Apple helps keep the App Store a safe and trusted place for users to discover apps by detecting and taking action against fraudulent developers and users.

Threats have been present since the first day the App Store launched on iPhone, and they’ve increased in both scale and sophistication in the years since. Apple has likewise scaled its efforts to meet those threats, taking relentless steps forward to combat these risks to users and developers alike.

The App Store provides a safe and trusted place for users around the world to discover and download your apps. And now with search suggestions, it provides another great discovery method. When users search on the App Store, they see suggested search terms related to what they’re looking for. Tapping a suggestion adjusts their search, so they’ll easily find even more apps that might fit their needs. App Store search is one of the main ways that users discover apps, and developers are already seeing more downloads from those who use these suggestions.

Search suggestions are currently available in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Additional regions will be made available over time.

Learn best practices for App Store search optimization

Private Click Measurement is now available in iOS 14.5 and iPadOS 14.5, allowing advertising networks to measure the effectiveness of advertisement clicks within apps and websites 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.

Starting with the beta release of iOS 14.6 and iPadOS 14.6, advertising networks that use SKAdNetwork 3.0 are eligible to receive attribution postbacks if their advertisement does not win the attribution. This allows up to five advertising networks to see when an advertisement they ran was a runner-up to an app installation.

Learn more about SKAdNetwork

Last year, to support apps that adapted services from in-person to digital due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we temporarily deferred the requirement to offer paid online group event services (one-to-few and one-to-many realtime services) through in-app purchase in accordance with App Store Review Guideline 3.1.1. As the world continues to recover from the pandemic, we’d like to support the communities that are still providing digital services in place of in-person group events by extending the deadline further to December 31, 2021.

As a reminder, guideline 3.1.3(d) allows apps offering realtime person-to-person services between two individuals (for example, tutoring students, medical consultations, real estate tours, or fitness training) to use purchase methods other than in-app purchase.

With the upcoming public release of iOS 14.5, iPadOS 14.5, and tvOS 14.5, 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 April 26, 2021.

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

Make sure your apps make the most of iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and watchOS 7. Build your apps with the Xcode 12.5 Release Candidate, update your product pages, and submit them for review.

iPhone and iPad apps. Starting April 26, 2021, all iPhone and iPad apps submitted to the App Store must be built with Xcode 12 and the iOS 14 SDK or later. The iOS SDK provides access to exciting new features like App Clips, Home screen widgets, ARKit, RealityKit, and much more.

Learn more

Apple Watch apps. Starting April 26, 2021, all watchOS apps submitted to the App Store must be built with Xcode 12 and the watchOS 7 SDK or later. The watchOS 7 SDK lets you create multiple complications for each complication family using new ClockKit APIs, SwiftUI Complications, and Xcode Previews — so users can enjoy your app right on their watch face.

Learn more

It’s now simpler than ever for developers around the world to enroll in the Apple Developer Program. As of today, the Apple Developer app also supports enrollment in Canada, France, India, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, and Spain.

Developers can start and finish their membership purchase with local payment methods on iPhone or iPad. And since membership is provided as an auto-renewable subscription, keeping it active is easy.

View on the App Store