News and Updates

Apple’s developer community will come together at WWDC16 in San Francisco to see the future of Apple platforms and connect with thousands of developers from all around the world. In addition to the activities planned for conference attendees, a variety of other exciting developer events will take place throughout the week in San Francisco. If you’re attending the conference or will be in the area during WWDC, learn about these other developer events.

Provide controls for Apple Music within your app. iOS 9.3 now supports playback of any song for Apple Music members. To learn more about the new features, guidelines, and affiliate program, see Apple Music Best Practices for App Developers.

At WWDC 2015 we announced the transition to IPv6-only network services in iOS 9. Starting June 1, 2016 all apps submitted to the App Store must support IPv6-only networking. Most apps will not require any changes because IPv6 is already supported by NSURLSession and CFNetwork APIs.

If your app uses IPv4-specific APIs or hard-coded IP addresses, you will need to make some changes. Learn how to ensure compatibility by reading Supporting IPv6 DNS64/NAT64 Networks and watch Your App and Next Generation Networks.

You can use the CareKit framework to develop apps that help people better understand and manage their health by creating dynamic care plans, tracking symptoms, connecting to care teams, and more. CareKit is open source so, in addition to creating great personal care apps, you can collaborate with other developers and the medical community to make CareKit even better. To download a sample app and learn more, visit CareKit.org.

Starting June 1, 2016, all new watchOS apps submitted to the App Store must be native apps built with the watchOS 2 SDK or later. Learn more about developing for watchOS.

You can now support Apple Pay for your customers in Singapore, providing an easy and secure way for them to pay using American Express. Apple Pay lets users buy physical goods and services within your app with a single touch. Learn more about Apple Pay.

The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off June 13 in San Francisco. WWDC features more than 100 technical sessions, over 1,000 Apple engineers, hands-on labs, and the Apple Design Awards. Register now for an opportunity to join Apple’s renowned developer community at this year’s conference. Students and STEM organization members can also apply for a WWDC Scholarship to attend. Learn more about WWDC.

Take advantage of new articles and videos designed to help you grow your business on the App Store and engage users worldwide. See how developers approach finding success on Apple platforms and what they’ve learned along the way. Learn more.

Get a sneak peek at upcoming Safari web technologies in OS X and iOS, and easily experiment with these technologies in your websites and extensions. Get started with the preview today.

You can now access Resolution Center from your iPhone or iPad to review and respond to your active threads, and easily forward threads to other members of your team. You can also opt in to receive a push notification whenever App Review sends you a new message. Visit the App Store for the latest update.

The latest versions of iOS, OS X, watchOS, and tvOS are now available to hundreds of millions of customers around the world. Submit your apps built with Xcode 7.3, which is available for download on the Mac App Store and includes the most recent SDKs. For downloads and details on guidelines, testing, and submitting, visit Prepare your apps for the App Store.

You can now opt in to receive a weekly App Analytics summary email for your most frequently downloaded apps. It will include data on App Store views, App Units, Sales, Sessions, and Crashes. To receive the App Analytics summary email, opt in by visiting the Notifications section of Users and Roles in iTunes Connect.

In addition to testing your apps on GM versions of software, you can also use TestFlight for internal and external testing of your apps running on beta 3 or beta 4 of iOS 9.3 and watchOS 2.2. Internal testing of tvOS 9.2 beta 3 or beta 4 is also supported. Learn more about TestFlight beta testing.

Over the past few months, developers around the world learned how to design and develop apps and games for Apple TV directly from Apple experts. Now you can share in the experience by watching all the session videos from the Apple TV Tech Talks. Watch the session videos.

You can now support Apple Pay for your customers in China, providing an easy, secure, and private way for them to pay using their China UnionPay credit and debit cards. Apple Pay lets users buy physical goods and services within your app without having to enter payment or contact information. Learn more.

Showcase your tvOS app in action by bringing its features and functionality alive with a short video on the App Store for Apple TV. By providing an app preview, you can help customers better understand your app and encourage more downloads. Learn more about app previews.

