Apple Closes Its Support Community on November 20, Ten Days After Making It Read-Only

Apple will permanently close the Apple Support Community on November 20, 2026. The user-to-user forum has been read-only since Tuesday, November 10, and a notice on its home page says the closure is permanent.

The notice says new posts are no longer accepted and sends readers to Apple's official support site for "trusted guidance and support". It does not say what happens to existing threads or profiles after November 20, and it gives no reason.

What Apple has said

Engadget reported on November 11 that Apple told MacRumors the decision came "after a careful evaluation of strategy and customer needs". That is the full explanation in the sources reviewed.

Engadget's Mariella Moon describes the site as staying online read-only for now. Apple's notice itself is silent on whether that continues after the closing date, so treat the archive's future as unconfirmed.

How abruptly it happened

Joe Rossignol of MacRumors wrote on November 11 that Apple put the forums into a read-only state on November 10 without warning, so contributors could not post farewells. He quotes one long-time contributor, John Daniel, the developer of EtreCheck, who said "We regularly solved problems".

The Spanish forums closed without advance notice, according to Elías Rojano Núñez of Chile. MacRumors says the French and German versions carry no closure notices but will meet the same fate.

Who used it

Item	Detail from MacRumors
Languages	English, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish
Longest-serving member quoted	Jeff Donald, since November 2000, when it was Apple Discussions
Volunteer programme	Apple Community+, launched in 2022
Private forum	The Lounge, open at Level 6 and above

MacRumors gives no total for members or posts, and neither source supplies traffic figures. Engadget says the community began in 1998, and that its answers often rank high in search results for technical questions while varying in quality.

What it means for anyone with a bookmark

Years of answers to questions about macOS and iPhone problems sit on discussions.apple.com, and links to them from other sites may break if Apple removes the pages. Save any thread you rely on before November 20, because the sources do not promise an archive.

What is still unconfirmed

Apple has not said whether discussions.apple.com URLs will redirect to Apple Support, whether the French and German communities will close on the same date, or whether contributors can export their own posts. The notice is the only first-party statement, and it names one date: November 20, 2026. Everything else in this report comes from MacRumors and Engadget, two outlets that both attribute the Apple quote to the same exchange.

Also on the software desk this week: Atuin Threads, which moves agent session history between machines, and Meta's Astryx design system, which gained stars on GitHub trending. Neither is related to Apple, and neither ties to the forum's closure.