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I have two Mac applications that I wrote for my own personal use, but I'm considering polishing them up and giving selling them on the Mac App Store a try. It seemed very premature to consider what would happen if either app would become successful enough to make it possible to set up a business around it, or to sell it to another developer. That is, until I read that Apple doesn't make it easy to transfer app ownership.

I'm not sure how to best register with the Apple Developer program now to avoid any possible hassle in this respect later. From what I understand, one can really only transfer ownership of a developer account. I'm not sure about the relationship between an Apple ID and an Apple developer account.

Does this mean I should at least not use the Apple ID I'm already using for iTunes, but create a second one to use for registering as an Apple Developer? Is there any disadvantage to using separate Apple IDs like this on the same Mac (one ID for Xcode development, the other ID for iTunes/iCloud/App Store/...)? Should one go as far as having a separate Apple ID & Apple developer account per app one develops? Or is there some other solution to take into account the possibility of transferring app ownership?

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closed as off topic by Jim G., ChrisF Nov 19 '12 at 9:23


I found this on another stack exchange.… –  Jake Sep 21 '12 at 21:38
Thanks for the link! I think the most helpful answer there to my own question is the one that says “As ownership transfer is currently not-supported […] it makes sense not to count on it as your mode of operation. […] Hence, why not set up a NEW developer account […]” ( But it also says “I've not tried this, but it seems like a viable solution.” I would appreciate getting further advice from someone who does have experience setting things up this way. –  Rinzwind Sep 22 '12 at 8:01

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You have to either delete the app so the buyer can relist, or transfer the entire iOS account to the buyer. You should therefore create a separate iTunes Connect account for each app, if you think there's a reasonable possibility that you'll sell any of them.


No - I do it. I have a personal account that's used for the app store, iCloud and iTunes, and a developer account for the company that's used in Xcode.

Update: As of WWDC 2013 it is now possible to transfer app ownership between Apple IDs without transferring the whole account. There are some caveats to this related to iCloud and recurring subscriptions.

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