Starting August 4, 2021, a new certificate for server-based Game Center verification will be available via the publicKeyUrl. The previous certificate will no longer be available after this date. As a reminder, make sure your app always retrieves and uses the current publicKeyUrl value so it automatically uses the new certificate. If your app caches the certificate or hardcodes the certificate URL, it will require an update.

Please note, this root certificate issuer has been updated from Symantec Corporation to DigiCert, Inc. Make sure to check that the new root certificate issuer is on your list of trusted CAs. You can download the trusted root CA (DigiCert trusted G4) here.

Learn more

The App Store makes it easy for you to manage transactions in 175 territories, and Apple administers tax on behalf of developers in 64 of those territories. Now App Store Connect provides the ability to assign tax categories to your apps and in-app purchases. These categories are based on your app's content (for example, videos, books, or news publications) and determine which tax regulations apply in each territory, allowing Apple to administer tax for you at specific rates.

To assign categories, visit the Pricing and Availability section for your app in App Store Connect. If a category applies to your app, select it at the app level to apply it to the app and its associated in-app purchases. You can also manage each in-app purchase individually. Your selections will be applied to future transactions and you can view the new Transaction Tax report the first full month after you configure your settings. If you choose not to make any changes, your apps and in-app purchases will be assigned the App Store software category at the same tax rate used today. Adjust these settings at any time as the characterization of your apps or in-app purchases evolve or as tax legislation changes.

Learn more about setting tax categories

The App Store is a safe and trusted place for customers to discover and download apps, and a great opportunity for developers. The App Store Review Guideline changes and clarifications support new features in upcoming OS releases, better protect customers, and help your apps go through the review process as smoothly as possible.

You can now connect with over 1,000 Apple engineers on the Apple Developer Forums through WWDC21 tags specific to sessions and topics.

Learn more

Create seamless, intelligent, and engaging experiences with the latest exciting advancements in iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey, tvOS 15, and watchOS 8. Get the Xcode 13 beta, which includes SDKs for all Apple platforms.

Learn more about what’s new

Xcode 13 adds powerful new team development features, perfect for working with Xcode Cloud as well as with GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab collaboration features. Initiate, review, comment, and merge pull requests directly within Xcode. See your teammates’ comments right inside your code. And quickly compare any two versions of your code files.

Learn more

Xcode Cloud is a continuous integration and delivery service built into Xcode and designed expressly for Apple developers. It accelerates the development and delivery of high-quality apps by bringing together cloud-based tools that help you build apps, run automated tests in parallel, deliver apps to testers, and view and manage user feedback. Sign up for the beta today.

Learn more about Xcode Cloud

The power of Create ML is now available as a Swift framework on iOS and iPadOS, in addition to macOS. 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, providing personalized and adaptive experiences while preserving user privacy. You can also take advantage of new templates and training capabilities, APls for Vision and Natural languages, and more.

Learn more about machine learning

ARKit 5 introduces new features and improvements that make the AR experiences in your apps better than ever. You can now place Location Anchors in even more cities, pin virtual content within your App Clips or ARKit apps to a printed or digital App Clip Code, take advantage of Face Tracking in the Ultra Wide camera on iPad Pro (5th generation), and more.

Learn more about augmented reality

SharePlay gives people the ability to share experiences right inside FaceTime in an entirely new way. Use the Group Activities API to bring movies, TV, music, and more from your app into a space where people are already connecting with each other.

Learn more about SharePlay

Enrich your app experience with audio recognition. Now you can 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.

Learn more about ShazamKit

Take advantage of the latest capabilities to improve the discovery of your app on the App Store, and deliver high-quality app and in-app purchase experiences.

• Showcase your in-app events right on the App Store.
• Create additional versions of your product page to showcase different features or content, each with a unique URL.
• Try different app icons, screenshots, and app previews on your default App Store product page and compare their performance to understand what users like most.
• Beta test your Mac apps using TestFlight.
• Take advantage of powerful, modern Swift-based APIs for in-app purchases with StoreKit 2. And provide more seamless support for in-app purchases with new APIs that let users request refunds and manage their subscriptions within your app.
• Help players discover and play your game with Game Center widgets, and build social experiences with the new Friends API.

And much more.

Find out what’s new

SF Symbols 3 introduces over 600 new symbols, enhanced color customization, new inspector with controls for rendering and color configuration, and improved support for custom symbols.

