iOS App Distribution

Earlier in the course, you went through the process of getting your app ready to submit for review. Let’s recap what that entailed:

A distribution certificate. You need a distribution, and not a developer, certificate to generate the proper provisioning profile for App Store distribution.

While developer certificates are available to any developer on your team, distribution certificates are limited to specific members of your team, such as the Team Admin.

An App Store Connect record. Each app you want to publish to the App Store needs a corresponding record in App Store Connect, with all the appropriate metadata filled out for your app. The App ID here must match the one that you chose in your Xcode project.

An archived app. By choosing Build and Archive from the Xcode Build menu, Xcode will package your app so it can be sent to the App Store. This can be done from the Organizer menu in Xcode using the Distribute App button. You saw this back in part 1 as well.

Submitting the app for review in App Store Connect. When everything is ready to go, you can choose a build to submit for App Review.

So what happens next? Well, according to Apple, on average, 90% of submissions are reviewed in less than 24 hours.

You’ll get a notification by email when the status changes.

You can also check on the status of your review in App Store Connect on the web or via the App Store Connect app for iPhone and iPad.

If your app didn’t pass review, you can submit an appeal. You’ll need specific reasons why you believe your app complies with whatever guideline was cited.

You can also request expedited reviews in cases such as fixing a critical bug or releasing an app coinciding with a particular event.

Links to submit an appeal, or request an expedited review are available on the App Store Review page linked in the author’s notes for this episode.

With your app in the wild, you can continue to monitor reviews and feedback in App Store Connect. But did you know you can also generate promo codes so people can try out your paid app for free? You’ll learn more about that in the next episode.