In an announcement made today, Apple announced that starting April 25, 2022, all iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS apps submitted to the App Store must be built with Xcode 13. Xcode 13 already includes SDKs for iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and watchOS 8.
The new requirement, confirmed via Apple’s developer site, shouldn’t be a big surprise — Apple does want developers to move to the latest version of Xcode as soon as possible, and they have a few weeks before the requirement goes into effect.
The full announcement is as follows:
Starting April 25, 2022, all iOS, iPad OS, and watchOS apps submitted to the App Store must be built with Xcode 13. Xcode 13 already includes SDKs for iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and watchOS 8.
Take advantage of exciting features in iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and watchOS 8 for a more intuitive and valuable user experience. Improve your app’s performance by refactoring your code to take advantage of async features in Swift. You can also enhance your app with the latest SwiftUI updates, such as an optimized list view, a better search experience, and support for controlling focus areas.
iPhone and iPad app. iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 let you take advantage of web extensions for Safari, simulcast sharing and Group Activities APIs, Focus Mode, ShazamKit, Create ML, and more. You can also publish custom product pages and in-app campaigns, and test product page optimization on the App Store for these platforms.
Apple Watch app. New watchOS 8 features include a 24/7 Retina Display so your apps are always on the watch face. In addition, there are Bluetooth devices that can be connected with complex functions, and user notifications based on region and other functions.