Learn more about SF Symbols

The Apple Developer Forums offer a trusted space to find answers, ask questions, and share thoughts on a variety of code-level topics with fellow developers and Apple engineers. New features now make it even easier to keep track of activity, search for content, post replies, and more.

• Post comments on questions or answers to provide context or ask for clarification.
• Search for content across multiple tags.
• Add and manage favorite tags.
• Upload images to your question or answer to provide supporting visual details.
• See tag descriptions when choosing tags for your question so you can quickly select the most appropriate ones.
• Subscribe to RSS feeds for tags you’re interested in.
• See your authored and watched content, favorite tags, and trending tags on the newly designed home page.

Learn more about the forums

Visit the forums

To help you describe your app’s content more precisely, the age rating settings in App Store Connect have been refined. The Gambling and Contests setting is now split into two settings, allowing you to indicate these content types separately. They’re also indicated separately on the App Store.

If your answer to the Gambling and Contests setting was Yes, the update automatically reflects that your app includes instances of Gambling. Contests will be marked as Frequent/Intense. If your answer was No, the update automatically reflects that your app does not include instances of Gambling or Contests.

In addition, you can access age rating settings directly from the App Information section in App Store Connect. Apps that offer Universal Purchase display the same age rating on the App Store across all platforms. You can make changes to your age rating settings when submitting a new version of your app and your app’s availability in certain regions will be updated based on local laws.

Learn more about age rating settings

Apple helps keep the App Store a safe and trusted place for users to discover apps by detecting and taking action against fraudulent developers and users.

Threats have been present since the first day the App Store launched on iPhone, and they’ve increased in both scale and sophistication in the years since. Apple has likewise scaled its efforts to meet those threats, taking relentless steps forward to combat these risks to users and developers alike.

The App Store provides a safe and trusted place for users around the world to discover and download your apps. And now with search suggestions, it provides another great discovery method. When users search on the App Store, they see suggested search terms related to what they’re looking for. Tapping a suggestion adjusts their search, so they’ll easily find even more apps that might fit their needs. App Store search is one of the main ways that users discover apps, and developers are already seeing more downloads from those who use these suggestions.

Search suggestions are currently available in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Additional regions will be made available over time.

Learn best practices for App Store search optimization

Private Click Measurement is now available in iOS 14.5 and iPadOS 14.5, allowing advertising networks to measure the effectiveness of advertisement clicks within apps and websites that navigate to a website. This information can be used to understand which advertisements drive conversions (such as purchases or signups) — while maintaining user privacy.

Starting with the beta release of iOS 14.6 and iPadOS 14.6, advertising networks that use SKAdNetwork 3.0 are eligible to receive attribution postbacks if their advertisement does not win the attribution. This allows up to five advertising networks to see when an advertisement they ran was a runner-up to an app installation.

Learn more about SKAdNetwork

Last year, to support apps that adapted services from in-person to digital due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we temporarily deferred the requirement to offer paid online group event services (one-to-few and one-to-many realtime services) through in-app purchase in accordance with App Store Review Guideline 3.1.1. As the world continues to recover from the pandemic, we’d like to support the communities that are still providing digital services in place of in-person group events by extending the deadline further to December 31, 2021.

As a reminder, guideline 3.1.3(d) allows apps offering realtime person-to-person services between two individuals (for example, tutoring students, medical consultations, real estate tours, or fitness training) to use purchase methods other than in-app purchase.

With the upcoming public release of iOS 14.5, iPadOS 14.5, and tvOS 14.5, all apps must use the AppTrackingTransparency framework to request the user’s permission to track them or to access their device's advertising identifier. Unless you receive permission from the user to enable tracking, the device's advertising identifier value will be all zeros and you may not track them.

When submitting your app for review, any other form of tracking — for example, by name or email address — must be declared in the product page’s App Store Privacy Information section and be performed only if permission is granted through AppTrackingTransparency. You'll also need to include a purpose string in the system prompt to explain why you'd like to track the user, per App Store Review Guideline 5.1.2(i). These requirements apply to all apps starting April 26, 2021.

As a reminder, collecting device and usage data with the intent of deriving a unique representation of a user, or fingerprinting, continues to be a violation of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement.

Learn more about user privacy and data use

Make sure your apps make the most of iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and watchOS 7. Build your apps with the Xcode 12.5 Release Candidate, update your product pages, and submit them for review.

iPhone and iPad apps. Starting April 26, 2021, all iPhone and iPad apps submitted to the App Store must be built with Xcode 12 and the iOS 14 SDK or later. The iOS SDK provides access to exciting new features like App Clips, Home screen widgets, ARKit, RealityKit, and much more.

