Apple's Support Community Forums Close on 20 November. Here's Where to Get Help Instead

If you've ever typed an iPhone or Mac problem into Google, there's a good chance you've ended up on a thread in Apple's Support Community, the official forums where Apple users help each other out. Apple has announced that those forums will close permanently on Friday 20 November 2026, and they've already stopped accepting new posts. So if you rely on them for answers, it's worth knowing what's changing and where to go for help afterwards.

What Apple has announced

Visitors to the Apple Support Community now see a notice saying the site will permanently close on 20 November 2026 and is in a read-only state from now on. Apple's message points people to its official Apple Support site instead, and thanks the members who gave their time to help others with their Apple products.

Read-only means you can still browse and search the existing discussions, and you can still press the "Me too" and voting buttons on posts, as 9to5Mac found, but you can't ask a new question or reply to one. There's still a sign-in button on the page, although it now leads to a login for Apple's own staff rather than for the public.

Apple told MacRumors that it made the decision after a careful look at its strategy and what customers need. It hasn't said whether the old threads will be kept anywhere once the site closes, so it's safest to assume they won't be there to look up after 20 November.

The end of a very long-running forum

These forums have been around in one form or another since 1998, when they began life as the Apple Tech Exchange. They became Apple Discussions in 2000, Apple Support Communities in 2011, and took the name Apple Support Community in 2022. That's nearly three decades of people swapping fixes and tips, which is why so many of those old threads still turn up near the top of search results.

What it means for you

For most people the main change is that the search results you're used to clicking on will start to disappear, and you won't be able to post a question there and wait for someone to reply. Apple's own support site isn't going anywhere, and you can still contact Apple Support directly. MacRumors also suggests its own forums and Reddit as places where people discuss Apple problems.

There is one thing I'd do before the 20th, though. If you've found a bit of advice on the forums that you keep going back to, take a screenshot of it, print the page out, or simply copy and paste the text into a note on your device so you can find it again later if you need it. Once the site has closed it'll be too late.

• Save anything useful now, by screenshot, printout or copying it into a note.
• Bookmark Apple's support site at support.apple.com for official guides.
• Contact Apple Support directly if you have a problem with your device that needs Apple's attention.

What I think

When customers have come to me after reading the forums, what they'd usually found wasn't so much a fix as reassurance. Most of the time the forums showed them that their problem wasn't just them, and that lots of other people were seeing the same thing, which is a comfort in itself and useful to know when you're deciding what to do next.

As for where to turn now, I'd say come here. My hope is that this blog is a place where you can find answers that are based on Apple's own documentation and expert knowledge, explained simply. And because you can comment on every post we publish, it's also a place to ask questions and get a conversation going about whatever the topic is, which is a little of what made the forums useful in the first place.

If you've got a quick question in the meantime, you can ask iHelp AI at /chat any time, and if you'd rather talk it through with a person, you can book a session with us, either remotely from anywhere in the UK or in person here in Dorset.

Alex