Critical Warning for External Purchases in Apple App Store

Summary

Viktor Maric: first time seeing this. Apple will punish the apps with external payment system Swift Dev: Yup it’s real, you see this warning if the app doesn’t use IAP. Also it says external purchases next to the “get” button It’s confusing to follow all the changes, but apparently—unlike in the US—external purchases in the EU don’t need to have corresponding IAP versions. The warning adds five lines of text at the top of the App Store screen, above even the app’s name and icon. On macOS, Apple declares three levels of alerts: Informational (app icon): “to be used to inform the user about a current or impending event” Warning (app icon): “to be used to warn the user about a current or impending event[…] when the alert’s content is more severe than [informational]” Critical (orange ! triangle icon): “Use a caution symbol sparingly. Using a caution symbol like exclamationmark.triangle too frequently in your alerts diminishes its significance. Use the symbol only when extra attention is really needed, as when confirming an action that might result in unexpected loss of data.” Guess which icon the App Store uses for external payments. But I wonder how many users will see the warnings. If you’ve already purchased an app, it can auto-update to add external payments without your having to go back to the store. And I think the DMA mandated that there can’t be scare screens at the time of purchase. Previously: Design European Union External iOS Payments iOS iOS 18 3