Category: Apple Developer News

As part of our ongoing commitment to helping developers succeed on the App Store, we’re introducing new options for submitting content and updates while your app is in review, double the number of custom product pages, and offer codes for all In-App Purchase types.

Submit additional items to App Review

Now you can send additional items to App Review independent of an existing submission, giving you greater flexibility when submitting your apps and games. For example, you can now submit:

• One or more In-App Events in a separate submission if you have an app version under review.
• An app version to address a critical bug that’s separate from any existing custom product pages under review.
• One or more Game Center features — including achievements, leaderboards, challenges, and more — in a submission that’s separate from an app version under review.

Learn more about submitting

Create double the number of custom product pages and add keywords

Custom product pages let you highlight different content and features within your app or game using unique screenshots, app previews, and promotional text. To provide you with even more flexibility, you can now create and publish up to 70 custom pages at a given time. Additionally, you can now assign keywords to each custom product page so they’re more discoverable on the App Store. Custom product pages with keywords assigned to them can appear in search results for those selected keywords instead of your default product page.

Learn more about custom product pages

Offer codes expand to all In-App Purchase types

Offer codes now support all In-App Purchase types, including consumable, non-consumable, and non-renewing subscriptions, in addition to expanded support for auto-renewable subscriptions. With offer codes, you can present people with a limited-time offer for a free or discounted In-App Purchase. This allows you to share the value of your In-App Purchases and encourage engagement and purchases within your apps and games. This expanded support includes the ability to create offer codes for:

• Consumable, non-consumable, and non-renewing subscriptions.
• Auto-renewable subscriptions that don’t auto-renew once the promotional period ends.

Schedule 1 and the Paid Applications Agreement (Schedules 2 and 3) will be updated to indicate that offer codes are available for all In-App Purchase types.¹

Promo codes for In-App Purchases

Offer codes build on the functionality of promo codes and provide improved configuration and customer eligibility options. As a result, starting March 26, 2026, you’ll no longer be able to create promo codes for In-App Purchases in App Store Connect. Any existing promo codes for In-App Purchases you’ve created can be redeemed until they expire. You can continue to use promo codes in order to provide people with a free download of your app.

Learn about creating offer codes

Learn about offer codes for auto-renewable subscriptions

Implementing offer codes

¹ Translations of the updated agreement will be available on the Apple Developer website within one month.

Starting January 1, 2026, developers based in the Republic of Korea must provide a server‑to‑server notification endpoint when registering a new Services ID, or updating an existing Services ID, to associate their website with an app using Sign in with Apple.

As a reminder, registering a notification endpoint allows Apple to send you important updates about the people who use your app and their account status, including:

• Changes in email forwarding preferences.
• Account deletions in your app.
• Permanent Apple Account deletions.

To learn more about server-to-server notifications, see WWDC20 session 10173: Get the most out of Sign in with Apple.

When you receive these notifications, you should immediately update any data associated with the account change in the app, as well as any necessary server infrastructure, to give people more control of the personal data they’ve shared. For more information, see Processing changes for Sign in with Apple accounts.

Before submitting a new app to the App Store, or updating an existing app configuration to register a new Services ID or modify an existing Services ID, please read the guidance below.

Account change guidance

Account changes are directly related to privacy and control for the user and their personal data, and confirming account changes should be straightforward and transparent.

For account email forwarding changes:

• Ensure any displayed user data affected by the account change matches the change event in the notification payload. Typically, this data is displayed in the app’s account settings or user profile.
• If people need to visit a website to finish changing or verifying their email address, include a link directly to the page on your website where they can complete the process.
• Keep users informed. If the email forwarding change affects other services you offer, let them know. If your app supports In-App Purchases, help people understand how billing, order tracking, and cancellations will be handled with the new email address.

For account deletions:

Note: Always follow applicable legal requirements for storing and retaining user account information and for handling account changes and deletions. This includes complying with local laws where your apps are available. If you have questions regarding your legal obligations, check with your legal counsel.

