Starting next month, Apple will begin mandating apps submitted to the App Store to be built with Xcode 13.
In an announcement on Tuesday, Apple revealed that come April, it will only accept apps that are built using Xcode 13, the latest version of Apple’s app development kit. The move will go into effect from April 25. By mandating Xcode 13, Apple will ensure that all new apps submitted to App Store are compatible with the latest versions of iOS, iPad OS, watchOS, tvOS, and macOS.
Starting April 25, 2022, iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS apps submitted to the App Store must be built with Xcode 13, which includes the SDKs for iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and watchOS 8.
Apple notes that developers can take advantage of all the new features and APIs introduced with iOS 15, watchOS 8, and macOS Monterey, including ARkit 5, SwiftUI, SharePlay, and Safari Extensions. Apps built with Xcode 13 will continue to support older versions of Apple software, such as iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur.
“Make the most of the exciting features in iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and watchOS 8 to offer even more intuitive and valuable user experiences. Improve your app’s performance by refactoring your code to take advantage of asynchronous functions in Swift. And with the latest updates to SwiftUI, you can enhance your apps with new features, such as improved list views, better search experiences, and support for control focus areas,” wrote Apple in its blog post.
The move comes after Apple released iOS 15.4 and iPadOS 15.5 to the public last week. The latest iOS version introduces several new features, including 112 new Unicode 14.0 emoji, Health and Wallet support for EU COVID-19 vaccination certificates, the ability to use Face ID when masked, Apple Card widget, support for setting up custom email domains, and other smaller, quality-of-life improvements.
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