Ask HN: How do you handle peer-to-peer discovery on iOS without a server?

Re:Ask HN: How do you handle peer-to-peer discovery on iOS w... by redgridtactical on Sunday March 22, 2026 @04:53PM (#47482016)

Hadn't seen that repo, really interesting find. Using undocumented Continuity fields for discovery is tempting but I wouldn't want to build on something Apple could break in any iOS update. I'm doing a GATT characteristic handshake with a session-derived service UUID for re-identification after address rotations. Takes a couple extra seconds on reconnect but at least it's stable. Those Continuity protocol docs are useful regardless though, good to understand what Apple is doing under the hood.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you handle peer-to-peer discovery on iOS w... by razingeden on Sunday March 22, 2026 @04:57PM (#47482052)

fair, I wouldn’t want a business model that’s dependent on something they could take away overnight.

so that’s discovery, I don’t have any ideas about retention offhand (you already do) but you’ve had that question rattling around for awhile and it’s new to me.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you handle peer-to-peer discovery on iOS w... by redgridtactical on Tuesday March 24, 2026 @07:07PM (#47510851)

Yeah exactly. Apple has a history of quietly changing undocumented behavior between point releases. Building on top of that is asking for a fun debugging session six months from now. The GATT handshake adds a couple seconds of latency on reconnect but at least I know it won't break with iOS 19.

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