Has anyone developed extensions for Safari yet?
Howdy folks, if anyone has developed extensions for Safari using the new webextensions api, can they share their experience?
I want to know more about these things specifically:
- How smooth was the process for developing the xcode wrapper and for notarizing the extension?
- How are payments handled for Safari extensions?
- Can Safari extensions be developed on a Mac virtual machine?
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Thanks @shash7 for mention.
TL;DR (1) smoothness was so-so; (2) must use apple payment system (3) no?
Yes, I have this experiment where one of my goals is to make it work with as many browsers as possible. I recently ported it to safari, so let me share my experience.
There is a command to create the wrapper (see docs). I did the conversion options which was easy. My biggest issues with the dev process were getting around xcode in general since I'm not used to it; basic things like terminal do not exist and while debugging I had to manually run from xcode to view changes. Luckily everything pretty much worked out of the box.
To upload to the store I followed this guide. It is all built into xcode so you need some machine where you can install xcode. The steps in that guide are correct, but I ran into a problem with my certs and needed my iOS dev friend to help me. Once I figured that part out I was good to go.
I went through the review dance 3 times before being approved. First because I changed the id from what was automatically generated, and forgot to update the wrapper code in appropriate places so it just didn't work for the reviewer. Second time they rejected me for having a sponsor link in the free extension, since they won't get their Apple-cut. The way I understood this, if you even hint at anything related to money, you need to use their payment system or you can't publish. I took out the link to resolve it. I was also missing icons and needed to figure out how to add them in xcode. Once I resolved these issues, I got approved.
This is all fairly recent and I cannot see any stats yet, so I have no idea about user stats at this point. The reviewers also forced me to set age rating 17+ for using the word douche so that will probably impact reach to some extent.
Epic
Truly epic
So the summary is that its not worth spending time on the safari store because the roi isn't great right?
Based on what I have discovered so far, the effort of getting to the app store is low including dev effort; there seems to be less competition so you get impressions easier than in other places, which is a positive. If you have to get a license and hardware to be able to publish on there, then the cost of entry becomes very high and probably not worth it, but if you have those two things already, I would do it. Apple users are generally more willing to pay than, say, android ( / google / chrome) users.
I just checked the stats, I can finally see them for the first time. Let me share what I have to give you some ballpark comparisons of marketplaces.
Safari (10 days) 5 installs / ? active / 1.4K impressions
Opera (3 mo): 770 installs / ? active / ? impressions
Firefox (4 mo): 40 installs / 13 active / ? impressions
Chrome (5 mo): 60 installs / 33 active / 4.2K impressions
Edge (4 mo): ? installs / 20 active / ? impressions
Wow, Opera has 770 installs. Surprised by that.
Any particular reason you think?
I think their store has fewer items? It is hard to get past their review process, I've been trying to add a second listing since May and still waiting. Opera is by far the worst dev experience I have had out of these 5 marketplaces.
Also Edge has analytics now, and the interaction there is about same as on Mozilla. Safari peaked early but has been a dud since... crickets. Chrome web store has been a generally good experience.
Updated numbers:
Safari (2 mo): 17 installs / ? active / 3.8K imp
Opera (5 mo): 1,435 installs / ? active / ? imp
Firefox (6 mo): 64 installs / 21 active / ? imp
Chrome (7 mo): 88 installs / 45 active / 27K imp
Edge (6 mo): 60 installs / 26 active / 449 imp
Chrome is skewed because I have other items there with high volume, so the impressions there are by proxy. I am doing different experiments to see what gives. So far nothing much, meh. May need to improve the extension but I also know people who try it seem to like it a lot, so leaning more toward ways to distribute it and how to get it off the ground. Once there is enough organic reach it will take on a life of its own.
Thanks for this feedback. It sough of makes sense.
Ya, Chrome seems to have been great for us. So, we were checking if we should expand to other extension stores and if it is worth it. Ya, the feedback has been mixed I guess. Also, we were thinking, if our extension is a must have, then people can still download Chrome and use it. We mainly try to do paid extensions.
Have you tried working on SEO on Chrome Store? In our experience, that is the biggest mover of download. Like, much more than the product experience. We did a lot of testing with the ranking parameters, and it seems on store SEO makes the biggest difference. Even more than the reviews. Have you tried it out for the Chrome extension? It could help with the numbers you mentioned.
Yes, I also make download all images extension and it is all coming from organic SEO and is working great (people literally search for that phrase). I need to figure out the right keywords to repeat it for other extension. And I agree, once it takes off, SEO is great.
I've ported Share-A-Cart for Everything to Safari recently: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/share-a-cart-for-everything/id1537641390. While I can't comment on payments as I do not use this feature, the rest was very easy. I was unable to get my VM going so I have used a real Macbook as XCode is required. All APIs worked out of the box and XCode signing and releasing is built in, all in all, I'd say about an hour to get it ready. It took longer than that to install XCode.
The only other note I have is that Apple is really strict with their policy requirements. Basically, you have to have everything they tell you to have and you have to make sure that everything works.
I see, so you'll definitely need a mac eh?
Anything interesting you found with the policy requirements? And how smooth was publishing updates compared to the chrome webstore?
I'd chip in by asking are there any statistics on number of safari users that know of and actively look for, install, and pay for extensions?
I don't know tbh. Haven't stepped in that market yet.
@Soft_Re @neea are the guys you can ask.
It depends on how you funnel them I guess.
In my context, user 1 creates a link that gets sent to user 2. In most cases user 2 will need an addon to proceed, so I direct them to the appropriate store to fetch and install it. At this point, Safari analytics reports 2k/impressions and 500 units -- I'm not sure what they mean by units, but I would guess thats install count.
That said, I have my own analytics internally for the addons and I can see a few hundred daily pings (not as many as units).
How would you compare the download numbers with Chrome Extensions?
Good stuff. @oleggromov - whole gang's here if you have any questions.