App submission

Use the app submission step to verify or change your selected release candidate build in app stores, review any final release settings, and submit your update for review.

Release workflow

If a release workflow or deploy branch is defined in your settings β€” for teams that produce different builds for staging/RC and production β€” you will see an additional module that displays the status of your production build workflow, along with a Run workflow action.

See our Builds and Branches article for additional information about configuring Runway for multiple build workflows.

Selected build in app store

The selected build module indicates which build is currently selected in the relevant app store, as well as its matching CI build identifier.

Runway isn’t always able to match a CI build to your selected build in the app store. This can occur if a build was manually uploaded to the app store, or if commit info is missing from your build in CI.

You can click the Change selected build action to switch the build that will be submitted for review. The list of builds will also show linked app store and CI build identifiers if available.

(iOS) Builds can take up to five minutes to show up in Runway after being uploaded to App Store Connect.

Runway will automatically select your latest uploaded build in the app store if the β€˜Select the latest build’ automation is enabled.

Note that Runway will stop automatically selecting the latest build if it detects that a build was manually selected either in Runway, or in App Store Connect or the Play Console.

(iOS) Additional review submission items

Additional items (custom product pages or in-app events) can be included alongside your app version submission. To add an item to your review submission, use the Add item button visible on the App submission step. Additional items included in your review submission can be removed from the submission bundle anytime prior to version submission.

Once a review submission bundle has been submitted from review, individual items included in the submission cannot be modified or removed. To remove an item from a submitted bundle, you must first pull the bundle from review.

Handling review submission issues

If there's a problem with one or more of your review submission items, you can choose one of the following options:

  1. Remove the problematic review submission item and proceed with the release of approved items. You can do this from Runway.

  2. Manually resolve the problematic review submission item by going in to App Store Connect – this may involve making changes to the item, or answering questions posed by the App Store Review team. Note that manual item resolution is not currently supported within Runway.

  3. Pull your review submission bundle from review and resubmit.

(iOS) App Store Connect release settings

This module reflects current settings for this app version in App Store Connect.

  • Version release

    • Automatically release this version

    • Automatically release this version after App Review, no earlier than a specified time

    • Manually release this version

If you want Runway to automate the release of your app update, the Version release setting in App Store Connect should be set to Manual.

  • Phased release

    • Off

    • On β€” When choosing this option, Apple will automatically increase your phased release percentage in the App Store each day over a 7-day period.

Phased release sequence: 1% of users on Day 1, 2% on Day 2, 5% on Day 3, 10% on Day 4, 20% on Day 5, 50% on Day 6, and 100% on Day 7.

App review information

Here, you can verify key information that will be passed along to Apple’s reviewers here. To make changes, or to view all available fields, visit App Store Connect directly.

  • Contact β€” Information for the contact person in your organization if the App Review team needs additional information.

  • Sign-in required β€” Sign-in information for a demo account, if relevant.

  • Review notes β€” Additional information about your app that can help during the review process.

(Android) Retained builds (Additional builds)

In certain cases for Android releases, you may want to include one or more past builds alongside new builds with your submission – this is known as retaining builds in the Play Console.

To choose past builds to include (retain) with your submission, click the dropdown on the right of "Change selected build", and click "Include build(s) from a previous release". Choose the past builds that you would like to retain and include alongside new builds with your submission.

Runway will automatically include the past builds you select when submitting your app for review.

Runway will automatically carry over any chosen retained builds to upcoming releases. You can stop retaining builds at any time by simply clearing the selection and saving.

(Android) Release settings

This module reflects the settings that Runway will use when submitting your app for review with Google.

  • Staged rollout

    • Don’t stage, release updates to all users immediately

    • Staged rollout to a percentage of users

    • Staged rollout with percent increasing over a 7-day period

      • When choosing this option, Runway will automatically increase your staged rollout percentage in the Play Console each day over a 7-day period. (1% of users on Day 1, 2% on Day 2, 5% on Day 3, 10% on Day 4, 20% on Day 5, 50% on Day 6, and 100% on Day 7).

A note on Google review: Because of a limitation with the Google Play Publishing API, Runway is unable to differentiate between updates that are in review with Google and those that have been released to the Google Play Store. Because of this, when you submit an Android build for review, Runway's Submission, Review, and Release steps will appear ready (green), though they may still be in review with Google.

Due to a limitation with the Google Play Publishing API, Runway cannot offer support for Managed Publishing. If you have Managed Publishing enabled on the Google Play Console, you must manually publish updates from there. Additionally, the status of an update may appear as Released or Staged Rollout In Progress in Runway even if it has not yet been made available for users via the Play Console.

App submission automations

You can configure the following App submission automations by visiting the Automations tab on this step:

App submission checklist

You can add checklist items to this step by visiting the Checklist tab.

Checklist items cover any unique parts of your team's release process and live across all your releases. Steps with checklist items won't be marked as complete (green) in Runway until all checklist items have been completed (in addition to the normal criteria that would mark a step as completed).

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