Category: Apple Developer News

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

The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference is coming to a screen near you, June 7 to 11. Join the worldwide developer community for an all-online program with exciting announcements, sessions, and labs at no cost. You’ll get a first look at the latest Apple platforms, tools, and technologies — so you can create your most innovative apps and games yet. Stay tuned for additional details.

Now through April 18, we invite students who love to code to submit their Swift playground to this year’s Swift Student Challenge. Winners will receive exclusive WWDC21 outerwear and a customized pin set.

Learn about the Challenge

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

A unique, memorable icon can help people recognize your Mac app at a glance on the desktop, in Finder, and in the Dock. Polished, expressive icons can also hint at an app’s personality and even its overall level of quality.

Icons in macOS Big Sur share a common set of visual attributes, including the rounded-rectangle shape, front-facing perspective, level position, and uniform drop shadow. Discover how you can update your app icon to look great on macOS Big Sur with these guidelines and templates from the Apple Design Resources.

Learn more about designing app icons for macOS

Explore Apple Design Resources for macOS

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

February 23, 2021

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

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