In addition to providing a web interface for users to access the same data as your app, you can now easily read and write to the CloudKit public database from a server-side process or script with a server-to-server key. Learn more about generating a server-to-server key and composing web service requests.

Lower price tiers, Alternate Tier A and Alternate Tier B, now let you offer paid apps and In-App Purchases at $0.99 (CAD) and $0.99 (NZD). Existing apps that already use these price tiers have been automatically updated. Get details on App Store pricing in the Pricing and Availability section of My Apps on iTunes Connect.

You can now measure user engagement and monetization for your tvOS apps in App Analytics. In addition to seeing data on product page views, downloads, and engagement, you can also see how many iOS users acquired with your marketing campaigns opened the same app on Apple TV. Learn more about App Analytics.

iTunes Connect now provides more visibility into the various file sizes of your app. In addition to viewing the size of your original binary, you can now see the download size and install size for Apple TV, for each iOS device type running iOS 9, and for the universal version of your app. Get started in the Activity tab of My Apps in iTunes Connect or learn more in the iTunes Connect Developer Guide.

As a reminder, we will not be accepting new app or app update submissions from December 22-29. If you plan to release apps during this time, they should be submitted, approved, and scheduled in advance. Other iTunes Connect and developer account functionality will remain available.

Join the open source community at Swift.org and help make the Swift programming language even better. You can now collaborate with other advanced developers to directly contribute features and enhancements, fix bugs, and help bring Swift to new platforms. Open source Swift includes support for building apps for iOS, OS X, watchOS, tvOS — and now, Linux. We’re excited to see where the community will take this language. To learn more, read the Swift blog.

In support of the next generation of innovative developers, we're hosting workshops and other special events in cities around the world during Computer Science Education week, December 7–13. And on December 10, we’ll host the Hour of Code, a free one-hour introduction to the basics of computer programming from Code.org, for kids ages six and up at your local Apple Store. To learn more and sign up, see the Apple Store website.

The busiest season on the App Store is almost here. Make sure your apps are up-to-date and ready for the winter holidays. New apps and app updates will not be accepted December 22-29, so any releases should be submitted, approved, and scheduled in advance. Other iTunes Connect functionality will remain available.

Because of your incredible apps, the App Store crossed 100 billion cumulative downloads. Revenue from the App Store increased 25% year over year, and the number of transacting customers grew 18%, setting a new all-time record. We want to thank you for all your hard work and dedication to our platforms.

You can now support Apple Pay for your customers in Canada and Australia, providing an easy and secure way for them to pay using American Express. Apple Pay lets users buy physical goods and services within your app with a single touch. Learn more.

Now you can invite up to 2,000 users to beta test your iOS and tvOS apps before you release them on the App Store. TestFlight makes it simple to invite testers using just their email address and lets testers easily provide valuable feedback within the TestFlight app. Learn more about TestFlight.

The new Shopping category is now available in all 155 App Store territories. This category makes it easy for iPhone and iPad users to find and enjoy apps that enhance the shopping experience—including mobile commerce apps, marketplace apps, coupon apps, and apps that incorporate Apple Pay. You can select the Shopping category for your new apps and app updates in iTunes Connect. To learn more about assigning categories for your apps, read App Store Product Page.

The App Store for the new Apple TV will soon be available to customers around the world. Get your tvOS apps and games ready and submit them for review now. To learn more, read Preparing Your App Submission for the new Apple TV.

Lower price tiers Alternate Tier A and Alternate Tier B for paid apps and In-App Purchases in China, Russia, Mexico, South Africa, Turkey, Indonesia, and India, are now available for Australia. For markets outside of these territories, items set at these tiers will have the same pricing as Tier 1. Get details on App Store pricing in the Rights and Pricing section of My Apps on iTunes Connect.

