The App Store (iPhone)

What you need

Join the Apple Developer Program at Apple's developer site with your Apple account. Apple confirms membership, which can take a day or two.

The steps in Piye

Press Publish and choose your phone app. Piye shows the steps in order, and opens each one when the step before is done.

1. Your app's server

Put your app's server online first (see Publish your website). Piye then points the phone app at it.

2. The store check

Before anything goes to Apple, Piye checks what Apple asks for, puts right what it can by itself, and tells you what's left. It takes a few minutes. If something is missing in your app (a page or a feature), press Ask the AI to do it, then check again. When it says Ready for the stores, carry on.

3. Connect Apple

Expo apps: sign in with Expo once. Then Sign in to the App Store with your Apple account (your Apple ID email and password). Expo signs in to Apple with them and makes your app's certificates; Apple sends a code to your iPhone to type in. Piye passes these to Expo and doesn't keep them.

Native apps: connect your App Store account with an App Store Connect key, once:

1. Piye opens Apple's page: App Store Connect, Users and Access, Integrations.
2. The first time only, Apple shows Request Access: your account's owner (the Account Holder) presses it and agrees. It's on straight away.
3. Press Generate (or the + button), name the key Piye, choose Access: App Manager, then Generate.
4. Press Download next to it. Apple lets you download it only once; Piye picks it up from your Downloads folder by itself.
5. Copy the Issuer ID shown above the list and paste it into Piye, with the Key ID.

The key is kept in your Mac's Keychain only, never in your project or on Piye's servers. App Manager is the lowest access that can fill a store page and send an app for review.

Also sign in to Xcode with your Apple Developer account (Xcode, Settings, Accounts). Xcode then makes your app's certificates itself; Piye never sees your password.

4. Make your app's page on App Store Connect (native apps, once)

Apple lets no tool create an app's page, so this one step is yours. On App Store Connect: Apps, the + button, New App, then fill in what Piye shows: platform iOS, your language, the name, and the Bundle ID (already in Apple's list: Xcode registered it).

5. Build and send it

Press Build it and send it to the App Store.

• Expo builds it in the cloud, usually in 15 to 25 minutes.
• Native apps are built and signed on your Mac with Xcode, then sent to App Store Connect, usually in 10 to 20 minutes.

You can keep working meanwhile. The app shows up in TestFlight first (Apple's way to try an app before it's public), then you choose when it goes public.

6. The store page and review

Piye prepares what people see in the App Store, then Apple's review:

• The words people read: the name, the line under the name, the description and the search keywords.
• Category and price (free, in every country).
• Pictures: Piye takes the screenshots Apple asks for, from your app.
• Privacy: what your app does with people's information. Piye finds what it can in your app and ticks it; change anything that isn't right. From this, Piye answers Apple's age rating, and gives you the exact answers to click for the questions Apple keeps on its own site.
• How Apple reaches you: an email and a phone number (with country code) for the review team.
• A sign-in for the reviewers: Apple's reviewers sign in to check your app. Piye makes them an account of their own on your live app and gives it to Apple for you.

Then send it for review. Apple usually answers in a day or two. If Apple asks for changes, Piye helps you make them and send it again.

After launch

• Expo apps can send many changes (text, screens, fixes) straight to people's phones in minutes, without a review. New permissions or native features need a new store release.
• Native apps change through a store release, checked by Apple each time.