Add an iOS companion app to a Apple Watch only app

Hi everyone,

We're fighting an issue that's driving us up the wall.

We developed an Apple Watch Only standalone app, which cost $2.99; once you paid, you could download and use the app on your Apple Watch.

We've released a companion iOS app for iPhone that goes into the same bundle (as it's the same app, now supporting two platforms). Nevertheless, the Watch app is still available as a separate app (you can download the Watch app only if you wish without needing to download the iPhone app as well).

The iOS companion reads information from the watch and provides more insights into the data it displays. Similar to the sleep tracking apps where you use the watch to sleep and track and the iPhone to see the results.

When we released the latest version, including both, we changed the price to Free in all countries.

After this, we now have a huge problem we haven't been able to solve:

  • Our existing users (who paid for the Apple Watch-only app) cannot download the companion iOS app. If they go to the App Store, it'd just say "Purchased" with no option to download it (nor the "Get" button or the "Cloud" icon).

  • If you go to your App Store account in your iPhone and then to "Purchases," the app won't appear there. Because technically, you never bought it, and it's now free.

  • If you do the same on your Apple Watch, you can still see the app on your purchases, but that would only download the Apple Watch app, not both.

But on top of that, I want my users to be able to download the companion app from the App Store with their iPhones because that's what they'll do anyway (only 9% of our app downloads happen straight in an Apple Watch; most come from iPhones).

Did anyone have this problem? I'm already talking with support because this is having a very negative impact on our app, and it all looks to be a bug on the App Store or an edge case that Apple hasn't considered.

The thing is, I experienced this issue myself with an app from another dev previously where I had the Apple Watch app installed and paid for it. When I wanted to download the companion they released, it was impossible for the same reasons stated above.

He managed to fix it, but I couldn't find any information.

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The App Store cache was not updating according to the new setup. In our case it took almost 2 months to get fixed by itself, and while in some countries the issue was fixed, in some others it wouldn't.

It's a terrible issue with the App Store cache, as people who paid for your app cannot download the new companion. Still, it's Apple's fault for not refreshing the cache when a change like this is introduced and only when the global App Store cache gets refreshed (which could take days or months in the worst-case scenario).

BTW: To your question @objectivist, uninstalling and installing again won't solve the issue while the App Store cache remains outdated. You can uninstall and install but only the Watch app, never the iPhone/iPad app.

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I do not have direct experience with this issue, but is it possible to remove both apps from their devices, and then re-install as if it were a new installation?

This may not be an acceptable solution if your users have stored data using the app(s) which would be lost when the apps are deleted.

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objectivist
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The App Store cache was not updating according to the new setup. In our case it took almost 2 months to get fixed by itself, and while in some countries the issue was fixed, in some others it wouldn't.

It's a terrible issue with the App Store cache, as people who paid for your app cannot download the new companion. Still, it's Apple's fault for not refreshing the cache when a change like this is introduced and only when the global App Store cache gets refreshed (which could take days or months in the worst-case scenario).

BTW: To your question @objectivist, uninstalling and installing again won't solve the issue while the App Store cache remains outdated. You can uninstall and install but only the Watch app, never the iPhone/iPad app.

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Ataliano
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