Category: Apple Developer News

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, prices of apps and in-app purchases (excluding auto-renewable subscriptions) on the App Store will increase in Turkey. Your proceeds will be adjusted accordingly and will be calculated based on the tax-exclusive price.

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

You can now take advantage of two exciting new features that help you build more effective App Store product pages.

Product page optimization. Try out alternate versions of your app’s product page with different icons, screenshots, and app previews to find out which one gets the best results. Each version is shown to a percentage of randomly selected, eligible App Store users and results appear in App Analytics, so you can set the best performing one to display to everyone on the App Store.

Custom product pages. Create additional versions of your app’s product page to highlight specific features or content, discoverable through unique URLs that you share. Custom product pages can have different screenshots, app previews, and promotional text — and are fully localizable — so you can showcase a particular sport, character, show, gameplay feature, and more.

Program members can get details and ask questions at the Tech Talks product page optimization session and custom product pages session.

Learn about product page optimization

Learn about custom product pages

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Originally published December 2 on the App Store Today tab.

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For over a decade, we’ve taken a moment at the end of the year to celebrate the very best apps and games on the App Store. We’ve heralded the work of individual self-taught developers as well as huge international teams.

With so many wonderful apps on the App Store, selecting just 15 award winners has been no easy task. As always, we put a focus on technical innovation, user experience, and design. Then we considered the impact these apps had on our lives.

Some helped us learn, others enhanced our work, and one even let us save the world as our favorite superheroes. It’s our honor to celebrate this year’s winners.

iPhone App of the Year: Toca Life World

An interactive playground that continues to invent fun new ways for kids to explore, all while teaching self-expression and emotional growth with a refreshingly inclusive world of characters anyone can relate to.

Download Toca Life World from the App Store

iPhone Game of the Year: League of Legends: Wild Rift

A landmark MOBA that transforms one of the world’s most popular and competitive PC games into a mobile experience everyone can enjoy.

Download League of Legends: Wild Rift from the App Store

iPad App of the Year: LumaFusion

This easy-to-use video editor for both professional and aspiring creators gives you precision storytelling tools to make your feature-length films and social media videos truly cinematic.

Download LumaFusion from the App Store

iPad Game of the Year: Marvel Future Revolution

A superhero brawler that makes everyone the star of their own cutting-edge superhero story, set against a backdrop of stunning graphics and exciting battles.

Download MARVEL Future Revolution from the App Store

Mac App of the Year: Craft

A versatile note-taking app, word processor, and personal documents organizer all in one that makes productivity as intuitive, fun, and stylish as you are.

Download Craft from the App Store

Mac Game of the Year: Myst

A remake that’s the most stunning version yet of one the most fascinating worlds in gaming history.

Download Myst from the App Store

Apple Watch App of the Year: Carrot Weather

A best-in-class weather app with helpful customizations, built-in watch faces, and, of course, that satirical robot named Carrot, who laughs at us all.

Download CARROT Weather from the App Store

Apple TV App of the Year: DAZN

A streaming app that simplifies the often challenging process of watching sports live and on demand, while serving up the best local games and matches to fans around the world.

Download DAZN from the App Store

Apple TV Game of the Year: Space Marshals 3

A space western with tense, tactical combat that’s even more gripping when played on the big screen.

Download Space Marshals 3 from the App Store

Arcade Game of the Year: Fantasian

An epic that brings us back to the golden age of role-playing with an incredible art style and a fantastic soundtrack.

Download Fantasian from the App Store

Trend of 2021: Apps that brought us together

Among Us! Connecting friends (and impostors!) all over the world through a wildly popular social game of whodunit.

Download Among Us! from the App Store

Canva Connecting us to our own entrepreneurial spirit with collaborative design tools and thousands of templates to make everything from your résumé to social media posts sparkle.

Download Canva from the App Store

Peanut Connecting women experiencing life milestones—from pregnancy to menopause and every moment in between.

Download Peanut from the App Store

Bumble Connecting users to social hubs for making friends, professional networking, and, of course, finding someone special, and it all grew from a women-powered shift in the dating dynamic.

Download Bumble from the App Store

EatOkra Connecting communities to Black-owned restaurants and food services with an innovative online marketplace, creating an invaluable guide to cities across the U.S.

Download EatOkra from the App Store

December 2, 2021

Every year, the App Store celebrates exceptional apps that improve people’s lives while showcasing the highest levels of technical innovation, user experience, design, and positive cultural impact. Join us in celebrating the work of outstanding developers from around the world.

