Sunsetting an Application with Apple
If you're thinking about sunsetting an application with Apple there are certain steps and tasks that you'll need to make sure to complete in order to fully understand the process.
Here is a summary of all the important steps and considerations that you need to be aware of.
Checklist for Sunsetting an Application
There are two ways to deal with the sunsetting of an app :
Dereference the app. You just uncheck each country where the app is available. The subscription will keep on renewing on devices where the app is installed. You can then drive your users to the new app or tell them that the service will be shut down at a certain moment. You can use offer codes to make people download and start a free trial in your new app then when you want to terminate the service you can proceed to
Remove the IAP from sale. There is a button in App Store Connect to deal with that. Renewal will be disabled for everyone.
If you remove from sale or change the availability of an IAP in a specific territory your subscriptions won’t renew. You might want to pro-rata refund yearly users that just subscribed you can ask Apple to do so using the following form : https://developer.apple.com/contact/app-store/remove/