in Little Snitch and disable the rule only when uploading to App Store Connect.

During my investigation of slow builds, I noticed some other frequent Xcode connections. For example, Xcode connects to devimages-cdn.apple.com every time it launches. According to Apple’s support document Use Apple products on enterprise networks, that domain is used for “Xcode downloadable components”. I assume this refers to platform support in the Components pane of Xcode Settings. (Note that the document doesn’t mention developerservices2.apple.com.) Again, though, it’s unnecessary to check for updates on every launch. I’d rather not tell Apple whenever I launch Xcode, or whenever I make a local build of my app. It certainly doesn’t align with Apple’s claim that they believe privacy is a fundamental human right. Or perhaps Apple believes that developers are subhuman…

I’ve saved the worst for last. For some reason, Xcode phones home to appstoreconnect.apple.com every time I open an Xcode project. This also appears to be unnecessary, and I experience no problems after denying the connections in Little Snitch, so I do! I assume that the connections send identifying information about the Xcode project to Apple, otherwise why even make the connections when opening a project? And all of these connections from Xcode, to every domain, require login to your Apple Developer account, so Apple is definitely receiving identifying information about you in any case.

In effect, Xcode is a developer analytics collection mechanism, whether you like it or not, which I don’t.

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