Apple is shutting down the Apple Support Community, its public question-and-answer forum, for good on November 20, 2026, and the site has already stopped taking new posts.
A banner now sits across the top of the forum’s welcome page. It says the community “will permanently close on November 20, 2026” and that the site “will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state.” Apple points visitors to its official Apple Support site instead and thanks the members “who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.”
That leaves nine days between the notice going up on November 11 and the closing date. Apple’s banner does not say whether old threads will stay online as an archive after that day or disappear entirely.
Why the forum mattered
For anyone who has typed an odd Mac error message into a search engine, the forum was often the first hit. Volunteers, not Apple engineers, wrote most of the answers. The site rewarded them with points and levels, and its front page still shows featured tips from members with more than 100,000 points, on topics such as when to charge an iPhone and how to tune Apple Watch volume.
Apple’s specialists mostly moderated and dropped links to support articles, according to a report on the closure, so the real knowledge lived in threads written by unpaid experts. The same report says an Apple spokesperson linked the decision to “a careful evaluation of strategy and customer needs.”
A short timeline
The forum is older than the iPhone. According to that report, it started as Apple Tech Exchange in 1998, became Apple Discussions around 2000, was relaunched as Apple Support Communities in 2011 and took its singular name in 2022. Counting from 1998, it ran for about 28 years.
The shutdown follows an earlier pullback. In 2023, reports said Apple was disbanding the staff who answered support questions on social platforms, though the community forum carried on without those dedicated responders.
What to do before November 20
If a thread holds a fix you rely on, keep a copy now:
- Open the thread and use your browser’s Print command to save it as a PDF.
- Copy any Terminal commands or settings paths into a notes app, word for word.
- Bookmark the replacement: Apple’s official support site, which hosts its help articles and lets you book a repair or chat with an advisor.
- Check whether the page is already saved in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which may become the only public record of many threads.
Apple has been reshaping how people get help across its services this year, from tighter App Store rules on AI deepfake apps to accessibility features such as Apple TV’s new sign language button with ASL and BSL interpreters. Closing the forum moves in the opposite direction from community help, pushing users toward company-written answers.
Apple has not announced a replacement for user-to-user discussion. The read-only window ends on Friday, November 20.
Illustrative image. Image: Simon Hattinga Verschure, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons
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