Pushing a WatchKit app to the AppStore

03 Apr 2015

Now Count The Days Left is in the App Store, I thought I should push out the next WatchKit enabled version just in time for anyone who’s getting on on the first day.

Issues shipping a WatchKit app

The release process was pretty smooth - well as smooth as any release to the AppStore is - with a few extra steps needed because of the WatchKit support.

1. You need to add a new Watch icon and screenshots

Surprisingly the icon needs to be 1024px square, but I just reused the image I’d made for the main watch. The screenshots were easy enough to produce in the simulator.

2. No TestFlight support (yet?)

Bit of a pain this one - I suppose this may come later once the watch is out officially? Something to bear in mind if you want to test your app this way and have added WatchKit support.

3. All your version and build numbers must align

Another pain, as I was using a build script to auto-increment the build numbers for the main app - documented here. However there is no “Build Phases” section for the WatchKit App target in Xcode, so I had to remove the script and manually set the build numbers to all match.

There are full details on the Apple developer site on preparing your WatchKit app for release.

Next steps

All done I think, just need to write a summary blog post in a day or so.

Previous posts in the series

• Plan for DaysLeft App
• Baby Steps using Swift
• Porting UserSettings Code To Swift
• Basic UI in Swift
• Writing a Today Widget in Swift
• Adding a Custom Control
• Swift and Build Odds and Sods
• Animating Progress
• Counting Weekdays Between Two Dates
• Getting ready to Ship Swift
• Waiting For Review
• Playing with WatchKit
• Count The Days Left Released

The code for the project is also available on GitHub