Publishing Mac App Store
- We have worked together with the Qt Project in order to enable smooth publishing of Qt-based applications to the Mac App Store with Qt Commercial 4.8.1. I have made an example submission, and wrote some instructions for those who want to submit their Qt apps to Mac App Store.
- Browse, purchase, and download apps for your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, Apple Watch, or Apple TV in the App Store. Learn how to use the App Store. Build, battle, explore, and more. Discover more than 100 exclusive single-player and multiplayer games with no ads or in-app purchases.
Which is why human App Reviewers ensure that the apps on the App Store adhere to our strict app review standards. Our App Store Review Guidelines require apps to be safe, provide a good user experience, comply with our privacy rules, secure devices from malware and threats, and use approved business models.
Deliver exciting app experiences, such as App Clips and widgets, to reach users in new ways on iOS 14 and iPadOS 14. Make sure your apps are faster, more responsive, and more engaging by taking advantage of the latest advances in ARKit,Core ML, and Siri. Build your apps with Xcode 12, update your product pages, and submit today.
Build with Xcode 12.
Deliver great user experiences by seamlessly integrating with the latest advances on Apple platforms. Build your apps using Xcode 12, which includes SDKs for iOS 14,iPadOS 14,watchOS 7,tvOS 14, and macOS Catalina.
Starting April 2021, all iOS and iPadOS apps submitted to the App Store must be built with Xcode 12 and the iOS 14 SDK.
Optimize for iOS 14 and iPadOS 14.
The iOS 14 SDK delivers a range of exciting capabilities. Give users a quick way to engage with a part of your app at the right moment with App Clips. Let users experience your app right on their iPhone home screen with new widgets. Bring your ideas to life with new features and more realistic augmented reality experiences using ARKit and RealityKit. And much more.
App Clips
Easily discoverable and quick to launch at the moment it’s needed, an App Clip is a small part of your iOS or iPadOS app that lets users start and finish an experience in seconds. And after you’ve demonstrated the value of your app, you can provide the opportunity to download your full app from the App Store.Cannot update apps mac.
Widgets
Notizen app android mac. Widgets deliver a small amount of timely, useful information or app-specific functionality. And now, they’re even easier to build and make available across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS with the new WidgetKit framework, widget API for SwiftUI, widget gallery, and Smart Stacks.
Dark Mode
Dark Mode is seamlessly integrated throughout the system and is easy to turn on from Control Center or Siri. With a dark appearance for all user interface elements, your app’s content becomes the focus. When Dark Mode is turned on, all apps built with the iOS 13 SDK or later will run in Dark Mode. If you need more time to make your apps look fantastic in Dark Mode or if Dark Mode is not suited for your app, you’ll need to opt out.
Multitasking
Support for Multitasking on iPad is strongly encouraged. Adding support for multiple windows, and adopting Multitasking capabilities, including Slide Over, Split View, and Picture in Picture, will ensure your app delivers a modern and complete experience on iPadOS.
Sign in with Apple
With built-in privacy and security features, Sign in with Apple is a great way to help users set up an account, sign in, and engage with your app quickly and easily. All accounts are protected with two-factor authentication, and Apple will not track users’ activity in your app or website. Apps that authenticate or set up user accounts must support Sign in with Apple if required by guideline 4.8 of the App Store Review Guidelines. See the latest App Store Review Guidelines and Human Interface Guidelines to learn how to provide great user experiences with Sign in with Apple.
Test on devices.
All-screen support
Word Publishing App
Apps should look great on all models of iPhone and iPad, regardless of display size or aspect ratio. With features like Xcode storyboards, Auto Layout, and SwiftUI, your app’s interface elements and layouts automatically fit the display. Test your apps with the latest devices or the simulator in Xcode 12 to make sure they’re ready to take advantage of the edge-to-edge displays by respecting safe areas, supporting adaptive layouts, and more. Find and address UI issues in your app before testing on a device to make sure your app looks great. App updates must use an Xcode storyboard to provide the app’s launch screen. In addition, new apps that run on iPhone must support all iPhone screens and new apps that run on iPad must support all iPad screens.