Learn more

Apple Watch apps. Starting April 26, 2021, all watchOS apps submitted to the App Store must be built with Xcode 12 and the watchOS 7 SDK or later. The watchOS 7 SDK lets you create multiple complications for each complication family using new ClockKit APIs, SwiftUI Complications, and Xcode Previews — so users can enjoy your app right on their watch face.

Learn more

It’s now simpler than ever for developers around the world to enroll in the Apple Developer Program. As of today, the Apple Developer app also supports enrollment in Canada, France, India, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, and Spain.

Developers can start and finish their membership purchase with local payment methods on iPhone or iPad. And since membership is provided as an auto-renewable subscription, keeping it active is easy.

View on the App Store

Make sure your apps are ready for iOS 14.5, iPadOS 14.5, and tvOS 14.5. With the upcoming public release, all apps must use the AppTrackingTransparency framework to request the user's permission to track them or to access their device's advertising identifier. Unless you receive permission from the user to enable tracking, the device's advertising identifier value will be all zeros and you may not track them.

When submitting your app for review, any other form of tracking — for example, by name or email address — must be declared in the product page's App Store Privacy Information section and be performed only if permission is granted through AppTrackingTransparency. You'll also need to include a purpose string in the system prompt to explain why you'd like to track the user, per App Store Review Guideline 5.1.2(i). These requirements apply to all apps starting with the public release of iOS 14.5, iPadOS 14.5, and tvOS 14.5.

As a reminder, collecting device and usage data with the intent of deriving a unique representation of a user, or fingerprinting, continues to be a violation of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement.

Learn more about user privacy and data use

If you support Family Sharing, you can now receive new App Store server notifications for real-time updates on family member statuses.

• REVOKE lets you know when to revoke a family member’s access to an auto-renewable subscription or non-consumable in-app purchase. The App Store sends this notification to your server when a purchaser disables Family Sharing for an in-app purchase, the purchaser or family member leaves the family group, or the purchaser asks for and receives a refund.

• DID_FAIL_TO_RENEW and DID_RECOVER are now sent for each family member when a shared subscription fails to renew due to a billing issue and when it is successfully recovered.

As a reminder, the following deprecated App Store server notification and top-level objects are no longer supported in production as of today. Update your code now to continue providing a seamless user experience.

• RENEWAL
• latest_receipt
• latest_receipt_info
• latest_expired_receipt
• latest_expired_receipt_info

Learn about App Store server notifications

Learn about supporting Family Sharing

The HTTP/2-based Apple Push Notification service (APNs) provider API lets you take advantage of great features, such as authentication with a JSON Web Token, improved error messaging, and per-notification feedback. If you still send push notifications with the legacy binary protocol, make sure to upgrade to the APNs provider API as soon as possible. APNs will no longer support the legacy binary protocol after March 31, 2021.

Learn about the APNs provider API

Additional details have been published on completing your App Store privacy labels, including more information about data types, such as email or text messages, and gameplay content. You’ll also find more information about data collected in web views and data that may be entered by users within documents or other file types.

Learn more

Indoor Mapping Data Format (IMDF) lets you present your users with fully-customized indoor maps of venues around the world, such as stadiums, airports, and campuses — all under the security and privacy controls of the property owner. Developed by Apple, IMDF makes it easy for organizations to enable Apple’s indoor positioning service on iPhone and iPad inside facilities without installing additional infrastructure, like beacons. It offers a mobile-friendly, compact, human-readable, and highly extensible data model for any indoor space, providing a basis for orientation, navigation, and discovery. And now, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) membership has added IMDF 1.0.0 to the OGC Standards Baseline as a Community Standard.

Learn more about IMDF

Learn about displaying indoor maps

You can now view important details about your App Clips, such as the number of installations, sessions, and crashes. You can also see how users found your App Clips — for example, through an App Clip Code, Maps, or an external referral. App Clip data is available only from users who have agreed to share their diagnostics and usage information with app developers.

Learn more

Apple Entrepreneur Camp supports underrepresented founders and developers as they build the next generation of cutting-edge apps and helps form a global network that encourages the pipeline and longevity of these entrepreneurs in technology. Applications are open now for the next cohort for female founders and developers, which runs online from July 20 to 29, 2021. Attendees receive code-level guidance, mentorship, and inspiration with unprecedented access to Apple engineers and leaders. Applications close on March 26, 2021.

