hi,
watchOSv6 apps can run independently, without needing an iPhone. they can even be isntalled directly on watch.
However, I was looking for option in App Store Connect page to publish an independent watchOS6 app, and couldn't find any option there.
One can publish an iOS app, tvOS app or macOS app, but there is no watchOS app category.
This is very poorly documented!
And since I just went multiple rounds with developer support until I figured this out (I'm not sure that developer support understands how confusing this is...) I'll share what I learned:
1. When you create a new Watch App project (not an iOS App with Watch App), note that it creates a Watch App target, a Watch Extension target, AND an almost empty iOS App target (no code, storyboards, xcassets, but under build phases it is dependent on the Watch App and embeds the Watch app).
2. On App Store Connect, you create a new iOS app project for your independent Watch app, but only fill in the data related to the Watch part of the project.
3. Archive and upload your project as you normally would a standard iOS project.
Voila! (And yes, that is not intuitive).
This no longer seems to work. When I create a new standalone app, I only get a Watch App target and when trying to archive this, I only get options for exporting the archive to file.
The bundlid ends with .watchkitapp, the app records are online at AppStoreConnect, there is even a screenshot in the watchOS portion of the app record. Stiil:
What am I missing?
@DrMickeyLauer I encountered this issue today as well. It was caused by inconsistent project settings between the old and new versions of Xcode. Creating a new project resolved the problem.