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

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

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

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

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

The Apple Developer Forums are a great place to connect with fellow developers and Apple engineers as you give and receive help on development topics. And now, it’s easier to find and keep track of content you’re interested in. Take advantage of enhanced search and a new feature that monitors threads for you and sends you an email each time there’s a reply.

Learn more about the forums

Visit the forums

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, your proceeds will be adjusted in the following regions and will be calculated based on the tax-exclusive price.

Cameroon: New value-added tax of 19.25%

Zimbabwe: New value-added tax of 14.5%

Prices of apps and in-app purchases (excluding auto-renewable subscriptions) on the App Store will increase in these regions.

Germany: Value-added tax rate reversion to 19% after temporary decrease to 16%. Prices on the App Store will not change.

Republic of Korea: Prices of alternative tiers for apps and in-app purchases (excluding auto-renewable subscriptions) will be adjusted to allow for additional locally relevant pricing conventions.

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

On March 29, 2021, token and certificate-based HTTP/2 connections to the Apple Push Notification service must incorporate the new root certificate (AAACertificateServices 5/12/2020) which replaces the old GeoTrust Global CA root certificate. To ensure a seamless transition and to avoid push notification delivery failures, verify that both the old and new root certificates for the HTTP/2 interface are included in the Trust Store of each of your notification servers before March 29.

Note that Apple Push Notification service SSL provider certificates issued to you by Apple do not need be to updated at this time.

Learn more about connecting to APNs

Designing apps for Apple platforms just got easier. Now you can quickly lay out your app for macOS Big Sur or tvOS 14 using new design templates, components, guides, and more. All major macOS and tvOS components, such as buttons, segmented controls, alerts, menus, and other controls, are included. In addition, the updated iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 design resources for Sketch have been rebuilt to support color variables, and include numerous minor improvements and bug fixes.

View resources

The App Store is a safe and trusted place for customers to discover and download apps, and a great opportunity for developers. The App Store Review Guideline changes and clarifications support new features in upcoming OS releases, better protect customers, and help your apps go through the review process as smoothly as possible.

SKAdNetwork 2.2. This update supports view-through attribution for advertisement formats such as video, audio, and interactive advertisements. This allows you to display your choice of advertising formats and measure which creatives are most effective, while preserving user privacy.

Private Click Measurement. iOS 14.5 and iPadOS 14.5 bring Private Click Measurement to apps, in addition to the web. Advertising networks can now measure the effectiveness of advertisement clicks within iOS or iPadOS apps that navigate to a website. This information can be used to understand which advertisements drive conversions (such as purchases or signups) — while maintaining user privacy.

Get started by building and testing your apps with the beta versions of Xcode 12.5, iOS 14.5, and iPadOS 14.5.

Learn more about SKAdNetwork

Learn more about Private Click Measurement

Download the latest betas

Late last year, to give you additional time to prepare, we had temporarily deferred the requirement to use AppTrackingTransparency when requesting permission to track users and access device advertising identifiers. This requirement now goes into effect starting with the upcoming beta update, and will roll out to everyone in early spring with an upcoming release of iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and tvOS 14. We encourage you to verify your app’s implementation of AppTrackingTransparency as soon as possible. Without the user’s permission, you will not be allowed to track them and the device’s advertising identifier value will be all zeros.

In an upcoming release of iOS and iPadOS, we will enhance SKAdNetwork and add Private Click Measurement support for apps, allowing advertising networks to better attribute advertisements that display within apps on these platforms. Private Click Measurement enables the measurement of ad campaigns that direct users to websites while preserving user privacy. Additional details are coming soon.

Learn more about user privacy and data use

Online purchase flows for users in the European Economic Area may be impacted by the European Union’s upcoming Strong Customer Authentication requirements. The App Store and Apple Pay will support Strong Customer Authentication. We recommend that you verify your app’s implementation of StoreKit and Apple Pay to make sure purchases are handled correctly.

Learn more

The App Store now helps users better understand an app’s privacy practices before they download the app on any Apple platform. On each app’s product page, users can learn about some of the data types an app may collect, and whether that data is linked to them or used to track them. As a reminder, your app’s privacy information is required to submit new apps and app updates to the App Store, and some data is optional to disclose if it meets specific criteria, such as certain data from health research apps and regulated financial services. You may update your answers at any time without resubmitting your app or going through App Review.

Learn more about the details you’ll need to provide

Learn how to provide app privacy information in App Store Connect

Easily discoverable and quick to launch at the moment it’s needed, an App Clip is a small part of your app that lets users start and finish an experience in seconds. While you can offer users several ways to discover your App Clip, the best way is with an App Clip Code. Visually beautiful and distinct, each App Clip Code encodes a URL and can incorporate an NFC tag. Users can hold their iPhone near the code or scan it with the camera to open your App Clip and quickly complete a task, before downloading your app.

Codes can now be created in App Store Connect or with the new command line App Clip Code Generator, which provides the flexibility to build your own batch generation process.

Learn about App Clip Codes