How to add a large amount of In-App Purchase items to iTunesConnect

Adding In-App Purchase items to your Application in iTunesConnect by hand is a boring and time consuming task. When I realized that I’d have to add about 1000 items for my app I really did not want to do that manually. Luckily there is a tool for mass upload of In-App Purchase items. It is a bit hidden though.

When you log in to iTunesConnect and select “Manage your Apps” there is a section in the footer called Application Loader. That’s the tool you’ll need.

Download Application Loader and the Spreadsheet Example. With Application Loader you can select a text file that contains a list of the In-App Purchase items that you want to add to your app. It is a tab separated list that contains all the metadata that you’d normally add manually when adding an item in iTunesConnect. Have a look at the spreadsheet example to see what format the list should have.

To add the mandatory screenshots I found it easiest to put all the screenshots in one folder and name the screenshot according to the product ID. If your item’s product ID is com.yourdomain.product1 than the screenshot must be named com.yourdomain.product1.jpg.

If you have that text file all you have to do is select the file in Application Loader, select the screenshot folder, hit “next” a couple of times and then “deliver”.

Voilá, that’s it! Do not panic if your new In-App Purchase items do not show up in iTunesConnect right away. Sometimes it takes a couple of hours(!) before the show up.