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Issue 95
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Hey everyone! I hope you’ve all had a fantastic couple of weeks. Welcome to another issue of the newsletter!
With iPhone Duo arriving soon, there is more to getting your app ready than testing its layout. Apple has introduced a badge for apps with Duo screenshots, and the latest App Store Connect API changes how we automate those assets. Meanwhile, GitHub has released its Xcode 27 runner image, and a couple of great new tools and articles make day-to-day development a little easier.
Let’s dive in!
📱 Show that your app is optimized for iPhone Duo
Apple says that if you build your app with Xcode 27.1 and submit iPhone Duo screenshots in App Store Connect, your App Store product page will show an optimized for iPhone Duo badge.
If you have already adapted your app, don’t forget the product page! This is a good reason to capture screenshots that show how it looks across the new device’s orientations and poses. Apple also says that iPhone Duo screenshots will be required for submissions starting in April 2027.
🚨 App Store Connect’s screenshot and preview APIs are deprecated
If your release workflow uploads screenshots or app previews through the App Store Connect API, take a look at the 4.5.1 release notes. Apple has deprecated the App Screenshot Sets, App Screenshots, App Preview Sets, and App Previews resources, along with the equivalent media resources for in-app events.
Apple’s replacement is the App Asset Library, which changes how images and videos are uploaded and placed on product pages. If you would rather not maintain that API integration yourself, Helm CLI can upload screenshots and app previews from your terminal as part of your release workflow.
🛠️ GitHub’s Xcode 27 runner image is generally available
You can now build and test with Xcode 27 on GitHub-hosted Actions runners using runs-on: xcode-27 or xcode-27-xlarge. The image runs macOS 27 and is available on Apple silicon runners only.
If you were already using those labels during the preview, you don’t need to change your workflow. Otherwise, this is a handy way to try the latest toolchain without managing your own Mac runner.
🤖 Work with Xcode projects from the command line
Last issue, we looked at Xcode’s new JSON project format. Artem Novichkov has now written a detailed guide to the command-line tools in the Xcode 27.2 betas: xcrun xcodeproj for inspecting and editing projects, and xcrun xcprojformatter for checking the new format.
The xcodeproj tool can also make small changes to existing project.pbxproj files, so you don’t have to convert a project just to use it. I especially like Artem’s advice on giving coding agents a few project-specific instructions so they can use these tools safely instead of editing project files by hand.
🌍 Fail the build when a translation goes stale
A missing translation, a string marked stale in an .xcstrings catalog, or a dropped format placeholder can be easy to miss until someone uses the app in another language.
Jeroen Leenarts shares a Swift checker that catches these problems in a Run Script build phase, both locally and in Xcode Cloud. It reports errors in a format Xcode can show in the issue navigator, so the build fails with a useful pointer to the offending string. The post includes the scripts if you want to adapt the check to the languages your app ships.
🎨 Give your Debug builds a blueprint app icon
If you have ever opened the wrong build because its icon looks just like the App Store version, Mustafa Natur’s blueprint is a fun little fix. This open source command-line tool turns an Icon Composer .icon file or a classic .appiconset into a blueprint-style icon for your Debug configuration.
You can add a DEV or BETA badge and choose the colours, then point your Debug build’s app icon setting at the generated asset. It is a small touch, but it makes it much easier to tell your builds apart on a device.