What’s New
Use the latest capabilities to improve the discovery of your app on the App Store, and deliver high-quality app and in-app purchase experiences.
In-app events
In-app events are timely events within apps and games — such as a game competition, a new movie premiere, a livestreamed experience, and more. Later this year, users will be able to discover your in-app events right on the App Store, giving you a whole new way to showcase your events and expand their reach. Users will be able to discover events in personalized recommendations and editorial curation on the Today, Games, and Apps tabs, in search results, and on the app’s product page. You can easily manage your events in App Store Connect, and view insights into how they’re performing in App Analytics.
Available on iOS 15 and iPadOS 15
App Store product pages
Reach even more users on the App Store later this year with new capabilities for your product pages in App Store Connect.
Custom product pages
Create additional versions of your product page with different promotional text, screenshots, and app previews to better showcase particular features or content within your app. Direct relevant audiences to a particular page using its unique URL and view performance in App Analytics.
Product page optimization
Optimize your default product page by trying out different app icons, screenshots, and app previews and comparing their performance to see what users like most. View results in App Analytics so you can make the best decisions for your product page.
Available on iOS 15 and iPadOS 15
Learn about enhancing your product page
TestFlight on Mac
Later this year, you’ll be able to invite internal and external testers to try out your Mac apps and provide feedback before publishing on the Mac App Store. When testing apps for any Apple platform, you’ll be able to create multiple groups of internal testers and configure build access for each one. And internal testers of apps built with Xcode Cloud can select builds based on build groups.
Available on iOS 13, iPadOS 13, macOS 12, and tvOS 13
Watch the session video from WWDC21
StoreKit 2
StoreKit 2 introduces powerful new APIs in Swift that make supporting in-app purchases and subscriptions easier than ever. StoreKit 2 uses Swift concurrency and JSON Web Signature to simplify how you retrieve product information and handle transactions. New APIs let you easily determine product entitlements, quickly get the history of all in-app purchase transactions for your app, find out the latest status of a subscription with one simple check, and more. And now you can provide more seamless support for in-app purchases with new APIs that let users request refunds and manage their subscriptions from within your app. You can take advantage of StoreKit 2 and test in Xcode and the App Store sandbox environment today.
Available on iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS 12, tvOS 15, and watchOS 8
App Store server APIs
Support users and resolve in-app purchase issues more quickly with new App Store server APIs.
- In-App Purchase History. Get the history of in-app purchase transactions for your app.
- Subscription Status. Determine whether a subscription is active, expired, in billing retry, or in billing grace period.
- In-App Purchase Consumption. Send information about a user’s in-app purchase to Apple when they request a refund, to help inform and improve the process.
And coming later this year:
- Renewal Extension. Extend the renewal date of a user’s subscription by up to 90 days in cases of a service or content delivery issue — such as a server outage or cancellation of a live event.
- Invoice Lookup. Confirm a user’s in-app purchase when providing customer support using the Order ID on the purchase invoice sent by Apple.
- Refunded Purchases Lookup. Identify whether a user received refunds for past in-app purchases.
Learn about App Store server APIs
App Store server notifications
App Store server notifications provide real-time updates on your in-app purchases, so you can create customized experiences for your users. Later this year, new notification types cover more user events, including subscription expiration, offer redemption, refunds, and more. You’ll also be able to enter an optional URL to receive server notifications in the App Store sandbox environment, separate from the URL that you use for production.
Learn about App Store server notifications
App Analytics
Later this year, App Analytics in App Store Connect will introduce brand-new data to help you manage and grow your business.
New App Store features
Use App Analytics to understand key metrics about your in-app events, custom product pages, and product page optimization results so you can optimize your presence on the App Store.
New metrics
Measure overall performance more effectively with new metrics, including re-downloads, total downloads, proceeds data, average revenue per paying user, pre-orders, and updates. Each of these metrics will be viewable by territory, device, and source type to let you easily determine what drives your app’s success and growth.
Data is available only from users who have agreed to share their diagnostics and usage information with app developers.
Available for apps on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and tvOS
Game Center
Bring even more fun and connection to your games with Game Center, Apple’s social gaming network.
Friends API
With the Friends API, your app can request access to a player’s Game Center friends list to let them bring friends into your game. Help players go on missions together, compare scores, see friends on a progression map, and more.
Game Center widgets
Enabling Game Center for your app allows it to be included in new Game Center widgets and within additional game recommendations on the App Store.
Friends Are Playing. Players can find out which games their Game Center friends are playing to discover new games, right on the Home screen.
Continue Playing. Players can view their recently played games across devices, making it easy to pick up right where they left off.
Friends API: Available on iOS 14.5, iPadOS 14.5, macOS 12, and tvOS 14.5
Game Center widgets: Available on iOS 15 and iPadOS 15
App Attest API
Part of the DeviceCheck services, the App Attest API helps protect against security threats to your apps by letting you generate a special cryptographic key on a device to validate the integrity of your app before your server provides access to sensitive data. Now you can use this API within your apps on tvOS 15 or later and App Clips on iOS 15 or later — reducing fraudulent use of your services on even more platforms.
Available on iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and tvOS 15
Learn about the App Attest API
App Store widget
This new widget includes stories and collections featuring developers, apps, and in-app events from the Today tab — right on the Home screen.
Available on iOS 15 and iPadOS 15