LEIGHA JARETT: Hi there,
Flutter developer. If you're watching
this video, I'm going to assume you've already
created a Flutter app that looks and feels great
on iOS, and now you're ready to deploy it to the App
Store, like the Wondrous app that I have here. Before we jump in, there's
a few prerequisites that you'll need to have. First, to build and
release an iOS app, make sure that you have Xcode
installed on your Mac computer. Second, to publish your
app to the App Store, make sure that your app
adheres to the App Store review guidelines. And finally, you'll need to be
enrolled in the Apple Developer Program. No worries if you're not. You can find a link
to sign up below. Now that we've got those
prereqs out of the way, let's get started. [MUSIC PLAYING] Start by registering
your app's bundle ID. You can register a bundle ID
with your Apple development team by going to
Apple's Identifiers page under Certificates,
IDs, and Profiles, and then filling out
the details of your app. If you haven't heard
of a bundle ID before, it's a unique
identifier for your app. Apple encourages reverse
domain-name notation to avoid conflicts
with other apps. Let's say you work at
a company where you use the domain mycompany.com. In that case, all of
your app bundle IDs might start with com.mycompany. If you created an
app called myapp, the entire bundle ID
could look something like this, com.mycompany.myapp. Once that's done,
create a record for your app in App Store
Connect, which you'll use to submit and manage your app. Head over to the Apps page
under App Store Connect and click the Plus button
to create a new record. Next, fill in the details
like the name and the target platform. Then select the bundle
ID that you registered. Now that you're all
set with your record, head over to Xcode to double
check some project settings. Oh, and by the way,
if you're looking for more information on how
Flutter works with Xcode, then check out our video
Flutter for iOS Developers. Open up the relevant
iOS files in Xcode by right clicking
on the iOS folder in your Flutter app
project, or run this command on the terminal from your
project's root directory. To view your app settings,
open up the runner target. Take a look at the General tab. Add a category and a
display name for your app, and check the bundle identifier. If you don't explicitly
set your org, Flutter fills it in with
a placeholder reverse domain, com.example, plus
the name of your app. Quick tip-- you can save time
and skip this step by passing your reverse domain
org as a parameter when you create a
Flutter project, or just modify the
settings in VS Code so all your new Flutter apps
will use that org domain. Either way, you'll
need to make sure that this bundle
identifier matches the one you registered earlier. In addition to confirming
the identity of your app, make sure that the deployment
information is correct. Now specify the
minimum version of iOS that your app users must have. If your app or plugins
make use of newer APIs, you'll need to
make sure that this meets the minimum requirement. Next up, head to the Signing
and Capabilities tab. Before we talk
through the settings, it's helpful to understand
just what code signing is. Code signing assures
users that your app is from a known
and approved source and hasn't been tampered with. Before your app can
be run on a device or submitted to the
App Store, its binary must be signed with
a certificate that's issued by Apple. The certificate
basically says that you are who you say
you are, and when you're ready to
distribute your app, a provisioning profile is
used to tie your certificates to your app ID and
authorizes your app to use particular services. Thankfully, Xcode has a
setting to automatically manage app signing for you,
and Flutter projects have it enabled by default. [DING] To use it, specify the
development team that should publish the app. Now on to adding your app icon. You may have noticed that
Flutter creates a placeholder icon, the infamous Flutter
F. In Xcode, click on Assets in the runner project. Here you see the different sized
icons based on their usage. Historically, developers would
use an app-icon generator to create all the different file
sizes based on a single input. But if you're using
Xcode 14 or later, you can just change the setting
to use a single 1,024 by 1,024 image and upload one icon. OK, so we have our settings
finished up in Xcode. Let's head back to our
Flutter repository. Before you build an archive
for a new version of your app, you'll want to increment
its version number. In iOS, this is tracked under
the CFBundleVersion Core Foundation key. This key is a
machine-readable string composed of one to three
period-separated integers, such as 2.0.13. The first number represents
a pretty major overhaul of the app, like changing
the design system. The second number likely
represents minor changes, like a few new features. And the last number represents
a patch, so pretty minor changes like little bug fixes. In Flutter apps, we
change the version by modifying the
pubspec.yaml file. You can also optionally
include a build number to track different builds
during development. Finally, you're ready to create
a build archive and upload it to App Store Connect. To build an app means to
compile the source code and app assets into something that
can be run or distributed. When you're debugging
and testing your app, you're usually running your app. Whether you're working in an
IDE and pressing the Run button or using the
flutter run command, both processes create a dot
app bundle in debug mode and launches it on the
connected simulator or device. Debug mode means that the
compilation is optimized for fast development cycles. So you can quickly make
changes, and by the magic of Flutter's hot
reload, you can see those changes reflected almost
immediately on the device. When it's time to
distribute your app, you'll want to build
in release mode. Release mode
compilation is optimized for fast startup, fast
execution, and small package sizes. To build your app
in release mode, run flutter build release. This creates a dot
app bundle which is good for local
development and testing, but to distribute the app,
you'll need a dot ipa. In Xcode, an app bundle is used
to create an archive, which is then used to create an IPA. In Flutter, we do
the same thing, only we've tried to
simplify this process by creating a single
command, flutter build ipa. When building an IPA,
you have the option to prepare your app to
be distributed inside or outside of the App Store. By default, we prepare
the IPA for the App Store, but you can use the
export-method flag to change this. For example, you may want
to use the enterprise export method, which allows you to
distribute your app to users in your organization. You can also consider adding the
obfuscate and split-debug-info flags to obfuscate your
Dart code so that it's more difficult to reverse engineer. Once you've run the
build ipa command, you can find the
Xcode build archive in your project's
build/ios/archive directory and the dot IPA file
in the build/ios/ipa. Now we're in the home stretch. It's time to add your IPA
file to App Store Connect. There are a few different
ways to do this, but the easiest is to use the
Apple Transport macOS app. Drag and drop the IPA
into the Transport app and wait for it to process. Once it's all ready, deliver
it to App Store Connect. Over in App Store Connect,
you can choose whether or not you want to deploy your app to
the App Store or to TestFlight. TestFlight lets
you push your apps to internal and external
testers before making it available to a larger audience. Just create your groups
of testers to get started. Keep in mind if you choose
to invite external testers, your app is submitted to
beta app review, which means that you may need to
wait a few days before your app becomes available to testers. Testers can install the
TestFlight app on their device and use it to install your
app and share feedback. When you're ready to release
your app to the world, complete all the required
fields and click Add for Review. Apple will notify you when
the review process is complete and your app is live
in the App Store. And that's how you deploy
your Flutter app in the App Store in seven steps. For more details
on all the steps that we went through
today and ways that you can
automate the process, check out the step-by-step
guide included in the video description. I'm Leigha. Thanks for watching, and I
can't wait to see your Flutter app in the App Store. [MUSIC PLAYING]