Now it's easier to discover and share information presented in WWDC videos with our recent search update. You can search a keyword and find all the instances of it mentioned in the videos. Go straight to the time the keyword was mentioned in the video or easily share a link to it. Try it out.

At WWDC 2015 we announced that the Game Center development sandbox environment would be turned off to simplify game development and beta testing. Starting today, the sandbox will no longer be available and all versions of iOS and OS X will automatically switch over to the production environment for development testing.

To learn more, read Game Center: Life without a Sandbox or visit the developer forums.

We recently removed apps from the App Store that were built with a counterfeit version of Xcode which had the potential to cause harm to customers. You should always download Xcode directly from the Mac App Store, or from the Apple Developer website, and leave Gatekeeper enabled on all your systems to protect against tampered software.

When you download Xcode from the Mac App Store, OS X automatically checks the code signature for Xcode and validates that it is code signed by Apple. When you download Xcode from the Apple Developer website, the code signature is also automatically checked and validated by default as long as you have not disabled Gatekeeper.

Whether you downloaded Xcode from Apple or received Xcode from another source, such as a USB or Thunderbolt disk, or over a local network, you can easily verify the integrity of your copy of Xcode.

You can now submit your apps that take advantage of the latest features in iOS, OS X, and watchOS. Build your apps using Xcode 7 GM seed, test with the GM seeds of iOS 9, OS X El Capitan, and watchOS 2, and submit them for review. Learn how to prepare your apps for the App Store.

With the new Apple TV, you can deliver highly immersive apps on the big screen using the tvOS SDK. The SDK includes many of the same frameworks and technologies as iOS, such as Metal, UIKit, CloudKit, and Game Center, so you can leverage your existing code to create rich games and apps that look amazing on the new Apple TV. Get started with the tvOS SDK.

The next release of watchOS, iOS, and OS X will soon be in the hands of hundreds of millions of customers around the world. Make sure your apps are optimized for the exciting new features now available for these platforms. To prepare, build your apps using Xcode 7 GM seed, and test with the GM seeds of iOS 9, OS X El Capitan, and watchOS 2. Learn more.

iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus introduce an entirely new way to interact with your phone. For the first time, iPhone senses how much pressure you apply to the display. In addition to familiar Multi–Touch gestures like Tap, Swipe, and Pinch, you can now add 3D Touch-enabled actions that bring a new dimension of functionality to your apps. Learn more about 3D Touch.

At WWDC 2015 we announced that iOS 9 will support IPv6-only network services. All apps submitted to the App Store must support IPv6 starting in early 2016. To make sure your app is compatible, use the networking frameworks (e.g., “NSURLSession”), avoid use of IPv4-specific APIs, and avoid hard-coded IP addresses. Before submitting your app, test for compatibility.

To learn more, read Supporting IPv6 DNS64/NAT64 Networks and watch Your App and Next Generation Networks.

Now you can use App Analytics to view your Ratios by territory, platform, campaign, app version, iOS version, and more. For example, find out which of your marketing campaigns generate the highest spend per new user by choosing Sales as the measure, comparing it to App Units, and viewing by campaign in the Metrics tab. You can also see which territory has the highest App Store product page conversion rate, which device customers use most to engage with your app, and much more. View your app analytics now.

iOS 9 SDK includes new APIs and services that are enabling new categories of apps and features. Multitasking and gaming APIs help enhance app functionality and create immersive games. Expanded search capabilities, and new support for CloudKit, HomeKit, HealthKit, and MapKit extend iOS to more places than ever before. See what’s new in iOS.

OS X El Capitan brings Metal to Mac, giving your apps unprecedented graphics and computing power. New extensibility APIs let your Mac apps work seamlessly with Photos and Safari. See what’s new in OS X.

With the new features and capabilities that watchOS 2 brings to WatchKit, your apps can integrate even more closely with Apple Watch. Take advantage of the Digital Crown, microphone, Taptic engine, and health sensors to take your Apple Watch app to the next level. See what’s new in watchOS.