Learn more about Entrepreneur Camp

Learn about some of our inspiring alumni

With the recent release of COVID-19 vaccines, we’ve seen an increase in apps that generate health passes used to enter buildings and access in-person services based on testing and vaccination records. To ensure these apps responsibly handle sensitive data and provide reliable functionality, they must be submitted by developers working with entities recognized by public health authorities, such as test kit manufacturers, laboratories, or healthcare providers. As with other apps related to COVID-19, we also accept apps submitted directly by government, medical, and other credentialed institutions.

Learn more about submitting COVID-19 related apps

The Apple Developer Forums are a great place to connect with fellow developers and Apple engineers as you give and receive help on development topics. And now, it’s easier to find and keep track of content you’re interested in. Take advantage of enhanced search and a new feature that monitors threads for you and sends you an email each time there’s a reply.

Learn more about the forums

Visit the forums

When taxes or foreign exchange rates change, we sometimes need to update prices on the App Store in certain regions and/or adjust your proceeds. In the next few days, your proceeds will be adjusted in the following regions and will be calculated based on the tax-exclusive price.

Cameroon: New value-added tax of 19.25%

Zimbabwe: New value-added tax of 14.5%

Prices of apps and in-app purchases (excluding auto-renewable subscriptions) on the App Store will increase in these regions.

Germany: Value-added tax rate reversion to 19% after temporary decrease to 16%. Prices on the App Store will not change.

Republic of Korea: Prices of alternative tiers for apps and in-app purchases (excluding auto-renewable subscriptions) will be adjusted to allow for additional locally relevant pricing conventions.

Once these changes go into effect, the Pricing and Availability section of My Apps will be updated. You can change the price of your apps and in-app purchases (including auto-renewable subscriptions) at any time in App Store Connect. If you offer subscriptions, you can choose to preserve prices for existing subscribers.

View the updated price tier charts

On March 29, 2021, token and certificate-based HTTP/2 connections to the Apple Push Notification service must incorporate the new root certificate (AAACertificateServices 5/12/2020) which replaces the old GeoTrust Global CA root certificate. To ensure a seamless transition and to avoid push notification delivery failures, verify that both the old and new root certificates for the HTTP/2 interface are included in the Trust Store of each of your notification servers before March 29.

Note that Apple Push Notification service SSL provider certificates issued to you by Apple do not need be to updated at this time.

Learn more about connecting to APNs

Designing apps for Apple platforms just got easier. Now you can quickly lay out your app for macOS Big Sur or tvOS 14 using new design templates, components, guides, and more. All major macOS and tvOS components, such as buttons, segmented controls, alerts, menus, and other controls, are included. In addition, the updated iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 design resources for Sketch have been rebuilt to support color variables, and include numerous minor improvements and bug fixes.

View resources

The App Store is a safe and trusted place for customers to discover and download apps, and a great opportunity for developers. The App Store Review Guideline changes and clarifications support new features in upcoming OS releases, better protect customers, and help your apps go through the review process as smoothly as possible.

SKAdNetwork 2.2. This update supports view-through attribution for advertisement formats such as video, audio, and interactive advertisements. This allows you to display your choice of advertising formats and measure which creatives are most effective, while preserving user privacy.

Private Click Measurement. iOS 14.5 and iPadOS 14.5 bring Private Click Measurement to apps, in addition to the web. Advertising networks can now measure the effectiveness of advertisement clicks within iOS or iPadOS apps that navigate to a website. This information can be used to understand which advertisements drive conversions (such as purchases or signups) — while maintaining user privacy.

Get started by building and testing your apps with the beta versions of Xcode 12.5, iOS 14.5, and iPadOS 14.5.

Learn more about SKAdNetwork

Learn more about Private Click Measurement

Download the latest betas

Late last year, to give you additional time to prepare, we had temporarily deferred the requirement to use AppTrackingTransparency when requesting permission to track users and access device advertising identifiers. This requirement now goes into effect starting with the upcoming beta update, and will roll out to everyone in early spring with an upcoming release of iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and tvOS 14. We encourage you to verify your app’s implementation of AppTrackingTransparency as soon as possible. Without the user’s permission, you will not be allowed to track them and the device’s advertising identifier value will be all zeros.

