How to submit an apple

Submit your iOS and iPadOS apps to the App Store.

Deliver exciting app experiences that make the most of iOS 15 and iPadOS 15. Make sure your apps are faster, more responsive, and more engaging by taking advantage of the latest advances in ARKit, Core ML, and more. Build your apps with Xcode 13, update your product pages, and submit today.

Build with Xcode 13

Deliver great user experiences by seamlessly integrating with the latest advances on Apple platforms. Build your apps using Xcode 13, which includes SDKs for iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey, tvOS 15, and watchOS 8.

Starting April 2022, all iOS and iPadOS apps submitted to the App Store must be built with Xcode 13 and the iOS 15 SDK.

Optimize for iOS 15 and iPadOS 15

The iOS 15 SDK delivers a range of exciting capabilities. Improve your app’s performance by refactoring your code to take advantage of asynchronous functions in Swift. Create great-looking apps across all Apple platforms with the power of Swift. Build and train Core ML models right on your Mac more easily. Provide more nuanced notification delivery with one of four interruption levels. Offer Safari Web Extensions on all Apple devices that support Safari. Enrich your app experience with audio recognition. And much more.

Swift and SwiftUI

Improve your app’s performance and eliminate tricky bugs with Swift Concurrency. Simplify your Swift code with async/await. Load remote images faster than ever using AsyncImage in SwiftUI and enhance your apps with new features, such as improved list views, better search experiences, and support for control focus areas. Gain more control over lower-level drawing primitives with the new Canvas API, a modern, GPU-accelerated equivalent of drawRect. And with the new Accessibility Representation API, your custom controls easily inherit full accessibility support from existing standard SwiftUI controls.

SharePlay

SharePlay is a powerful new way to reach people organically as users introduce your app to their friends at relevant moments. Bring people together in an entirely new way by integrating your app into FaceTime using SharePlay and the Group Activities API.

Focus and notifications

With Focus, users can have notifications delivered at times that work best for them and with the Interruption Levels API, you can provide more nuanced delivery with one of four interruption levels (including new Passive and Time-Sensitive levels). Notifications from communication apps now have a distinctive appearance, and these apps can — with user permission — sync their status to reflect the user’s current system-level Focus status.

Safari Web Extensions

Safari Web Extensions use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to offer powerful browser customizations and new functionality across the web. With iOS 15, Safari Web Extensions are now available on all Apple devices that support Safari.

ShazamKit

Enrich your app experience with audio recognition. Match music to the millions of songs in Shazam’s vast catalog or make any prerecorded audio recognizable by building your own custom catalog using audio from video, podcasts, and more.

Create ML

The power of Create ML is now available as a Swift framework on iOS and iPadOS. Programmatically experiment and automate model creation in Swift scripts or playgrounds. Build dynamic app features that leverage Create ML APIs to train models directly from user input or on-device behavior, allowing you to provide personalized and adaptive experiences while preserving user privacy.

Test on devices

All-screen support

Apps should look great on all models of iPhone and iPad, regardless of display size or aspect ratio. With features like Xcode storyboards, Auto Layout, and SwiftUI, your app’s interface elements and layouts automatically fit the display. Test your apps with the latest devices or the simulator in Xcode 13 to make sure they’re ready to take advantage of the edge-to-edge displays by respecting safe areas, supporting adaptive layouts, and more. Find and address UI issues in your app before testing on a device to make sure your app looks great. App updates must use an Xcode storyboard to provide the app’s launch screen. In addition, new apps that run on iPhone must support all iPhone screens and new apps that run on iPad must support all iPad screens.

Required device capabilities

The App Store is designed to provide users with apps that work seamlessly with their devices’ capabilities. Verify that your information property list (info.plist) is compatible with any device requirements when submitting a new app that takes advantage of the latest technologies.

TestFlight beta testing

Before finalizing your app for release, get valuable feedback with beta testers. Upload your app to App Store Connect and use TestFlight to test on a device and easily invite other testers.

Submit for review

Before submitting your app for review, make sure it’s ready to be publicly released and that you’re making the most of your product page.

