How to hide an iPhone App from the iPad's AppStore

0
votes

I noticed that WhatsApp Messenger [1] isn't available for iPad anymore.

Apple states that "iPad runs nearly all applications, or apps, designed for iPhone and iPod Touch" [2]

Now, I must have missed a memo since I knew that any iPhone App could be downloaded on iPad too.

So we finally get to my question: How to hide an iPhone App from the iPad's AppStore?

Thanks.

[1] https://itunes.apple.com/it/app/whatsapp-messenger/id310633997?mt=8

[2] http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4082

1
iphoneipadapp-store
which memo do you think you missed? the end-user's decision whether they like to see iPhone apps on an iPad's AppStore or not. – holex
I think something changed since I knew that every iPhone App is available on iPad too. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore. That's not an end-user decision, the user is not able to see WhatsApp (for example) on the iPad AppStore, that's because WhatsApp doesn't work on iPad but I don't know how they specify that with Xcode or iTunes Connect. – GiovaMaster
The trick WhatsApp seemed to use is Required device capabilities. They made telephony mandatory to run the app, which excludes iPad and iPod Touch – rckoenes

1 Answers

3
votes

As far as I know, WhatsApp has never been available for download on the iPad. This is because they listed telephony as one of the Required Device Capabilities in their info.plist.

That's the only way that you can get an iPhone app not to install on an iPad. Apple doesn't provide any other way as they want all (most) of the iPhone apps to be compatible on iPads (if the app is not universal it'll just run in the iPhone scaled mode).

Please note that if you require telephony to achieve this, but that's not an actual requirement for your app, it will most likely be rejected on the App review process as Apple don't allow artificial hardware requirements used for limiting device types.