In an upcoming release of iOS and iPadOS, we will enhance SKAdNetwork and add Private Click Measurement support for apps, allowing advertising networks to better attribute advertisements that display within apps on these platforms. Private Click Measurement enables the measurement of ad campaigns that direct users to websites while preserving user privacy. Additional details are coming soon.

Learn more about user privacy and data use

Online purchase flows for users in the European Economic Area may be impacted by the European Union’s upcoming Strong Customer Authentication requirements. The App Store and Apple Pay will support Strong Customer Authentication. We recommend that you verify your app’s implementation of StoreKit and Apple Pay to make sure purchases are handled correctly.

Learn more

The App Store now helps users better understand an app’s privacy practices before they download the app on any Apple platform. On each app’s product page, users can learn about some of the data types an app may collect, and whether that data is linked to them or used to track them. As a reminder, your app’s privacy information is required to submit new apps and app updates to the App Store, and some data is optional to disclose if it meets specific criteria, such as certain data from health research apps and regulated financial services. You may update your answers at any time without resubmitting your app or going through App Review.

Learn more about the details you’ll need to provide

Learn how to provide app privacy information in App Store Connect

Easily discoverable and quick to launch at the moment it’s needed, an App Clip is a small part of your app that lets users start and finish an experience in seconds. While you can offer users several ways to discover your App Clip, the best way is with an App Clip Code. Visually beautiful and distinct, each App Clip Code encodes a URL and can incorporate an NFC tag. Users can hold their iPhone near the code or scan it with the camera to open your App Clip and quickly complete a task, before downloading your app.

Codes can now be created in App Store Connect or with the new command line App Clip Code Generator, which provides the flexibility to build your own batch generation process.

Learn about App Clip Codes

As a reminder, new apps and app updates will not be accepted December 23 through 27 (Pacific Time). Please ensure time for your releases to be scheduled, submitted, and approved in advance so you’ll be ready for the busiest season on the App Store. Other App Store Connect and developer account features will remain available.

You can now enable Family Sharing for auto-renewable subscriptions and non-consumable in-app purchases, allowing users to share their purchases with up to five family members. Family Sharing provides a streamlined, convenient user experience and can help you attract subscribers, encourage paid subscriptions, increase user engagement, and improve retention. Sales and Trends reports will be updated soon to help you understand the performance of family subscriptions.

Learn how to enable Family Sharing

Now you can better understand your subscription offer code performance with Sales and Trends dashboards and reports in App Store Connect. Offer code data appears in version 1_3 of the Subscription, Subscription Event, and Subscriber reports, and version 1_1 of the Summary Sales Report.

Learn how to view offer code data

Enrollment is now open for the new App Store Small Business Program, designed to accelerate innovation and help propel your small business forward. Featuring a reduced commission rate of 15% on paid apps and in-app purchases, this program helps you invest more resources into your business so you can continue building great apps. The vast majority of developers on the App Store who sell digital goods and services are eligible — simply complete a short enrollment form.

Learn more about the program

Developing for Apple platforms is now accessible with a new service that combines the performance and reliability of our world-class hardware with the scalability of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud, now includes EC2 Mac instances. For the first time, you can easily set up and deploy macOS workloads natively within AWS, and take advantage of its flexibility and scalability to add more compute capacity. EC2 Mac instances in the cloud make it easy to create more builds, run more tests, and further automate your development processes by seamlessly provisioning and accessing macOS compute environments with just a few clicks.

Learn more

The SKAdNetwork API helps advertising networks measure the success of ad campaigns for your app while maintaining user privacy. With SKAdNetwork 2.0, networks can use Source App ID to identify which app initiated a download from the App Store. And Conversion Value lets them know whether users who installed your app through a campaign performed an action in your app, such as signing up for a free trial or completing a purchase. This information is made available only if it cannot be used to identify individual users.

Learn more about SKAdNetwork

The busiest season on the App Store is almost here. Make sure your apps are up to date and ready for the holidays, as new apps and app updates will not be accepted December 23 through 27 (Pacific Time). Please ensure time for your releases to be scheduled, submitted, and approved in advance. Other App Store Connect and developer account features will remain available.

As the world fights COVID-19, we recognize that adapting experiences from in-person to digital continues to be a top priority. Although apps are required to offer any paid online group event experiences (one-to-few and one-to-many realtime experiences) through in-app purchase in accordance with App Store Review guideline 3.1.1, we temporarily deferred this requirement with an original deadline of December 2020. To allow additional time for developing in-app purchase solutions, this deadline has been extended to June 30, 2021.

