iOS 27 Is Out: New App Store Submission Rules and the April 2027 SDK Requirement

Apple released iOS 27 to the public on September 14, 2026, alongside iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, tvOS 27 and visionOS 27, according to the Apple Newsroom announcement of that date. Five days earlier, on September 9, 2026, Apple told developers that the App Store was open for apps built for the new releases and listed what it now expects at submission.

If your business already has an app on the App Store, the release itself does not take your app down or force an immediate rebuild. It does start a clock, and it adds questions you must answer before your next update can be submitted. This article sets out what is in force now, what has a future date, and what a team responsible for iPhone app development should plan for over the next six months.

What Apple announced and when

The developer notice is titled App Store submissions now open for the latest OS releases and is dated September 9, 2026. It asks developers to build with Xcode 27, test through TestFlight and submit for review. On that date Xcode 27 was a Release Candidate. Apple's Releases page lists the final Xcode 27 on September 14, 2026, and a maintenance update, iOS 27.0.1, on September 28, 2026.

The same notice contains four things an app owner should know about: a new minimum SDK requirement with a date in April 2027, age rating questions about social media features, new App Store marketing assets, and a change for Mac apps. Each is covered below.

In force now: age rating questions about social media features

iOS 27 introduces Time Allowances, a parental control that lets parents set daily time limits for children by category, including Entertainment, Games and Social Media. Apple described the feature for developers on June 8, 2026 in Introducing Time Allowances.

To sort apps into the Social Media category, Apple added questions to the age rating questionnaire in App Store Connect on July 9, 2026. That notice says that from September 2026 an answer is required before you can submit a new app or an update, and also before submitting an app for notarization for alternative distribution.

Apple's definition is about features, not category

Apple defines a social media capability as the ability to redistribute, amplify or interact with user-generated content through a social feed or similar discovery method. The June 8 notice states that the classification depends on whether the app offers those capabilities, regardless of the App Store category you selected. A retail, fitness or community app with a public feed of user posts may therefore need to answer yes even though nobody on the team thinks of it as a social network.

What a yes answer does

According to the June 8 notice, an app that declares social media capabilities is placed in the Social Media Time Allowance category and receives a minimum age rating of 13+. The July 9 notice adds that such apps show a Social Media content descriptor on their product page. If the capabilities are switched off for anyone under 13, the app is not placed in that category for those users, but Apple says you then need to use the Declared Age Range API, at a minimum, to check users' age ranges.

Future date: the iOS 27 SDK becomes mandatory in April 2027

The September 9 notice states that starting April 2027, apps and games uploaded to App Store Connect must meet new minimums:

• iOS and iPadOS apps must be built with the iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 SDK or later.
• tvOS, visionOS and watchOS apps must be built with the version 27 SDK for their platform or later.

Apple's notice gives the month but not a day. For comparison, the previous cycle's requirement took effect on April 28, 2026 and its exact date was confirmed in a separate notice in February 2026, so expect Apple to publish a specific day closer to the time on its Upcoming Requirements page.

Two points are often misunderstood. First, the rule applies to uploads, meaning new apps and updates. Apple's notice does not say that apps already on the store will be removed in April 2027. Second, building with the iOS 27 SDK is not the same as requiring customers to run iOS 27. The SDK is the toolkit the app is compiled against; the oldest iOS version your app supports is a separate setting. On that setting, the Upcoming Requirements page lists an entry dated September 9, 2026 stating that iOS and iPadOS apps uploaded to App Store Connect must target iOS 13 or later.

New App Store assets and a change for Mac apps

Apple's notice also points to new product page headers and search result assets, with design guidance and templates published for them. These are optional marketing assets, not a submission requirement. The notice mentions a product page preview tool in App Store Connect and labels it as coming soon, so treat that tool as announced rather than available.

For companies that also ship a Mac app, the notice states that macOS 27 is Apple silicon only and advises developers who want to limit their app to those Macs to set the build architecture to arm64, then rebuild and resubmit. If your Mac app still depends on Intel-only components, raise it with your developers now.

What this means for your business

The following is our reading of the notices, offered as guidance rather than as Apple's position.

The age rating questions are the item most likely to cause an unplanned delay. They sit in App Store Connect, not in the code, so a release that is technically finished can be held up because nobody with the right account role has answered them. The answers also have consequences: a 13+ minimum rating and a Social Media label change how your listing appears to parents. That makes it a product and compliance decision rather than a box for a developer to tick. For apps used by children in the US or UK, it is worth involving whoever handles your privacy and child safety obligations. This article is not legal advice.

The April 2027 SDK requirement is a planning matter. Moving to a new SDK can surface interface changes, deprecated APIs and third-party library updates. Apps built with Flutter or React Native depend on those frameworks and their plugins supporting Xcode 27, which is a separate dependency to check; our comparison of native, Flutter and React Native explains why that layer matters. An app that has not been touched for a year or two usually needs more work than one that is updated regularly, and the cost is driven by how many screens, libraries and custom components are involved rather than by the SDK switch itself.

What to do next

• Sign in to App Store Connect and answer the social media questions for every app you own, after agreeing internally what the honest answer is.
• Ask your developers which Xcode version and SDK your current release is built with, and when they can produce a test build with Xcode 27.
• Test the current store version of your app on a device running iOS 27 and log anything that looks or behaves differently.
• Schedule the SDK migration for a release well before April 2027, leaving time for App Review.
• Check the Upcoming Requirements page monthly for the exact April date.

If an outside agency built your app and you no longer have a relationship with it, confirm that you hold the source code and the Apple Developer account. Without both, none of the steps above are possible.

Conclusion

iOS 27 has been available since September 14, 2026. For existing apps, the practical consequences are a set of age rating questions that must be answered before the next submission and a requirement, starting in April 2027, to build with the iOS 27 SDK. Neither is difficult if it is planned, and both are disruptive if they are discovered on the day you need to ship an urgent fix.

If you would like a second opinion on what the move to the iOS 27 SDK involves for your app, you can request a quote and we will review the scope with you.