Resources

Beginning January 1, 2026, a new state law in Texas — SB2420 — introduces age assurance requirements for app marketplaces and developers. While we share the goal of strengthening kids’ online safety, we are concerned that SB2420 impacts the privacy of users by requiring the collection of sensitive, personally identifiable information to download any app, even if a user simply wants to check the weather or sports scores. Apple will continue to provide parents and developers with industry-leading tools that help enhance child safety while safeguarding privacy within the constraints of the law.

Once this law goes into effect, users located in Texas who create a new Apple Account will be required to confirm whether they are 18 years or older. All new Apple Accounts for users under the age of 18 will be required to join a Family Sharing group, and parents or guardians will need to provide consent for all App Store downloads, app purchases, and transactions using Apple’s In-App Purchase system by the minor. This will also impact developers, who will need to adopt new capabilities and modify behavior within their apps to meet their obligations under the law. Similar requirements will come into effect later next year in Utah and Louisiana.

Today we’re sharing details about updates that we’re making and the tools we’ll provide to help developers meet these new requirements.

To assist developers in meeting their obligations in a privacy-preserving way, we’ll introduce capabilities to help them obtain users’ age categories and manage significant changes as required by Texas state law. The Declared Age Range API is available to implement now, and will be updated in the coming months to provide the required age categories for new account users in Texas. And new APIs launching later this year will enable developers, when they determine a significant change is made to their app, to invoke a system experience to allow the user to request that parental consent be re-obtained. Additionally, parents will be able to revoke consent for a minor continuing to use an app. More details, including additional technical documentation, will be released later this fall.

We know protecting kids from online threats requires constant vigilance and effort. That’s why we will continue to create industry-leading features to help developers provide age-appropriate experiences and safeguard privacy in their apps and games, and empower parents with a comprehensive set of tools to help keep their kids safe online.

This month: Watch a new code-along video to discover how to use the Foundation Models framework to access the on-device LLM that powers Apple Intelligence.

Plus, dive into new games offerings, explore new App Store Connect features, and find out how the air-quality app Paku is helping its users breathe easy.

Read the full story

Beginning January 1, 2026, Bulgaria will adopt the euro (EUR) as its official currency, replacing the Bulgarian lev (BGN). As a result, the currency for App Store purchases and subscriptions in Bulgaria will change from BGN to EUR on this date. Your proceeds from sales in Bulgaria will also change to euros.

If you’ve selected the lev as the currency for your bank in App Store Connect, it will automatically change to the euro on December 1, 2025. If you’ve selected a different currency for your bank account, you’ll continue to be paid in that currency. The statutory fixed conversion rate is 1.95583 BGN = 1 EUR as established on July 8, 2025, by the Council of the European Union in connection with the introduction of the euro as the official currency in the Republic of Bulgaria.

• Auto-renewing subscriptions, manually priced apps and In‑App Purchases, or apps and In‑App Purchases with Bulgaria as the base storefront: Pricing on the Bulgaria storefront will be updated to a euro price based on the statutory conversion rate and rounded down to a supported euro price point. If you’ve chosen Bulgaria as the base storefront for your app or In‑App Purchases, pricing in other storefronts may be updated to maintain equalization with the new euro price.

• Other apps or In‑App Purchases: Pricing on the Bulgaria storefront will be converted to the euro using the standard equalization for euro markets where App Store sales are subject to value‑added tax (VAT).

You can change the prices of your apps, In‑App Purchases, and auto‑renewable subscriptions at any time.

Auto‑renewable subscriptions won’t be interrupted. Subscription prices will be automatically updated for each current, preserved, and future scheduled price to euros. Customers with auto‑renewable subscriptions will receive an email informing them of the currency change.

Per the Euro Act, you’ll need to communicate both the lev and euro prices for In‑App Purchases to customers within your app for the duration of the transitional period from now until the end of the transition period on August 8, 2026. This messaging should appear anywhere prices are displayed.