Please note that guideline 3.1.3(d) allows apps offering realtime person-to-person experiences between two individuals (for example, tutoring students, medical consultations, real estate tours, or fitness training) to use purchase methods other than in-app purchase.

We believe that small businesses are the backbone of our global economy and the beating heart of innovation and opportunity in communities around the world. Launching January 1, 2021, the industry-leading new App Store Small Business Program is designed to accelerate innovation and help propel your small business forward. The program has a reduced commission rate of 15% on paid apps and in-app purchases, so you can invest more resources into your business and continue building the kind of quality apps your customers love.

The vast majority of developers on the App Store who sell digital goods and services will qualify for the Small Business Program.

• Existing developers who made up to $1 million in proceeds in 2020 for all their apps, as well as developers new to the App Store, can qualify for the program and the reduced commission.
• If a participating developer surpasses the $1 million threshold, the standard commission rate will apply for the remainder of the year.
• If a developer’s business falls below the $1 million threshold in a future calendar year, they can re-qualify for the 15% commission the year after.

Stay tuned for additional details in early December.

You can now create subscription offer codes to acquire, retain, and win back subscribers. Offer codes are unique, alphanumeric codes that provide auto-renewable subscriptions at a discounted price or for free for a specific duration. Provide your one-time use codes digitally or offline at physical events, alongside products, and more. Users on iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 and later can redeem offer codes on the App Store through a one-time code redemption URL, or within your app if you’ve implemented the presentCodeRedemptionSheet API. Sales and Trends reports will be updated later this year to include information on the performance of your subscription offer codes.

Learn more about subscription offer codes

You can now use Transporter for Mac to upload metadata, view a history of delivered builds for each app version, and filter that history by time period. This latest version also includes support for 29 additional languages.

View on the Mac App Store

Submit your apps built for macOS Big Sur today. You can submit Universal apps built with Xcode 12.2 that take full advantage of Apple silicon Macs. Your apps will look better than ever on macOS Big Sur, thanks to an all-new interface that’s been finely tuned for the powerful features that make a Mac a Mac. New widget features and the new widget gallery can make your app visible at a glance. And much more. Build your apps with Xcode 12.2 Release Candidate, update your product pages, and submit your apps for review today.

Learn more

Custom apps let you meet the unique needs of organizations and schools. And now, you can distribute custom Mac apps. Provide a tailored look and feel, security features for sensitive data, special functionality for workflows, and much more, then distribute privately on Apple Business Manager or Apple School Manager.

Learn more about creating custom apps

Later this year, the App Store will help users understand an app’s privacy practices before they download the app on any Apple platform. On each app’s product page, users can learn about some of the data types the app may collect, and whether that data is linked to them or used to track them. You can now enter your app’s privacy information in App Store Connect. This information will be required to submit new apps and app updates to the App Store starting December 8, 2020.

Learn more about the details you’ll need to provide

Learn how to provide app privacy information in App Store Connect

App Store server notifications provide real-time updates on a subscriber’s status, so you can create customized user experiences. The following new notifications are now available in production:

• DID_RENEW lets you know when a subscriber successfully auto-renews.
• PRICE_INCREASE_CONSENT lets you know when the App Store starts asking users to agree to your subscription’s new price, so you can remind them of your service’s value as encouragement to stay subscribed.

In addition, the following will be deprecated in production in March 2021: RENEWAL notifications and these top-level objects: latest_receipt, latest_receipt_info, latest_expired_receipt, and latest_expired_receipt_info. Update your code to continue providing a seamless user experience.

Learn more about App Store server notifications

When taxes or foreign exchange rates change, we sometimes need to update prices on the App Store. In the next few days, prices of apps and in-app purchases (excluding auto-renewable subscriptions) on the App Store will increase in Brazil, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Russia, and South Africa. These increases also reflect the following tax changes:

• India: New equalization levy of 2% (in addition to the existing goods and services tax of 18%)
• Indonesia: New value-added tax of 10% for developers based outside of Indonesia

Prices of apps and in-app purchases (excluding auto-renewable subscriptions) will also be adjusted in Iceland and Albania to align with pricing used in other markets selling in U.S. dollars with value-added tax.