View this year’s selections

Ariel Vardi’s road to launching Facer started a long way away. Mars, specifically.

In 2015 he released the official Apple Watch game The Martian, based on the film starring Matt Damon. “You played directly from your wrist, interacting in real time with Damon’s character,” says Vardi.

His game studio, Little Labs, started by developing watch games before moving over to Vardi’s other Apple Watch interest: design. Facer is now among the world’s largest open marketplaces for watch-face creators, with more than 30,000 of them sharing their wares — joined by traditional watch brands like Mr. Jones, AVI-8, and Maurice Lacroix.

We spoke to Vardi from his L.A. home base to talk about bringing watch design to everyone and how to tell if an idea is truly original.

Who is Facer for?

Facer was always intended to be an open marketplace; we would make tools to allow non-devs to create watch faces without writing a single line of code. Anyone with a bit of design sense can create a watch face in literally 30 seconds. The bulk of faces today are coming from indie designers. But fairly early on we partnered with brands like Star Trek, Tetris, and Garfield.

What has this meant for the watch-design community?

The traditional watch world has always been very closed. There’s a group, mostly coming out of Switzerland and a few other parts of the world, that have historically had the privilege to design watches. A lot of people have dreamed of designing watches themselves but couldn’t. The smartwatch and watch-face worlds have opened up that opportunity.

How do you handle customer feedback for a community of Facer’s size?

We don’t have a separate customer support team. I’m part of the customer support team! But we do have around a hundred designers in the watch-face community we chat with every day. If something’s broken, someone will hear about it.

What’s your approach to creating new features?

We try to resist the inclination to start building because something feels cool. What feels cool to an engineer is not necessarily what feels cool to regular users, and those are the people you’re building apps for. For any new product or feature, we sit down, write out what it is, and come up with proof for why it’s going to succeed.

What advice do you have for developers who are just starting out?

If a product makes sense to you, you’ve probably already got competitors. Smart people tend to have the same ideas; if you’re really the first, there’s a good chance you don’t have the right one. So think hard about what makes you truly different. It’s easy to say, “Oh, my product is going to be better,” but you need to find that specific differentiating point. If you’re not confident about it, think some more or find another idea.

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Download Watch Faces by Facer from the App Store

Learn more about the App Store Small Business Program

November 29, 2021

Connect with Apple experts to learn how to create best-in-class apps through office hours and live sessions with Q&As until December 17. The final set of Tech Talks activities have been released, so register today if you’re a member of the Apple Developer Program or Apple Developer Enterprise Program.

Learn more

It’s time for our fourth and final Tech Talks digest, and we’ve got one last round of sessions and office hours for you to peruse and enjoy. Tech Talks events are running through December 17 — don’t miss your chance to learn more about Object Capture or HealthKit, get your questions answered, and more.

Explore the schedule

You can currently browse and register for all Tech Talks activities taking place through December 17.

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Note: To register for sessions or request office hour appointments, you must be a current member of the Apple Developer Program or Apple Developer Enterprise Program.

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Get notified about new activities and your appointment requests by opting in to push notifications in the Apple Developer app or signing up for email notifications. To enable push notifications, visit the Account tab in the Apple Developer app. To enable email notifications, sign in to your developer account, open the top-right menu, and click Email Settings.

One last time: Don’t miss a conversation with SwiftUI engineering

The SwiftUI engineering team is hosting one last chat before the end of Tech Talks on December 14: Join members of the team for a full hour of live Q&A, dedicated to answering your queries and questions around all things SwiftUI.

What sorts of questions can the team answer? Well, during November’s chat, we highlighted a SwiftUI debugging tool that helps track down rendering or high cpu usage issues: Check it out yourself by calling Self._printChanges() inside the body of a view to print out the changes that have triggered the view update.

This session will be presented in English live from Cupertino on December 14.

A conversation with SwiftUI Engineering

Don’t miss: Simplify 3D content creation with Object Capture

On December 6, learn how you can best use the Object Capture API to create lifelike 3D models of real-world objects. The team will cover best practices with object selection and image capture to help you create 3D models, and share a peek at several top-notch content creation apps that use Object Capture to bring their assets to life.

This session will be presented in English live from Cupertino and London on December 6 and December 13.

