Emergency Rollback to Previous Version of your App

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The problem :

So you worked your ass off on some cool new features in your IOS app. Submitted it to the appstore and can’t wait for it to get released. Finally, the email shows up “Your application is ready for Sale”. Yipee! you jump with joy, download the latest and greatest update from Appstore to do a smoke test to make sure it works as expected. But wait! something went wrong. You accidentally introduced a major bug in your app and it is crashing.

You know that there is nothing called a quick fix, because Appstore takes a week easily to approve your updates. You start to panic, start googling on how to rollback your update. But don’t find anything. Then you end up on my blog…..

The solution :

Don’t worry. We at Loqly – bit.ly/e5u4jv were in the same boat some time back as you are right now. And here is what I did to get my bug fix out in 4 hours !!!

1. First of there is nothing called a rollback to previous version on Appstore. I have no idea why Apple has done that.
2. Second and most important –> fix your bug!! I know you are panicking but please stay calm and take your time to test the app thoroughly. Lot of times developers only test new functionality but fail to regression test existing functionality. So, take a chill pill and do not repeat the mistake you made earlier. Make sure that your bug is fixed and everything else looks okay.
3. Now, submit your app to itunesconnect.apple.com as a regular update.
4. All done! Now send an email to App review team. Here is what I sent them when we ran into problems
5. End result : The update was approved in 4 hours. Good luck !

EMAIL TO APPSTORE REVIEW TEAM
We would like to request an expedited review of XXX as there was a critical bug accidentally introduced in the last released version (xxx), which causes our app to crash (or show NULLs)

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To test this scenario you can do this : blah blah (you need to tell them how to recreate the bug)
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We have fixed this in xxx.1.4 and would like to request you to please expedite our review so that our customers are not affected by the bug.This is also the first time we are requesting an expedited review and we assure you that we have a proper testing team in place and we will make sure to take necessary steps so that these kind of problems do not arise in the future.