You can download the updated price tier charts now. Once these changes go into effect, the Pricing and Availability section of My Apps will be updated, and your proceeds will be adjusted accordingly and calculated based on the tax-exclusive price. You can change the price of your apps and in-app purchases (including auto-renewable subscriptions) at any time in App Store Connect. If you offer subscriptions, you can choose to preserve prices for existing subscribers.

Apple Entrepreneur Camp supports underrepresented founders and developers as they build the next generation of cutting-edge apps and helps form a global network that encourages the pipeline and longevity of these entrepreneurs in technology. Applications are now open for the first cohort for Black founders and developers, which runs online from February 16 to 25, 2021. Attendees receive code-level guidance, mentorship, and inspiration with unprecedented access to Apple engineers and leaders. Applications close on November 20, 2020.

Learn more about Apple Entrepreneur Camp

Learn about some of our inspiring alumni

Now you can let customers pre-order your app up to 180 days before it’s released for download on the App Store. Take advantage of this longer lead time to build more excitement for your app’s features, services, and content, and to encourage more pre-orders. Once your app is released, customers will be notified and it will automatically download to their device within 24 hours.

Learn more about pre-orders

The HTTP/2-based Apple Push Notification service (APNs) provider API lets you take advantage of great features, such as authentication with a JSON Web Token, improved error messaging, and per-notification feedback. If you send push notifications with the legacy binary protocol, we strongly recommend upgrading to the APNs provider API.

To give you additional time to prepare, the deadline to upgrade to the APNs provider API has been extended to March 31, 2021. APNs will no longer support the legacy binary protocol after this date.

Learn about the APNs provider API

Now it’s simpler than ever for developers based in the United Kingdom and Ireland to enroll in the Apple Developer Program. The Apple Developer app now supports enrollment in these regions, allowing developers to start and finish their membership purchase with local payment methods on iPhone or iPad. And since membership is provided as an auto-renewable subscription, keeping it active is easy.

View on the App Store

App Store server notifications provide real-time updates on a subscriber’s status, so you can create customized user experiences. The following new notifications are now available in the App Store sandbox environment and you can use them in production later this year:

• DID_RENEW lets you know when a subscriber successfully auto-renews.
• PRICE_INCREASE_CONSENT lets you know when the App Store starts asking users to agree to your subscription’s new price, so you can remind them of your service’s value as encouragement to stay subscribed.

In addition, the following will be deprecated in the App Store sandbox environment in November 2020: RENEWAL notifications and these top-level objects: latest_receipt, latest_receipt_info, latest_expired_receipt, and latest_expired_receipt_info. Update your code to continue providing a seamless user experience.

Learn more about App Store server notifications

Apple designed WKWebView in 2014 to ensure that you can integrate web content into your app quickly, securely, and consistently across iOS and macOS. Since then, we’ve recommended that you adopt WKWebView instead of UIWebView and WebView — both of which were formally deprecated. New apps containing these frameworks are no longer accepted by the App Store. And last year, we announced that the App Store will no longer accept app updates containing UIWebView as of December 2020.

However, to provide additional time for you to adopt WKWebView and to ensure that it supports the features most often requested by developers, this deadline for app updates has been extended beyond the end of 2020. We’ll let you know when a new deadline is confirmed.

Learn about the latest in WKWebView

Take advantage of new marketing resources to promote your apps around the world. You can now generate short links or embeddable code that lead to your App Store product page and display your app icon, a QR code, or an App Store badge. Download localized App Store badges, your app icon, and more.

Learn more

The latest version of Schoolwork, the powerful iPad app for teachers and students that helps them keep track of assignments and student progress, is now available. Make sure your app takes advantage of the latest ClassKit features to provide a great user experience. With the new ClassKit Catalog API, you can declare contexts ahead of time instead of at runtime, include keywords, and support a large number of assignable activities. Teachers can browse your app’s activities in Schoolwork before running your app for the first time on their device. Available in beta, this REST API can be tested with Schoolwork 2.1. And on iPadOS 14, ClassKit supports rich new metadata properties to make your content more discoverable by teachers in Schoolwork.

Learn more about the ClassKit Catalog API

Download Schoolwork 2.1 beta

Make sure your apps are ready when iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 become available to customers worldwide. Give users a quick way to engage with a part of your app at the right moment with App Clips. Let users experience your app right on their iPhone home screen with new widgets. Bring your ideas to life with new features and more realistic augmented reality experiences using ARKit and RealityKit. And much more.