Guidelines

All apps submitted to the App Store are reviewed based on a set of technical, content, and design criteria. Make sure to review the App Store Review Guidelines before submitting your app for review.

Product page

Make sure your app’s name, icon, description, screenshots, app previews, and keywords are ready for your product page. You can also take this opportunity to update your subtitle and promotional text, and choose to promote any new in-app purchases. If your app supports Dark Mode, consider including at least one screenshot that showcases what the experience looks like for users.

App privacy details

Enter all necessary information about your app’s privacy practices, including the practices of third-party partners whose code you integrate into your app, in App Store Connect. These details inform the app privacy label on your App Store product page and are required to submit new apps and app updates to the App Store.

iPhone and iPad apps on the Mac App Store

Your iPhone and iPad apps will be published automatically on the Mac App Store on Apple silicon Macs, unless you update their availability in App Store Connect.

Submission

Once your app is updated for the latest platform versions and devices, submit for review. Get step-by-step instructions how to submit your apps for distribution on the App Store.

watchOS 8 Submissions

Deliver up-to-date information, make your apps more accessible, connect to Bluetooth peripherals in the background, gather HealthKit data, and take advantage of the GPU for rich programmatic drawing.

tvOS 15 Submissions

Easily authenticate purchases, build great media experiences with an all-new playback UI, integrate Apple Music into your apps using Swift, and protect against security threats.

Источник

How to Submit an iOS App to the App Store

You have worked weeks or months on your first iOS application, and you are ready to submit your masterpiece to Apple’s App Store. How do you do this? Is your application ready for submission? I am sure that some of these questions have entered your mind at one point or another.

Is submitting an application as simple as sending Apple your application’s binary? Not quite. With this tutorial, I will provide you with a detailed map to get your application submitted to Apple’s App Store.

Introduction

Even though the App Store review process is a black box for the most part, that doesn’t mean that you can’t prepare yourself and your application for Apple’s review process. Apple provides guidelines to help you stay within the sometimes invisible boundaries of what is and isn’t allowed in the App Store.

The first time you submit an application to the App Store is exciting and nerve-racking at the same time. Even for experienced iOS developers, submitting an application to the App Store is often a stressful undertaking because it is something that most developers don’t do on a daily basis.

Throughout this article, I am assuming that you are a registered iOS developer, which means that you are enrolled in Apple’s iOS Developer Program and are allowed to submit applications for publication in the App Store. To submit an iOS application to the App Store, you need to be a registered iOS developer. Red flag? Don’t worry. You can enroll in Apple’s iOS Developer Program by visiting the Apple Developer page and clicking the Enroll button.

1. Is Your Application Ready?

Step 1: Testing

An application isn’t necessarily ready when you’ve written the last line of code or implemented the final feature of the application’s specification.

Have you tested your application on one or more physical devices? Have you profiled your application for memory leaks and performance issues? Does your application crash from time to time?

The family of iOS devices has grown substantially over the years, and it is important to test your application on as many iOS devices as you can lay your hands on. Common issues include not optimizing an application for certain screen sizes. The iOS Simulator is a great tool, but it runs on your Mac, which has more memory and processing power than the phone in your pocket.

Apple’s Review Process isn’t airtight, but it is very capable of identifying problems that might affect your application’s user experience. If your application crashes from time to time or it becomes slow after ten minutes of use, then you have some work to do before submitting it to the App Store.

Even if Apple’s review team doesn’t spot the problem, your users will. If the people using your application are not pleased, they will leave bad reviews on the App Store, which may harm sales or inhibit downloads.

Step 2: Rules and Guidelines

As I mentioned earlier, Apple provides developers with a number of documents that are a great help during the creation and development process of your application.

The documents that you should be aware of are the iOS Human Interface Guidelines and the App Store Review Guidelines. Despite the availability of these documents, it seems that few developers take the time to browse them, let alone read them. It shouldn’t be a surprise that some applications are therefore rejected even though the reason for the rejection is clearly stated in these documents.

Even if you don’t intend to read the iOS Human Interface Guidelines or the App Store Review Guidelines, it is important to know some of the rules that they talk about. Take a look at the short list below to get an idea of what your application should and shouldn’t do.

