What’s new
Use the latest capabilities to improve the discovery of your app on the App Store, and deliver high-quality app and in-app purchase experiences.
Pre-orders by region
Offering your app for pre-order is a great way to build awareness and excitement for your upcoming releases on the App Store. And now you can offer pre-orders on a regional basis. People can pre-order your app in a set of regions that you choose, even while it’s available for download in other regions at the same time. With this new flexibility, you can expand your app into new regions by offering it as a pre-order and set different release dates for each region.
Now available.
StoreKit views
With new SwiftUI views provided by StoreKit, it’s easier than ever to create merchandising experiences for in-app purchases and subscriptions. Take advantage of three different StoreKit views to showcase your products across Apple platforms; StoreView, ProductView, and SubscriptionStoreView help you get up and running with merchandising faster than ever. With as little as one line of code, the description, price, and duration for each level of service are clearly presented to the user.
- Offer in-app purchases in different languages and currencies with built-in localization support.
- Easily provide secure in-app purchase experiences that follow Apple’s design best practices.
- Customize StoreKit views to match the look and feel of your app.
Available in beta.
App privacy details
An important part of submitting your app to the App Store is explaining how your app handles user data. Two new updates make it easier to accurately provide Privacy Nutrition Labels and improve the integrity of the software supply chain: signatures for third-party SDKs and privacy manifests. In addition, we’re adding more data type options to use in your Privacy Nutrition Label when describing what types of data your app collects.
Available later this year.
Product page optimization
Product page optimization lets you test different elements of your App Store product page to understand which results in the most engagement. Now you can release a new app version without interrupting a running test, providing more flexibility for your app release schedule.
Now available.
App Store Server API
App Store Server updates make it simpler to query for transactional data, interpret subscription statuses, and manage notifications. The new App Store Server Library helps you use best practices for handling purchase data that comes from notifications and App Store endpoints. This code sample is designed to use App Store Server API endpoints, verify App Store signed data, and assist with migrating away from using verifyReceipt.
Now available.
In-app purchase testing enhancements
Several enhancements help you test your in-app purchase experiences throughout the development process. Improvements to StoreKit testing in Xcode, the Apple sandbox environment, and TestFlight help you test even more customer experiences. Additional testing controls help test changing subscription states, Family Sharing, and server notifications.
Now available.
TestFlight
Make the most of the beta testing process in TestFlight with updates to tester management capabilities that help you better understand your testers and get valuable new details.
- Filter and sort testers by their level of engagement, indicated by app sessions, app crashes, and volume of feedback.
- View the most recently installed device type and OS used by testers when testing your app.
- Perform key actions for multiple testers at once.
These features are also supported by the App Store Connect API.
Available later this year.
Game Center
Game Center is Apple’s social gaming network, designed to help players experience the joy of games with their friends.
Multiplayer improvements
Customize your matchmaking rules in multiplayer matches. For example, you can automatch players based on skill or region for a better multiplayer experience. Additional enhancements improve the speed and reliability of multiplayer matches.
Achievement rarity
Players can view the number of other players who’ve unlocked a particular achievement, so they’ll stay motivated and excited about what they’ve accomplished.
Configuration improvements
Set up and manage achievements and leaderboards more easily with enhanced Game Center tools and APIs.
- Archive achievements and leaderboards you no longer want to display.
- Configure and manage achievement and leaderboard metadata.
- Submit score and achievement data directly to Game Center.
Now available: archiving achievements and leaderboards, achievement rarity.
Available later this year: multiplayer improvements, configuration improvements.
SKAdNetwork 5
SKAdNetwork makes it possible for ad networks to measure how successfully ad campaigns drive downloads of your app, while preserving privacy. In addition to measuring how advertising drives downloads of your app, SKAdNetwork 5 measures when users reengage with your app after they’ve downloaded it. As a result, you and the ad network receive up to three postbacks when a user opens your app by tapping an advertisement.
Available later this year.
In-app billing resolution sheet
Now it’s even easier for your customers to resolve payment issues, so they can stay subscribed to your content, services, and premium features. Starting in iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4, if an auto-renewable subscription doesn’t renew due to a billing issue, a system-provided sheet appears in your app upon launch with a prompt that lets customers update their payment method for their Apple ID. No action is required to adopt this feature. You can get familiar with the sheet in Sandbox, as well as test delaying or suppressing it using messages and display in StoreKit.
All of this builds on existing App Store features that help you retain subscribers. For example, if a subscription is in the billing retry state, Apple uses machine learning to optimize payment retries for the best possible recovery rate. And when you enable Billing Grace Period, customers can continue accessing their subscriptions while Apple attempts to collect payment.
Now available.