Build your apps using Xcode 12 GM seed, test them on devices running iOS 14 and iPadOS GM seed, and submit them for review. Starting April 2021, all iOS and iPadOS apps submitted to the App Store must be built with Xcode 12 and the iOS 14 SDK.

Learn more

Deliver even more powerful and personal apps for Apple Watch with the new capabilities of watchOS 7. Brand new APIs and tools, like multiple complications APIs, SwiftUI Complications, and Xcode Previews, make it easier than ever to create unique complications, so users can enjoy your app right on their watch face. And with Face Sharing, people can share their favorite customized faces via Messages, the web, and more.

Build your apps using Xcode 12 GM seed, test them on devices running watchOS 7 GM seed, and submit them for review. Starting April 2021, all watchOS apps submitted to the App Store must be built with Xcode 12 and the watchOS 7 SDK.

Learn more

With the tvOS 14 SDK, games now have multiuser support and you can offer gamers a wider range of controller and input device options than ever before. You can augment custom video players with Picture in Picture and system-provided controls. And take advantage of new APIs to enhance search features in your apps.

Build your tvOS apps using Xcode 12 GM seed, test them on Apple TV running tvOS 14 GM seed, and submit them for review.

Learn more

The App Store is a safe and trusted place for customers to discover and download apps, and a great opportunity for developers. These guideline changes and clarifications support new features in upcoming OS releases, better protect customers, and help your apps go through the review process as smoothly as possible.

The Apple sandbox environment lets you test in-app purchases on devices using product information set up in App Store Connect. You can now test upgrades, downgrades, and cancellations for subscriptions, as well as reset the introductory offer eligibility for a test account from Settings on devices running iOS 14 or later. You can also test your app’s response to interrupted purchases on devices running iOS 14 or later. And App Store Connect users with the Developer role can now create and manage sandbox tester accounts.

Learn about testing in-app purchases in sandbox

Learn about testing at all stages of development

Later this year, you’ll be able to acquire, retain, and win back subscribers with subscription offer codes: unique, alphanumeric codes that provide free or discounted prices for auto-renewable subscriptions. Provide your one-time use codes digitally or offline at physical events, alongside products, and more. Customers on iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 and later can redeem offer codes on the App Store, through a one-time code redemption URL, or within your app if you’ve implemented the presentCodeRedemptionSheet API.

Learn more about subscription offer codes

When taxes or foreign exchange rates change, we sometimes need to update prices on the App Store. In the next few days, prices of apps and in-app purchases (excluding auto-renewable subscriptions) on the App Store will increase in response to tax changes in Chile, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Your proceeds will be adjusted accordingly and will be calculated based on the tax-exclusive price.

• Chile: New value-added tax of 19%
• Mexico: New value-added tax of 16%
• Saudi Arabia: Increase in value-added tax from 5% to 15%
• Turkey: New digital services tax of 7.5% (in addition to the existing value-added tax of 18%)

In addition, your proceeds will also be adjusted in Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom, and will be calculated based on the tax-exclusive price. However, prices on the App Store will not change.

• Germany: Reduced value-added tax rate from 19% to 16% (effective July 2020)
• France: New digital services tax of 3% (in addition to the existing value-added tax of 20%)
• Italy: New digital services tax of 3% (in addition to the existing value-added tax of 22%)
• United Kingdom: New digital services tax of 2% (in addition to the existing value-added tax of 20%)

Note that Apple will automatically issue refunds on a monthly basis to customers in Germany (effective July 2020) with auto-renewable subscriptions to account for the tax reduction. These refunds will not affect your proceeds.

You can download the updated price tier charts now. Once these changes go into effect, the Pricing and Availability section of My Apps will be updated. You can change the price of your apps and in-app purchases (including auto-renewable subscriptions) at any time in App Store Connect. If you offer subscriptions, you can choose to preserve prices for existing subscribers.

The App Store is dedicated to providing a great experience for everyone. To continue offering a safe place for users to download apps and helping you successfully develop apps that are secure, high-quality, reliable, and respectful of user privacy, we’ve updated the app review process as announced at WWDC20. For apps that are already on the App Store, bug fixes will no longer be delayed over guideline violations except for those related to legal issues. You’ll instead be able to address guideline violations in your next submission. And now, in addition to appealing decisions about whether an app violates guidelines, you can suggest changes to the guidelines. We also encourage you to submit your App Store and Apple development platform suggestions so we can continue to improve experiences for the developer community.

Submit an App Store or platform suggestion