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iOS offerings empty only after successful app store review (testing with promo code)

  • 29 November 2021
  • 8 replies
  • 760 views

Userlevel 1
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Our iOS app works ok in TestFlight but subscription offerings is coming back empty once the app is approved by apple. Our steps are

  • Post to TestFlight prior to review 
  • Launch app and go to subscription screen - works fine
  • Send for Apple Review (set to manual release)
  • App passes Apple Review
  • Download with a promo code
  • Launch app and go to subscription screen - no products!
  • Try restoring purchases - no products!

Obviously we’d like to make sure this works before we manually release, is there anything that might be stopping the offerings/products showing after the Apple Review. Is it the promo code? Or perhaps something else?

Things we’ve checked

  • The bundle ID is correct
  • The in-app purchase entitlement is present
  • There are products in the offerings
  • Our products on the App Store have passed approval
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Best answer by ryan 29 November 2021, 18:52

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8 replies

Userlevel 5
Badge +9

Hey @Tobin Harris!

On your initial app release, products can’t be fetched until your app is live on the store. It can even take ~24hrs sometimes for Apple to propagate your app throughout the app store (on initial release) so you may see that products won’t return if you download your app immediately after it’s released. I’d recommend not doing any big marketing push until the first version of your app has been around for at least a day. The joys of the App Store! 

Userlevel 1
Badge +7

Thanks @ryan .

 

I forgot to mention that the uploaded version pending release will replace an existing app (that has not been updated for several years). However, the subscription products are new. Think they should show up?

 

P.S - Yes the app store is pure fun! :/

Userlevel 5
Badge +9

Hmmm I’m not 100% sure in that scenario to be honest. You could give it a day after being in ‘Pending Developer Release” and seeing if anything changes. The products are all ‘Approved’, right? 

 

If your app is already released with in-app subscriptions and you just want to add a new product, you can do that in App Store Connect without a new release and test things before launching the new product to customers (RevenueCat Offerings ftw). However, I’m not sure how things change for the first release of an existing app with in-app subscriptions.

Userlevel 6
Badge +8

Hey @Tobin Harris! Are you still have issues here? We’ve found that it’s so hit or miss to have products available before fully releasing your app update. If you found a workaround, or aren’t having an issue here anymore, let us know!

Badge +4

Running into this ourselves now for a new app, that we still have as “Pending Developer Release”. 24h after, looks like you all are right, the app needs to be released before they can be requested by RevCat.

One interesting thing to try out is the new “unlisted apps”, maybe that would help with these scenarios. Anyone has any experience?

EDIT: Answering myself here. Unlisted apps cannot change the distribution method afterwards. So this is a no-go.

Badge +3

Hi,

 

Just chiming in here too for anyone encountering this issue in future. We were trying to release our app (for the first time) and waited for a week with all subscriptions approved, and the app pending developer release. The promo code version never showed us the offerings/subscriptions, despite all the documentation saying that this _would_ work!

In the end we gave up and released our app, and all the subscriptions showed up.

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Been having an hard time with that too, its kind of blocking that you cannot even test your code is working before publishing it publicly to App Store… thanks i found this thread after searching for hours xD, thanks for the replies! :)

Userlevel 1
Badge +5

I had the same issue. Once fully released and visible on the App Store everything worked.

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