Simplify 3D content creation with Object Capture

Simplify 3D content creation with Object Capture

Don’t forget: Explore the future of Photos access in your app

Discover how PHPicker and the Limited Photos Library can provide your app with secure, private, and modern access to the Photos library. The session explores how you can integrate directly with someone’s image library while ensuring privacy and giving people direct control over which pictures your app can access. Presenters will take you through recent improvements to PHPicker, the simplest and most secure integration for your app, and explore how to use the Limited Photos Library for experiences that need a deeper integration. And lastly, learn best practices for migrating off the deprecated ALAssetsLibrary APIs so that your app can continue to deliver a great, integrated experience with the Photos library.

This session will be presented in English live from London and Cupertino on December 7 and 13.

Explore the future of Photos access in your app

Explore the future of Photos access in your app

Share your thoughts

Thank you for checking out Tech Talks 2021! Whether you attended a session, office hour appointment, or followed along through these digests, we’d love to know what you thought.

Share your feedback on Tech Talks

Isharna Walsh was several years into a long-term relationship when she had a life-changing realization.

“We’d hit that point where the sex sort of decreases,” Walsh says, “and I realized I had no idea how to consistently create intimacy, talk about sex, or navigate the things I was experiencing.”

She started looking for resources and quickly discovered she was hardly alone — lots of people needed such help. “I had this light-bulb moment,” she says. “Improving this part of our lives flows into everything else; it’s foundational to our health and happiness.”

Walsh partnered with a who’s-who of intimacy experts — including psychologists, therapists, educators, and researchers — to create Coral. The app uses science-based lessons, conversations, and guided meditations and exercises to help users deepen their intimacy. Walsh hopes that, on a bigger scale, Coral can help normalize sex and remove some of the baggage many people have around it.

We caught up with the Los Angeles–based founder to chat about the advantages of being a first-time app creator and the challenges of being a groundbreaker.

Coral tackles a subject that’s sensitive for a lot of people. How do you design for that?

There’s a lot of nuance around sexuality and intimacy. It’s a very taboo topic, and there’s a deep vulnerability in opening up to someone intimately. But there’s also excitement and fun. In the design, we want to make you feel very safe, like this is a place where you’re going to be respected and seen. At the same time we want to make you feel curious. That’s a hard needle to thread.

How do you ensure the app speaks to everyone?

Personalization is one of our core guiding principles. Are you seeing content tailored toward people with vulvas or people with penises? Or toward people who are in relationships? We also have content versioned around what we learn about you. If you identify yourself as having experienced trauma, you’re going to see something a little different.

Does your mission expand beyond intimacy?

I’ve been really interested in mental health for years, and I see this as the biggest opportunity to drive change in the space. Sleep, nutrition, exercise, sex, and intimacy — they impact the way we feel on a daily basis. From a more holistic perspective, we’re trying to unpack a lot of the shame and baggage around a very natural and healthy aspect of our being.

What’s been your biggest challenge?

We’re trying to create something brand new. There’s no, “OK, here’s what a sexual self-improvement practice is.” We’re figuring all of that out. And there are issues around advertising policies: Are we a sex product, or are we mindfulness and psychology? Being a female founder in this context has its own challenges too. But we have a deep belief in the changes we’re making and the inevitability of our success. Maybe our path isn’t going to be as clear as some others, but I just know that this needs to exist.

Where does the name come from?

I love to scuba dive, and the first time I went diving I thought, “There’s a whole world here, but we never see it.” Sexuality is similar. It exists but is often hidden. You don’t really know what’s there until you go take a look.

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Download Coral: Relationship self-care from the App Store

Learn more about the App Store Small Business Program

When Ania Wysocka started having panic attacks as a university student, she turned to the first resource she thought of. “My instinct was to look for an app that could explain what was happening to me,” she says.

But when the hypnosis and therapy apps she downloaded didn’t have what she was seeking, she decided to create Rootd, whose lo-fi vibe matches its simple mission: to demystify panic attacks and bring on-the-spot relief.

Rootd offers a primer in the biology of anxiety, as well as breathing tools, journal prompts, and guided visualizations narrated by Wysocka herself. “The whole concept of Rootd is to befriend your fear and face it head-on,” says the British Columbia–based creator.

We caught up with her to discuss her own history, the power of perseverance, and how she learned to build an app from scratch.

What’s your personal experience with panic attacks?

