I understand we can now compile our plugins as AU’s for iOS and sell them on App Store, but what is it really?
Do we need to bundle/deploy it with a App somehow or will it automagically also run as a standalone app?
Is there any good Apple links with more information? (google didn’t give much insight)
If you compile and run that Standalone app on your iOS device, it will run your plug-in with a minimal standalone wrapper around it (essentially a full-screen app window and audio/MIDI input+output hooked up automatically). You can also customise this standalone no-host view so it looks different from the usual plug-in view if you like (adding a keyboard component and what not).
But the main feature is that once you run that app on your iPhone/iPad, it will automagically register the AppExtension version of itself. From that point on, this AppExtension (the actual plug-in) will be loadable on AUv3 iOS hosts like GarageBand and Cubasis.
If you have a JUCE licence, you can then go ahead and sell your app on the App Store!
Ideally this iOS port should even work out-of-the-box with your existing plug-ins. It’s pretty cool actually. Have fun!
You can also customise this standalone no-host view so it looks different from the usual plug-in view if you like (adding a keyboard component and what not).
I wanted to ask how to customize it, but found it. Here’s how:
Add the line JUCE_USE_CUSTOM_AU3_STANDALONE_APP=1 to the Extra Preprocessor Definitions in Introjucer
Add the line START_JUCE_APPLICATION(YourApplication) somewhere in your code, where YourApplication is your custom subclass of JUCEApplication.
In the main settings page for a plugin project, the “Plugin Formats” field has an “AUv3” checkbox (you may need to click the disclosure button at the bottom of the plugin formats field in order to reveal the checkbox).
Yes, that’s expected. A GUI Project is a project built as a standalone application, meant to run on its own, while a plugin project is meant to be a plugin that is loaded by another application – technically these are two very different things, so you can’t just turn a standalone application into any plugin format.
But in case you need a standalone version of your plugin as well, you can add a standalone application “plugin format”, which will automatically build a small standalone application that does nothing but loading your plugin so that the user can use it as if it would be a standalone application