Before you start thinking about submitting your application
to the App Store, you need to make sure
that it is ready for submission based on
a few prerequisites. In this lesson, you will
review the submission process for your mobile application
to the iOS App Store. The first thing to be
certain of is that your application is finished
or close to being finished. This is to make sure
that the application is successfully built
with no errors. The best step to take
in this situation is to test your application
using a simulator, or even better, test your
application on a real device. This is because some parts of the application can act slightly differently in a simulator as opposed to an actual
user's device. The next step is to
ensure that you have an Apple developer
account so that you can log into the App
Store Connect website. This is the website where
everything regarding the submission of your
application will be handled. Your Apple developer
account needs to be enrolled into the Apple
Developer Program. This is the website where
everything regarding the submission of your
application will be handled. You don't need to make
any purchase while your application is in
the development phase. You can wait once your
application is ready for submission before paying for
the Apple Developer Program. After you have a valid account enrolled to the Apple
Developer Program, you will be able to
add your account to Xcode and use it to connect your application
to your account. This is a key step since it
will allow you to create unique certificates
which will be used to sign your Apple
bundle for distribution. Another key thing to
do before submitting your application is to review
the App Store guidelines. This is where Apple created certain rules about how
the application should be designed and it goes deep into every aspect
of the application. This can be found
in the additional resources of this course. From the design to
user privacy and safety, application performance, and other important topics, once all these steps
are completed, you are ready to proceed
with the submission process. In order to submit the
application to the app store, your project will
need to be archived. You will archive
your application via the product tab in
the toolbar menu. Be sure that none of the
simulator options are selected since the
archive option will only be enabled if you set any
iOS device as your device. Once the archiving
process is completed, the archives window will open with a distribute button and you will now be able
to choose how you want to distribute
your application. There will be multiple options for distributing
your application, but you will choose
App Store Connect. After choosing the
distribution options, you will then start uploading your application
to the App Store. After the uploading is complete, you will see the status
of your submission and you can submit the
application for review. You will have to wait for
the Apple staff to review your application and to provide
any necessary feedback. That covers the App Store
submission process. As you may have noticed, similar to the development
process of your app, the main thing is ensuring
you have identified and fixed any bugs in your
app before submission. You are well on your way to submitting your own
app to the App Store.