I’m currently trying to get a subscription to my app working in the Sandbox App Store storefront.
Here’s what I’ve learned so far:
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Subscriptions:
- Subscription Localizations are not marked as required, but you need at least one or you’ll get “Status: missing metadata” when viewing the subscription. Although App Store Connect typically shows errors for missing data, it doesn’t in this case.
- Additionally, you need screenshots for the Review Information. App Store Connect at least warns you about this, but they seem completely useless to any purpose but completing metadata. Thanks to Sean Heber for mentioning this; I forgot to put it on the list of recent pain. A lot has happened in the last couple of days.
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Subscription Groups:
- Subscription Group Localizations are also not marked as required, but you need at least one or you’ll get “Status: missing metadata” when viewing the subscription. That’s not a mistake: the warning about missing data in Subscription Groups appears in Subscriptions, not Subscription Groups.
- Getting account level banking information submitted (and accepted, it took much longer than 24 hours to process) changed my status from “Missing metadata” to “Ready to Submit.”
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Other
- You need to specify “Terms of service: (URL)” at the end of your description when using Apple’s service terms, even if you’ve specified the terms of service in the appropriate field. I would love to know the rationale for this.
Overall, App Store Connect needs some small but meaningful usability improvements. It would be enormously helpful if it listed which metadata was missing (and ideally linked to where to set it) instead of just reporting “Status: missing metadata” or, worse, “Preparing for submission.”