Required device capabilities
The App Store is designed to provide users with apps that work seamlessly with their device’s capabilities. Verify your information property list (info.plist) is compatible with any device requirements when submitting a new app that takes advantage of the latest technologies.
TestFlight beta testing
Before finalizing your app for release, get valuable feedback with beta testers. Upload your app to App Store Connect and use TestFlight to test on a device and easily invite other testers.
Submit for review.
Before submitting your app for review, make sure it’s ready to be publicly released and that you’re making the most of your product page.
Guidelines
All apps submitted to the App Store are reviewed based on a set of technical, content, and design criteria. Make sure to review the App Store Review Guidelines before submitting your app for review.
Product page
Make sure your app’s name, icon, description, screenshots, app previews, and keywords are ready for your product page. You can also take this opportunity to update your subtitle and promotional text, and choose to promote any new in-app purchases. If your app supports Dark Mode, consider including at least one screenshot that showcases what the experience looks like for users.
iPhone and iPad apps on the Mac App Store
When the first Mac with Apple Silicon ships later this year, your compatible iPhone and iPad apps will also be published automatically on the Mac App Store unless you’ve updated their availability in App Store Connect. Compatibility with macOS will be determined by Apple. Visit App Store Connect to update app availability at any time.
Submission
Once your app is updated for iOS 14 and the latest devices, submit for review. Get step-by-step instructions how to submit your apps for distribution on the App Store.
Update 9/18/2016:
This post is outdated. Please follow the latest guide. The only notable thing is that Electron does not support “bookmark” entitlement, which causes applications fail to open local file or folder after reboot. Issue
Update 4/21/2016:
The Chrome 0.37 signing problem seems to be fixed by adding an entry to entitlements.
Update 4/10/2016:
Due to a Chrome update of version 0.37, signed Electron app won’t work properly according to this issue. Using 0.36.12 is a better choice.
Update 4/8/2016:
Something more should be signed as well (see demo signing file). You might receive Apple’s Email informing that some files’ signature are not correct. Make sure signing them.
Main
It’s not simple to publish an Electron-based app to the Mac App Store (MAS). A lot of people are using electron-packager to make their lives easier. However, before they add Mac App Store support to the build system, I don’t recommend to use it because until now (01/25/2016), electron-packager only supports linux, win32 and darwin platforms (source).
Simply using darwin platform to build will receive an email from Apple that Apple Store no longer accepts QTKit APIs. Fortunately, according to this issue, the MAS support is on the way. Before that, it is wise to stick on the electron’s official guideline.
It is a great guide, and yet lack some very key points.
- Two certificates are needed: distribution and installer. The basic flow to publish on MAS is that to pack an .app package, to use $ productbuild to create a .pkg file, to upload the file using Application loader.
- child.plist and parent.plist need to be placed in the same directory as the .sh script file (not in the app directory).
- The last line of the signing script in the guide was incorrect: $APP_PATH should be $RESULT_PATH. I think the typo will be soon fixed (fixed on 11/20/2015).
- Even thought your app works fine in development, to publish it to the MAS you will need Sandbox entitlements; otherwise it will be rejected in 3 seconds. In the guideline, however, no any entitlement examples. A lot of electron-based apps will need to connect to the Internet to work, and a bunch of apps need to have the read and write access to save settings. Taking these two as example, the correct writing should be like the following:
Publishing Apps For Windows
Also make sure that you put these two entitlements in the MAS publishing page.
Sometimes after all these steps, when you open the your app, you will find a blank page and the app crashes. This issue offers a solution: adding
-i '<com.xxx.name>'in all codesign commands.
Web Publishing App
For my app WordMark, the signing script is like this: