If you develop apps for Apple’s platforms, you may have heard about NativeConnect, an excellent app for macOS that lets you manage the content of App Store Connect without having to open it on the web — we have even written about it here. After being available to download since December last year, NativeConnect was released today on the Mac App Store.
The original NativeConnect app requires a subscription, but now the app can be purchased with a permanent license on the Mac App Store. Once you’ve purchased the “Indie Edition” on the App Store, you don’t have to pay anything else to access all of its features.
So what does NativeConnect do? It provides the main features of the App Store Connect right into a Mac app in a simple, fast, and intuitive way. If you’re not familiar with App Store Connect, it’s a web portal from Apple that allows developers to manage all of their iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS apps.
As of 2018, Apple provides an official App Store Connect API, which can be used to build third-party clients to its portal, and that’s what powers NativeConnect. That means all your data is safe, as the app uses Apple’s technologies to work.
Developer Vadim Shpakovski, founder of NativeConnect, reinforces the privacy behind the app and praises Apple for supporting their project.
NativeConnect features
We deeply care about privacy. NativeConnect keeps all sensitive data in the Sandbox container as well as in the local Keychain, and this data would never leave your Mac. But it took some time to get everything else prepared for the submission. And it seems that we did our homework well.
With NativeConnect, you can easily change the metadata of your apps, such as the name, promotional text, description, and release notes for an update. Even if your app includes support for multiple languages, NativeConnect can handle different localizations.
If your apps are already available on the App Store, you can check metrics like download numbers, revenue, and refunds right on the stats page. Reviews from users are also accessible through the app, and you can answer them from there. The app even generates promo codes.
What’s also great is that you can add multiple App Store Connect accounts to manage them in different libraries. That’s very useful for developers who have a personal account and also a work account. Libraries are saved as single files, so you can easily access them on other Macs.
NativeConnect can now be purchased on the Mac App Store for $99, and all existing subscriptions purchased for $99 will be automatically converted into lifetime licenses. The standard version of the app will now be the “Teams Edition” with some extra enterprise features, and it costs $4.99 per month.
