Chapter 16. Distributing your app
This chapter covers
- Distributing your app to beta testers
- Publishing your app to the App Store
What’s the point of all this work perfecting your app if you’re going to keep it to yourself? At some point, you’ll most likely want to share your awesome new app with the world.
But, wait! Before you do, it’s a good idea to get beta testers to give your app a good run-through. Their feedback will be invaluable—not only for finding obscure bugs, but also to provide you with a more subjective perspective of user experience with the app.
You can put your Swift hat away for now. In this chapter, we’ll look at distributing your app. Along the way, we’ll explore
- Joining the Apple Developer Program
- Signing identities and provisioning profiles
- Developer account site and iTunes Connect
- Beta testing and TestFlight
- Building a home for your app in the App Store
Exciting days—your Bookcase app is feeling ready to distribute to beta testers. Then, after you tweak the app based on beta feedback, the App Store awaits!
The first thing you’ll need to do before you can distribute your app is join the Apple Developer Program. You may have already done this, because it was mentioned in chapters 1 and 12 (you needed membership to utilize iCloud). But if you haven’t joined yet and you hope to distribute your app on the App Store, now might be the time to bite the bullet!