I was in my fourth year of university and hanging out at a friend’s house when I experienced my first one. My heart started racing and I felt overcome with feelings of doom. As a young, relatively healthy person, it was terrifying and confusing. My doctor said everything was OK with me. I said, “Then how do you explain what happened?” They were quick to move on to the next patient.

What did you do to track down the explanation?

I looked in academic journals, but they were all written in medical jargon and not very helpful. I ended up seeing a counselor and reading the work of Claire Weekes. She was one of the first doctors to say that panic disorder does exist, that in a panic attack you enter a cycle of fear in which you’re constantly expecting it to happen again. That resonated.

How did you figure out how to turn that insight into an app?

It was years after my first panic attack, when I’d collected enough information and started feeling much better, that I went for it. I’d thought through the wireframes, design, and marketing, but I definitely didn’t know the techie stuff. I worked with a developer I’d known from a former job; he knew the nuts and bolts of building an app. It took a lot of trial and error. It required a lot of perseverance. Things kept falling apart, and we needed to just rebuild.

After you launched Rootd, how did you get the word out?

You don’t actually need to spend millions of dollars putting ads on buses. My main marketing strategy early on was App Store optimization via keyword optimization, which I learned about by reading articles online. The keywords that go into the body of the product description are like gold. You want to make sure you’re using all the space you can as strategically as possible.

What was your intention behind the app’s relatively simple design?

When you’re in a state of distress, you don’t need flair. You need focused and simple. The big red button is called the Rooter. You know how a huge oak tree in a storm will barely move, while a plant in the ground can topple over? Our goal is to get you to be the oak tree, so you feel confident you can withstand everything coming at you.

Download Rootd from the App Store

Learn more about the App Store Small Business Program

Originally published on the App Store

Self-professed “photo nerds,” Ben Sandofsky and Sebastiaan de With built Halide to mimic the tactile feel of a professional-grade camera — and that meant focusing on every detail, right down to fonts that simulate the classic etched-in-metal look of traditional cameras.

“We didn’t see any apps that did exactly what we wanted, like letting you dial in settings as you would with a DSLR or film camera,” says de With. “We wanted something more pro and elegantly designed.”

Alongside iOS developer Rebecca Slatkin, the pair have turned Halide into one of the App Store’s most popular pro camera apps, bringing histograms, waveforms, color zebras, and RAW+JPEG capture to all. Spectre Camera, the team’s remarkable long-exposure app, was named 2019 iPhone App of the Year.

We spoke with Sandofsky, Slatkin, and de With about overnight success and the challenge of being popular.

When did you decide to create Halide?

de With: Ben slid into my Twitter DMs back in 2016. We interacted about photo gear and tech, then decided to make an app as a pure passion project. When we launched, I remember my mother saying, “There are a lot of camera apps out there.” But Ben and I had to scratch this itch.

What’s been your greatest challenge so far?

Sandofsky: When Halide started getting popular. People liked it so much more than we could have guessed. That got us to realize it could be a real business — and that we needed help. At the start, we’d have never imagined hiring someone else to help us with Halide and then Spectre. To have Rebecca on our team is a dream scenario.

What did you have to learn to launch Halide?

Slatkin: I didn’t know a ton about photography, so I faced a steep learning curve. But my dad was a professional photographer, and we had detailed, technical conversations about what he’s dedicated his life to. It’s been great to connect on that.

de With: Rebecca made our app appeal to more than just hardcore photo nerds. She brings the perspective of someone who loves taking photos but hasn’t been shooting with a Leica M8 for a decade. We needed that. We’re making a pro-level app, but we want to be sure we’re still approachable for people as they grow as photographers.

Can you share one of your most rewarding moments?

Sandofsky: Sebastiaan curates photos submitted to us by users, and at the end of the year he makes a calendar just for the three of us. Looking through that calendar is wildly inspiring. To see people using what you made with friends to express themselves is one of the coolest things you can experience.

What advice would you give to aspiring app developers?

Slatkin: Trust yourself. Every time you feel overwhelmed or intimidated, know that things are within your reach. When I feel that way, I break things down into small problems.

Sandofsky: Don’t get caught up in measuring yourself against others. Sometimes it’s luck, but people usually reach success after a lot of hard work. People who look like overnight successes have actually been working on their craft for 10 years. Everyone’s journey is different, and setbacks will happen. Just stay focused on what you want to do and why you want to do it.

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Download Halide Mark II – Pro Camera from the App Store

Learn more about the App Store Small Business Program