Apple does not report analytics for AUv3 iOS Plug-Ins

Hello everyone,

I’ve recently published an AUv3 FX Plug-in for iOS (SDK v12.1). As an FX Plug-In, it’s mainly designed to be used inside iOS hosts such as GarageBand, Cubasis, Beatmaker, etc.

Through App Store Connect, Apple gives a detailed report of Sales and Usage analytics.

The problem is that when the plug-in is being used as AUv3 inside an iOS host - and not as a standalone app - Apple does not report any USAGE analytics - which are the ones that I’m mainly interested for (Installations/Sessions/Active Devices/Crashes/etc).

This is the official answer that I received from Apple’s support:

After further investigation, we could verify that the usage analytics you are seeing are indicative only of the standalone app. Therefore, the usage analytics count only if the app opened by customers that agreed to share their details with you.

I’m planning to integrate an external analytics SDK and specifically, I’m looking into Google’s Firebase SDK for iOS apps.

Has anyone used the Firebase SDK for AUv3 iOS apps and could safely confirm that the analytics are reported successfully when the plug-in is being used inside an iOS host?

not an answer directly, but here’s how to get Firebase/Admob working with JUCE

Hey,

thanks for your answer! I’ve already seen your videos regarding integration.

Have you tested with AUv3 inside iOS hosts?

I have not! I’m curious what results you get though

I do not believe this will work at all. An AUv3 in an iOS host can not “see” the outside world; its only access is via the Files app trigger and the security group; it can read from the source app bundle, but can not write to it, nor access any interwebs. Any entitlements you’d be required to add for your analytics won’t actually work in the AUv3; iOS hosts are hardened, and you only have access to entitlements that the host passes through.

Maybe things have changed since this thread was started but Firebase Analytics appears to work inside an AUv3. Initialized within the iOS ViewController (rather than the AppDelegate since that’s not used from an AUv3 point-of-view).
With debug logging enabled, it claims to be receiving a 204 status after sending analytics content.
I can’t see it from the Firebase DebugView though because there seems to be an issue with passing the -FIRDebugEnabled command line argument into an app extension.