Your Sales and Trends reports and monthly financial reports will also be updated. For Sales and Trends, euros will be indicated for transactions after the currency change. For monthly financial reports, earnings from sales that occurred before the currency change will be in the BG report, and earnings from sales after the currency change will be in the EU report.

All refunds issued after January 1, 2026, will be refunded in euros, regardless of the date of purchase.

Learn more about the Bulgaria EUR adoption

Be ready for the new design. Whether you’re a longtime pro or a hobbyist, get inspired and make your apps and games look their best by exploring videos, downloads, and docs.

Plus, sign up for one-on-one appointments to dive into machine learning and AI, and meet the team behind the wholesome open-world game Hello Kitty Island Adventure.

Read the full story

The App Store is designed to make it easy to sell your digital goods and services globally, with support for 44 currencies across 175 storefronts.

From time to time, we need to adjust prices or your proceeds due to changes in tax regulations or foreign exchange rates. These adjustments are made using publicly available exchange rate information from financial data providers to help make sure prices for apps and In-App Purchases stay consistent across all storefronts.

Tax and price updates

As of August 21:

Your proceeds from the sale of eligible apps and In‑App Purchases have been modified in:

• Brazil: Imposto sobre Operações Financeiras (IOF) of 3.5%
• Canada: Digital services tax (DST) no longer applicable
• Estonia: Value‑added tax (VAT) rate increase from 22% to 24%
• Romania:

    – VAT rate increase from 19% to 21%

    – Reduced VAT rate increase from 5% to 11% for news, magazines, books, and audiobooks

• The Philippines: VAT introduction of 12% for developers based outside of the Philippines
• Vietnam:

    – Organizations based outside of Vietnam: VAT rate increase from 5% to 10%.

    – Individual developers based outside of Vietnam: Personal income tax (PIT) introduction of 5%, replacing the corporate income tax (CIT). Reduced VAT rate of 0% for news, magazines, and books no longer applies and all content will be taxed at the standard rate.

    – Organizations based in Vietnam: Apple will no longer remit foreign contractor tax (FCT) on sales to end customers. FCT of 5% introduced on Apple’s commission.

    – Individual developers based in Vietnam: Personal income tax (PIT) introduction of 2%, replacing the corporate income tax (CIT). FCT of 5% introduced on Apple’s commission. Reduced VAT rate of 0% for news, magazines, and books no longer applies and all content will be taxed at the standard rate.

Exhibit B and C of the Paid Applications Agreement will be updated to indicate that Apple collects and remits applicable taxes in the Philippines, and the relevant tax changes in Vietnam.¹

Beginning September 8:

Pricing for apps and In-App Purchases will be updated for the Philippines and Vietnam if you haven’t selected one of these storefronts as the base storefront for your app or In‑App Purchase.² These updates also consider VAT introductions and changes listed in the tax updates section above.

If you’ve selected the Philippines or Vietnam as the base storefront for your app or In-App Purchase, prices won’t change. On other storefronts, prices will be updated to maintain equalization with your chosen base price.

Prices won’t change in any region if your In‑App Purchase is an auto‑renewable subscription. Prices also won’t change on the storefronts where you manually manage prices instead of using the automated equalized prices.

The Pricing and Availability section of Apps has been updated in App Store Connect to display these upcoming price changes. As always, you can change the prices of your apps, In‑App Purchases, and auto‑renewable subscriptions at any time.

Learn more about managing your prices

View or edit upcoming price changes

Edit your app’s base country or region

Pricing and availability start times by country or region

Set a price for an In-App Purchase

Learn more about your proceeds

View payments and proceeds

Download financial reports

¹ Translations of the updated agreement will be available on the Apple Developer website within one month.

² Excludes auto-renewable subscriptions.

The App Store is designed to be a safe and trusted place for all ages, including children. The age rating system for apps and games has been updated in order to provide people with more granular age ratings. We’ve also introduced new age rating questions to help identify sensitive content in your app and added the ability to set a higher rating to reflect your app’s minimum age requirement. Ratings for all apps and games on the App Store have been automatically updated to align with this new system and will be reflected on Apple devices running beta versions of iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, tvOS 26, visionOS 26, and watchOS 26.

