Apple Is Shutting Down Their Support Community Forum Pages
If you visit the Apple Support Community pages, you will now see a message that says the pages will permanently close on November 20th, 2026. Today’s post will go over what we know so far about this announcement by Apple. Apple Support Community Shutting Down
The End Of The Apple Support Community
If you visit the Apple Support Community forum pages, you will now see a message at the top of the page sayings “…will permanently close on November 20, 2026“, with the site no longer accepting new posts and is now only read-only.
Per Apple’s message, assistance support will continue on the “official Apple Support site“.
As of now, the message on the Support Community page is a little vague. The message says Starting today, it will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state. However, it says the community will permanently close on November 20th.
- So, does that mean Apple will completely remove the pages and information on that day, or will the existing pages remain available in read-only state? If you were intending to keep the forum history (pages) available long term, why wouldn’t you just say something like “The community pages will be permanently available as read-only from this day forward” and not have a closing date? The closing date gives the impression that forums will be removed, but that is just how we are reading the message.
About The Apple Support Community
The forum pages started as Apple Tech Exchange in 1998, a place users who needed help could ask questions and other users could provide “fixes that they used“. It was then renamed, Apple Discussions in 2000. With another renaming as Apple Support Communities in 2011, with many users pointing out the name change in 2011 as communities (as in multiple). With the final rename to the Apple Support Community in 2022.
Back when it first started, Apple Discussions information would appear as top results in many online searches when looking fixes or information about Apple features. It’s funny because even IT techs would search the forums for help, as many times fixes in real world environments were better answers compared to the text book fixes given by Apple.
The Apple Support Community vs The Apple Support Site
Both the Apple Support Community and The Apple Support site provide information to the public; however, the community forum provides real world answers given by real world people. Not every answer is valuable to every person, and not every answer works, but it is the “This is how I fixed this in my world….” and takes into account variables that happen in day-to-day life. Information like this update to 27.2.1 causing wifi issues post that 13 others also said “Me To” on.
If I ask the same question on the Apple Support page, I get a very generic answer to Troubleshoot joining a wifi network.
Final Thoughts
For those of us who are old enough, the internet was about users helping users, People finding people. It is no longer that, the internet, as life itself these days is now How Can We Monetize. Many of the comments seen today say that the forums are useless, and maybe they are, because they require humans to run them and manage them, and these days humans managing anything online is becoming an extinct art.
Have also seen comments about how “That is what Reddit is for”, and that is fine, except that Reddit is also making changes, and soon Reddit will be a required logged-in experience, per the Reddit CEO. Which means that once you log in, they can see what you are doing and show you what the algorithm thinks you should see, again to Monetize things.
Lastly, and this isn’t a comment just about Apple, once you log in and can be tracked and monetized, you have basically 2 choices
- Give up your privacy for access, in which companies make money from your data (your life)
- Pay to get access to information
As someone who has 30 years working and fixing things in tech, Thank you and RIP to the Apple Community Support forums. You helped many a tech over the years find answers to many a strange or impossible issue.
Sources:
- Reddit – About The Log-In Screen (Upcoming Changes)
- Apple Support Community – Closing Message
- Official Apple Support – Main Page
