Hello,
We are currently developing a macOS application and evaluating Managed Background Assets for delivering additional downloadable content.
Our preference is to rely on Apple-hosted asset delivery as much as possible, rather than maintaining a separate CDN or server infrastructure. While reviewing the documentation and forum discussions, we found a few areas that are still unclear and would appreciate your guidance.
1. Scope of the 200GB Apple-hosted asset pack limit
Some documentation and discussions seem to describe the 200GB limit as applying per Apple Developer Program team/account, while others suggest it is a per-app bundle limit. Could you clarify the exact scope of this limit?
- Is the 200GB quota applied per individual app bundle ID?
- Or is it shared across all apps under the same Apple Developer Program account?
References:
2. Storage expansion and hybrid hosting
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Are there any plans to expand the Apple-hosted asset pack limits in the future, or is there an official process to request additional hosting capacity?
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If an app eventually exceeds the Apple-hosted limit, is it acceptable or technically possible to use a hybrid approach (i.e., using Apple hosting for some assets while self-hosting the rest)?
3. Recommended strategy for older macOS versions
As we understand, Managed Background Assets are only available starting from newer OS releases. However, our application also supports older macOS versions, and we would ideally like to avoid maintaining a completely separate asset delivery backend for them. From Apple’s perspective, what is the recommended strategy in this situation?
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Is it expected that developers continue using Unmanaged Background Assets for older OS compatibility?
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Is it acceptable to support Managed Background Assets only on newer systems, while older OS versions simply do not receive the same downloadable-content functionality?
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Or is there another recommended migration/compatibility approach for apps supporting both newer and older macOS versions?
Thank you in advance for your clarification!
Hello, @JE-H! The 200GB limit is per-app; if you have, say, five apps, then each app can have up to 200GB of its own asset packs for a total of 1TB across all five apps. If you have ten apps, then that would be 2TB, and so on. If you need more than 200GB for a single app, then you can contact us to see how we can work with you to enable that. If you do contact us, then please reply to this thread with the case ID so that we can connect things internally and make sure that your inquiry gets to the right people.
Regarding “hybrid” hosting, that’s indeed possible in the sense that you could use the standard URL Session APIs to download whatever assets you want from your own server while your app is active regardless of whether you also use Background Assets to download other assets from Apple servers. However, it’s not currently possible to use the Background Assets APIs and functionality (e.g., installation-time downloads) with both Apple hosting and your own hosting for the same app simultaneously. If that would be a useful feature for you, then please file a feedback report that explains your use case and reply to this thread with the feedback ID.
An app can use either Managed Background Assets (Apple-hosted or otherwise) or unmanaged Background Assets; it can’t use both feature sets at the same time, so that wouldn’t work as a backwards-compatibility approach. If your app needs to run on older OS versions and is able to offer some limited functionality that doesn’t require the additional assets, then that’s a perfectly fine approach to take.
I hope that this helps!