System design

Apple System Design Questions

Every system design problem candidates reported at Apple between September 2025 and September 2026, most-asked first. Each one links to a full solution. Tick them off as you go.

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11problems
14candidate reports
2asked more than once
18topics
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Companies

Meta26Microsoft24Amazon23OpenAI22Google20TikTok16Salesforce15Anthropic15Uber12LinkedIn11Apple11JPMorgan11Atlassian11Snowflake9Netflix9Oracle9Goldman Sachs8Rippling8Databricks7Walmart7Airbnb7Capital One7NVIDIA6Pinterest6Roblox6Flipkart4Bloomberg4Visa4Adobe4Anduril1

Topics

Design Cloud Photo Storage and Multi-Device Sync
3 reports · last seen Aug 2026StorageCDNDistributed Systems
Advanced▶ Mock
Design ad click aggregator and file sync service
2 reports · last seen Jan 2026AdsAnalyticsData Pipelines
Advanced+2▶ Mock
Design a Distributed Token-Bucket Rate Limiter
1 report · last seen Aug 2026Rate LimitingDistributed SystemsAPI Design
Intermediate+9▶ Mock
Design a Centralized Logging System
1 report · last seen Jun 2026ObservabilityData PipelinesSearch
Intermediate+1▶ Mock
Design APIs for a Voting System
1 report · last seen May 2026API DesignDatabasesSecurity
Beginner▶ Mock
Design a smartwatch sensor subsystem
1 report · last seen Feb 2026IoTReal-timeData Pipelines
Intermediate▶ Mock
Design CI/CD for AI Services
1 report · last seen Feb 2026SchedulingDistributed SystemsStorage
Advanced▶ Mock
Design TikTok Data Engineering Systems
1 report · last seen Jan 2026Data PipelinesAnalyticsStorage
Advanced▶ Mock
Design Apple News without ML
1 report · last seen Dec 2025SearchData PipelinesCaching
Intermediate▶ Mock
Design a multimodal RAG assistant
1 report · last seen Dec 2025AI / MLSearchData Pipelines
Advanced▶ Mock
Design Disk-Based Inventory Serving
1 report · last seen Oct 2025StorageDatabasesAlgorithms
Advanced▶ Mock

Duplicate reports of the same problem are merged and counted.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What system design questions does Apple ask?

Candidates reported 11 distinct system design problems at Apple between September 2025 and September 2026, including Design Cloud Photo Storage and Multi-Device Sync, Design ad click aggregator and file sync service, Design a Distributed Token-Bucket Rate Limiter.

How to prepare for Apple system design interview?

Start with the Apple problems reported most often, work through each full solution, then practice explaining a design end to end under time pressure in a mock interview.

What is the difference between HLD and LLD at Apple?

HLD (High-Level Design) focuses on system architecture, scalability, and component interactions. LLD (Low-Level Design) dives into class diagrams, API contracts, and database schemas. Apple tests both.