Apple Is Shutting Down Its Support Community Forums After Nearly 28 Years, Leaving Users Days to Save Fixes

CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple is permanently closing its Apple Support Community, the user-to-user help forum where millions of customers have traded troubleshooting advice for nearly three decades.

The company posted a notice on the forum's welcome page Tuesday saying the site had stopped taking new posts and would shut down completely next week.

"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," the notice said.

Apple pointed users to its official support website and thanked the volunteers who kept the forums running. "We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products," the company said.

Apple did not give a reason for the closure.

Read-only ahead of shutdown

The forum, at discussions.apple.com, stopped accepting new questions and replies right away. MacRumors reported that the last user post went up at 5:49 p.m. Pacific time on Tuesday.

The sign-in button now leads to an internal AppleConnect login page for corporate employees, 9to5Mac reported. In some places, the closure notice calls the site the "AppleCare Support Community" rather than its public name.

Apple has not said whether the millions of existing threads will stay online in an archive after Nov. 20 or be removed, and it has not offered a way to export them. Users who depend on a particular fix posted on the forums may want to save a copy before the deadline.

Nearly three decades of user help

The discussion network dates to 1998, when it launched as the Apple Tech Exchange. It later became Apple Discussions and then the Apple Support Community, growing into one of the largest product support forums on the internet.

The site let customers ask questions about iPhones, Macs, iPads and other Apple products and get answers from other users. Many of the most active contributors were longtime volunteers who earned points and status levels for helpful answers. Apple employees moderated the site but rarely answered questions themselves.

For many users, the forums were a way around the limits of official support channels. Threads often documented bugs, workarounds and fixes for older hardware that never made it into Apple's support articles, and many of those threads turn up at the top of web searches for specific error messages.

"It was a way of getting around the limitations of Apple Support and find some useful suggestions," one longtime contributor wrote on the TidBITS discussion forum after the announcement.

Where users can go now

Apple is directing customers to its official Apple Support website and app, which offer support articles, live chat, phone support and appointments at Apple Store Genius Bars.

Independent communities are likely to absorb some of the traffic. Long-running Apple enthusiast forums such as MacRumors and Reddit communities like r/AppleHelp already host large volumes of troubleshooting discussion.

A wider shift

The closure comes as tech companies increasingly move customer support toward automated tools, including AI-powered chat assistants, and away from open community forums that require moderation.

Apple has not said whether it plans to replace the forums with any other kind of community feature.

Some longtime users have expressed frustration. Volunteers who spent years answering questions said the sudden shutdown, with about 10 days' notice, leaves little time to preserve knowledge built up over decades.

The site will remain readable until Friday, Nov. 20.