The updated age rating system adds 13+, 16+, and 18+ to the existing 4+ and 9+ ratings. Age ratings are assigned to each country or region and may vary based on region-specific suitability standards.

We’ve introduced a new set of required questions to the ratings questionnaire for all apps. These new questions cover:

• In-app controls.
• Capabilities.
• Medical or wellness topics.
• Violent themes in your app or game.

Your answers to these questions will help Apple better calculate a rating and help you deliver an age-appropriate experience.

If your app has a policy requiring a higher minimum user age than the rating assigned by Apple, you can set a higher age rating after you respond to the age ratings questions. You can view the age rating for each of your apps under the updated system and respond to the new questions for each app in the App Information section in App Store Connect.

As a reminder, you must consider how all app features, including AI assistants and chatbot functionality, impact the frequency of sensitive content appearing within your app to make sure it receives the appropriate rating. All apps are subject to the App Review Guidelines, such as the safety guidelines regarding objectionable content or user generated content, and must abide by all applicable local laws and regulations, like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”), and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”).

Please provide responses to the updated age rating questions for each of your apps by January 31, 2026, to avoid an interruption when submitting your app updates in App Store Connect.

Learn more about age ratings values and definitions

Learn how to set your app rating

Beginning April 2026, watchOS apps uploaded to App Store Connect must also include 64-bit support and be built with the watchOS 26 SDK. To enable 64-bit support in your project, we recommend using the default Xcode build setting of “Standard architectures” to build a single binary with 64-bit code.

You can test ARM64 compatibility for your apps in the Xcode Simulator, and on Apple Watch Series 9 or 10, or Apple Watch Ultra 2 running watchOS 26 beta.

Learn more about the SDKs included in Xcode

The European Commission has required Apple to make a series of additional changes under the Digital Markets Act:

Communication and promotion of offers

• Today, we’re introducing updated terms that let developers with apps in the European Union storefronts of the App Store communicate and promote offers for purchase of digital goods or services available at a destination of their choice. The destination can be a website, alternative app marketplace, or another app, and can be accessed outside the app or within the app via a web view or native experience.
• App Store apps that communicate and promote offers for digital goods or services will be subject to new business terms for those transactions — an initial acquisition fee, store services fee, and for apps on the StoreKit External Purchase Link Entitlement (EU) Addendum, the Core Technology Commission (CTC). The CTC reflects value Apple provides developers through ongoing investments in the tools, technologies, and services that enable them to build and share innovative apps with users.
• Music streaming apps on the App Store in the European Economic Area (EEA) wanting to use the Music Streaming Services Entitlement (EEA) can use these options.

Update to Business Terms for Apps in the European Union

• By January 1, 2026, Apple plans to move to a single business model in the EU for all developers. Under this single business model, Apple will transition from the Core Technology Fee (CTF) to the CTC on digital goods or services. The CTC will apply to digital goods or services sold by apps distributed from the App Store, Web Distribution, and/or alternative marketplaces.
• Apps currently under the Alternative Terms Addendum for Apps in the EU continue to be subject only to the CTF until the transition to the CTC is fully implemented next year. At that time, qualifying transactions will be subject to the CTC, and the CTF will no longer apply. Additional details regarding this transition will be provided at a later date.

User Experience Update

• Beginning with iOS 18.6 and iPadOS 18.6, iOS and iPadOS will provide an updated user experience in the EU for installing alternative marketplaces or apps from a developer’s website. Additionally, later this year, we will provide an API which will allow developers to initiate the download of alternatively distributed apps they publish from within their app.

To learn more, view Communication and promotion of offers on the App Store in the EU. To read the full terms, view the Alternative Terms Addendum for Apps in the EU or the StoreKit External Purchase Link Entitlement Addendum for EU Apps. You can also request a 30-minute online appointment to ask questions and provide feedback about these changes.