• shouldn’t crash
• shouldn’t use private APIs
• shouldn’t replicate the functionality of native applications
• should use In App Purchase for in-app (financial) transactions
• shouldn’t use the camera or microphone without the user’s knowledge
• should only use artwork that is your copyright or that you have permission to use

Keep in mind that this is a tiny subset of the guidelines included in the aforementioned documents. The majority of the rules and guidelines are trivial, but some are not, and you might even violate some of them inadvertently.

Let me give you an example. Before Apple started using its own maps (a really long time ago), the MapKit framework used Google’s maps. This was clear to the user because of the small Google logo in the bottom left corner of each map. However, if some part of your application’s user interface covered or obscured Google’s logo, your application would get rejected. This rule seems trivial, but it is a rule that is easily violated if you’re not careful. Even automated tests won’t cover you in this case.

2. Prerequisites

Before you can even start thinking about submitting your application to the App Store, you need to make sure that you have an App ID, a valid distribution certificate, and a valid provisioning profile. Let me show you what this entails.

Step 1: App ID

Every application needs an App ID or application identifier. There are two types of application identifiers: an explicit App ID and a wildcard App ID. A wildcard App ID can be used for building and installing multiple applications. Despite the convenience of a wildcard App ID, an explicit App ID is required if your application uses iCloud or makes use of other iOS features, such as Game Center, Apple Push Notifications, or In App Purchase.

If you’re not sure what App ID best fits your project, then I recommend reading Technical Note QA1713 for more information about the topic.

Step 2: Distribution Certificate

To submit an application to the App Store, you need to create an iOS provisioning profile for distribution. To create such a provisioning profile, you first need to create a distribution certificate. The process for creating a distribution certificate is very similar to creating a development certificate. If you have tested your application on a physical device, then you are probably already familiar with the creation of a development certificate.

If you need to refresh your memory, I suggest reading Apple’s guide, Code Signing your Apps, about signing certificates and provisioning profiles. The process is not difficult once you understand how the various pieces of the puzzle fit together.

Step 3: Provisioning Profile

Once you’ve created an App ID and a distribution certificate, you can create an iOS provisioning profile for distributing your application through the App Store.

Keep in mind that you cannot use the same provisioning profile that you use for ad hoc distribution. You need to create a separate provisioning profile for App Store distribution. If you use a wildcard App ID for your project, then you can use the same provisioning profile for multiple applications.

Step 4: Build Settings

With the App ID, distribution certificate, and provisioning profile in place, it is time to configure your target’s build settings in Xcode. This means selecting the target from the list of targets in Xcode’s Project Navigator, opening the Build Settings tab at the top, and updating the settings in the Signing section. You will need to set the Code Signing to Automatic.

Even though the code signing process is fairly simple once you understand it, it is something that trips up a lot of developers. I don’t know a single Cocoa developer who hasn’t run into code signing issues at some point in their career. Once you’ve cleared this hurdle, the rest of the submission process is fairly easy.

Step 5: Deployment Target

It is useful to think a little about your application’s deployment target. Each target in an Xcode project has a deployment target, which indicates the minimum version of the operating system that the application can run on.

It is up to you to set the deployment target, but keep in mind that modifying the deployment target is not something you can do without consequences once your application is in the App Store. If you increase the deployment target for an update of your application, then users who have already purchased your application but don’t meet the new deployment target cannot run the update.

It gets really problematic when a user downloads an update through iTunes (not the device), replacing the previous version on their computer, and then discovers that the new update doesn’t run on their device.

I have two very simple tips with regards to your application’s deployment target:

1. Be very careful when you decide to increase the deployment target of an existing application. Mention this in the application’s release notes of the updates that precede the change, and again in the update that uses the new deployment target. If you warn your customers well in advance, you have done all you can to prevent potential problems.
2. For new applications, I almost always set the deployment target to the last major release.

3. Assets

Step 1: Icons

You probably know that an application icon is a vital component of every iOS application, but you need to make sure that your application ships with the correct sizes of the artwork. Take a look at the table below:

Источник