Managing being featured in 9to5Mac and having a critical bug at the same time

I just emerged from a 3-day rollercoaster.

On Saturday afternoon, my app Type (https://usetype.app) was featured on 9to5Mac (https://9to5mac.com/2024/12/28/indie-app-spotlight-type/).

I was so excited!

...Until I discovered a major bug that prevented users on the latest version of macOS from purchasing Type or even starting a free trial...

I hadn't yet realized that Apple had introduced a new payment sheet in macOS 15.2.

For some unknown reason:

• The sheet appeared beneath the menu bar icon and couldn't be dragged.
• The sheet lacked a purchase button (!!!)
• Users were only able to dismiss the sheet.

I began receiving emails from users saying they couldn't purchase Type (a good problem to have, right?).

A total of 29 people contacted me, and I'm so grateful they did. This allowed me to stay in touch with them throughout the entire process.

I'm logging all RevenueCat errors as non-fatal errors in Crashlytics. Specifically the "Purchase was cancel" error (when users were dismissing the sheet), because that was their only choice in the sheet.

During the last 3 days, ~100 users encountered this bug.

The conversion rate between free trials (138) and lifetime purchases (60) is ~43%. Minus the ~30 users who reached out via email, I'm left with ~70 users I couldn't contact.

This translates to ~30 potential paid users.

This likely means I lost $7.99 x 30 = $240.

How did I fix this?

1. I reviewed how I was presenting the paywall window, removed a few lines of code, and submitted an expedited review on Sunday morning.

Sadly, it didn't fix the problem.

2. I posted a message in the iOS Folks Slack workspace, which includes many experienced engineers, some from Apple.

I quickly received a response from an Apple engineer informing me that this payment sheet is new in macOS 15.2.

He also provided a workaround for users.

3. On Sunday afternoon, I created a help page on my website with steps to bypass this new modal and revert to the previous behavior.

I added a link at the top of the landing page and emailed all the users who reached out to me.

I think this limited the problem.

4. Early Monday morning, I may have finally found a technical solution.

But I can't test it because this payment sheet only appears in production.

So I submitted another expedited review.

And waited... 18 hours...

5. Finally, last night, the update was approved by Apple, and it fixed the issue.

What a relief!

In the end, I've made about $500 so far. It's still pretty nice, but I could have made around $750.

That's it!