App Transfer Impact on APNS

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Hello,

We are planning to transfer an app to a different Apple Developer account and had several questions regarding APNs continuity and behavior after the transfer.

We are specifically interested in the period immediately after the app transfer, but before the app has been updated under the recipient account.

I’ve done some due diligence on this topic within the forums and found related guidance here:

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/744468?answerId=776692022#776692022

My understanding from that thread is that the existing push notification credentials will become invalid after a short delay following the transfer, and that we would need to update our backend to use newly generated credentials from the recipient account. However, since things can evolve over time, I wanted to confirm whether that guidance is still accurate for the following scenarios.

For users who already have the app installed and previously opted into push notifications before the transfer:

Will existing APNs device tokens remain valid after the app transfer?
Will these users continue receiving push notifications without interruption, assuming our provider infrastructure remains unchanged?

For users who newly install the app after the transfer:

Will we need to migrate to a new APNs authentication key or certificate associated with the recipient Apple Developer account in order to successfully register for and send push notifications to those users?

For users who restore or migrate the app to a new device (for example, via iCloud Backup restore or device-to-device transfer):

Will push notification registration continue to function normally after the app transfer?
Will those app instances need to re-register and obtain new APNs device tokens associated with the recipient account?
To support this scenario, would our provider infrastructure need to migrate to and use a new APNs authentication key associated with the recipient account?

Any clarification on the expected APNs transition behavior during and after an app transfer would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

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Answer 1

Engineer OP

Apple

5h

Yes, the guidance still holds true. Apart from a trivial but non-zero time period around the moment of transfer being completed (due to network propagation and database update times), once the transfer is complete, the credentials of the old team will no longer work, and the new team with their new credentials will need to take over.

The only exception is if the old team has already open connections to APNs having used their old credentials, those connections will continue functioning until the connections are closed.

For users who already have the app installed and previously opted into push notifications before the transfer:

The transfer hands over push server infrastructure authentication from one team to the other. The app itself is not affected at all unless the new team is changing the Bundle ID.

Will existing APNs device tokens remain valid after the app transfer?

Device tokens will not change as long as the App Bundle ID is the same, and the migration to the "new" app does not involve deleting the old and reinstalling the new version.

Will these users continue receiving push notifications without interruption, assuming our provider infrastructure remains unchanged?

As long as the provider infrastructure is using the new credentials, there will be no interruptions.

For users who newly install the app after the transfer: Will we need to migrate to a new APNs authentication key or certificate associated with the recipient Apple Developer account in order to successfully register for and send push notifications to those users?

The app will register regardless of who owns it. To send notifications to the app, you must use new credentials. The old ones will no longer work (other than the edge cases I mentioned above)

For users who restore or migrate the app to a new device (for example, via iCloud Backup restore or device-to-device transfer): Will push notification registration continue to function normally after the app transfer?

Yes, app behavior does not care who owns it.

Will those app instances need to re-register and obtain new APNs device tokens associated with the recipient account?

Yes, they will obtain new tokens. This is unrelated to app transfer.

To support this scenario, would our provider infrastructure need to migrate to and use a new APNs authentication key associated with the recipient account?

The recipient app will be reporting their new token to the provider server. However that is being done today, that might need to be changed if the servers for the old team has been hard coded, or on the provider side some sort of forwarding cannot be arranged. This is all much more easy if the two teams are amicable.

If the token update to the provider has been hard coded in the app, and forwarding to the new provider, or sharing the token database is not an option, then you might need to publish a new version of the app, and then coordinating that with the app transfer is a whole another kettle of fish.

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