Does parent app with WatchKit extension be iOS 8 and later?

Question

I've got an existing iOS app, which still supports iOS 7, I would like to keep that for some time. But I would also love to have an Apple Watch app - is it possible that the app extension for WatchKit is iOS 8 and the parent iOS is iOS 7 or do I have to lift that to iOS 8 as well?

EDIT:

I just uploaded my build to Crashlytics because I wanted to let users test the app before submitting to Apple, one user (running iOS 7) got the error "The developer needs to upload a build that supports your device's architecture (armv7)." Now I'm afraid that apps with the WatchKit extension don't run on older devices... Or does this have something to do with Crashlytics? Because in the Simulator it works without problem...

Answer 1

You can keep your host app at iOS 7 as long as the deployment target for your Watch app is 8.2. If you use a framework in your WatchKit extension, you'll have to bump your host app to 8.0, however.

Answer 2

You sure can continue support iOS 7 users even if you add WatchKit support. This happens with every OS improvements and it's same as moving from iOS 6 to 7 which added extension (keyboard etc). ao same rules apply here.

Things you shall know:

1. The watch works only with iOS 8.2, means there would be no users that have a watch without this version

2. If the host app would run on iOS 7 device the watchKit framework would be nil. Which is fine but you must check that you are not using any of it's functionality. meaning check if the function is there using respondWithSelector and only if it is use it.

3. You would need to compile everything with iOS SDK 8.2 (some restrictions over upgrading the general software to support 64 bit/new arm etc. - anyway you would have to do that because Apple soon won't get any new apps don't)

Answer 3

As Apple Watch only works from iOS 8.2 , so the user using Watch requires to have iOS >=8.2 on their iPhone .

And for the error "The developer needs to upload a build that supports your device's architecture (armv7)." it might be related to apple app submission policies reported here .

Answer 4

As the first part of your question has been answered and accepted, I concentrate on the second part:

Your Provisioning Profiles settings in the app are probably misaligned. You need to have the correct PPs set in all 3 targets, automatic is likely to fail.

See my answer for details.