Publish to App Stores — Overview
How VULK publishes your generated app to the Apple App Store and Google Play using your own developer accounts.
Publish to App Stores
VULK can take an app you generated and publish it to the Apple App Store and Google Play — built, signed, and submitted from inside VULK.
The single most important thing to understand up front:
Your app is published under your own Apple and Google developer accounts. Apple and Google ship every app under the account of the legal entity that owns it. VULK automates the entire mechanical pipeline on your behalf: you own the developer accounts and grant VULK API access to them — the same model every "publish to the store" platform uses.
What you need (summary)
| Apple App Store | Google Play | |
|---|---|---|
| Account | Apple Developer Program | Google Play Console |
| Cost | $99 / year | $25 one-time |
| Who can enrol | Individual or Organization (Organization needs a D‑U‑N‑S number) | Individual or Organization (identity verification required) |
| What you give VULK | App Store Connect API key (Issuer ID + Key ID + .p8) | Google Cloud service-account JSON linked in Play Console |
| Build machine | macOS (VULK runs this for you) | Linux (VULK runs this for you) |
Full step-by-step for each is in Apple account setup and Google account setup.
How your credentials are stored
When you connect a developer account, VULK stores the credential encrypted at rest and only decrypts it transiently inside the build pipeline to sign API requests. The credential is never exposed to the browser, never written to generated source, and never shared between users. You can revoke it at any time from VULK, and you can independently revoke the API key in Apple/Google — VULK never has more access than the key you issued it.
What gets published
VULK packages your app (React / Vite) as native iOS and Android projects with Capacitor 8, adds native capabilities — push notifications, haptics, sharing, status bar and deep links — and then builds and signs it:
- iOS: native archive → signed
.ipa→ uploaded to App Store Connect (TestFlight first, then App Store review). - Android: signed Android App Bundle (
.aab) → uploaded to a Play track (internal/closed/open/production).
The exact pipeline is described in How it works.
What VULK does
VULK automates: app-record creation, signing assets, building, packaging, metadata, screenshots, build upload, and submitting for review — all via the official Apple and Google APIs.
What you set up once
- Enrol in the Apple Developer Program ($99 / year) and register your Google Play Console account ($25 one-time).
- If you charge for the app, sign Apple's Paid Applications Agreement as the Account Holder, on the web.
- Follow your app through Apple's and Google's human app review. VULK delivers your app to the review queue in good shape, and the store's reviewers approve the release.
See Requirements for the complete checklist.