Apple Support Community Forums Close for Good Nov 20

The Apple Support Community, the user forum where iPhone, Mac and iPad owners have traded fixes for decades, is shutting down. Apple stopped accepting new posts on November 10 and says the site will close for good on November 20, 2026. If you've got a thread bookmarked that fixed something for you, now's the time to save it.

What happened

Visitors to discussions.apple.com now see a banner that reads, in part: "The Apple Support Community will permanently close on November 20, 2026. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state." It points people to the official Apple Support site instead.

MacRumors says Apple told it the decision came after "a careful evaluation of strategy and customer needs." The last post appears to have gone up at 5:49 p.m. Pacific on November 10, and the Sign in button now leads to an internal login page for Apple staff. 9to5Mac spotted that the first version of the notice called it the "AppleCare Support Community," and that you can still browse, search and press "Me too" on existing threads for now.

The forum goes back to 1998, when it launched as Apple Tech Exchange. It became Apple Discussions in 2000, Apple Support Communities in 2011, and took its current name in 2022.

Why it matters

A lot of Apple fixes never made it into an official support article. They live in long threads where someone with the same odd problem tried ten things and posted the one that worked. Search for almost any strange iPhone or Mac bug and a discussions.apple.com link is usually near the top. Those links are all over the web, in Reddit posts, YouTube descriptions and blog guides, including a few on this site.

What Apple hasn't said is whether the archive stays readable after November 20 or vanishes completely. The notice only says the site will "permanently close," which doesn't sound like a read-only museum.

What to do before November 20

1. Save the threads you rely on. Open each one and use File > Print > Save as PDF on a Mac, or the Share button > Print, then pinch out on the preview to save a PDF on iPhone. Make sure every reply you need is expanded first.
2. If you answered questions there, keep your best ones. Long-time helpers have years of write-ups on their profiles. Copy anything you'd want to reuse or post elsewhere.
3. Bookmark the official routes. support.apple.com and the Apple Support app are where Apple wants you to go now, and they're still the way to book repairs or chat with an advisor.
4. Know where the community is heading. MacRumors suggests its own forums and Reddit as places for peer help. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine may also have copies of popular threads after the shutdown, though there's no guarantee for any single page.

My take

This one feels like a real loss. Apple's support articles are fine for the basics, but they're written for the common case. The forum was where the weird cases went, like a Mac that wakes itself at 3 a.m. or an iPhone that dims for no clear reason. When I wrote up why an iPhone screen goes dim when you wake it, community threads were part of how I worked out which fixes people actually reported helping.

I'd guess Apple wants more of those questions to go through its own support tools, and maybe through Siri and Apple Intelligence over time. That's Apple's call, but it does mean the answers will come from Apple's point of view rather than from other users who've been stuck with the same bug. Ten days isn't much notice for a 28-year-old archive. If there's a thread that saved your Mac or your iPhone, save a copy today rather than on November 19.

And if you're dealing with a common problem right now, our guides on iOS 27 battery drain and Mac battery drain during sleep on macOS 27 are a good place to start.