Make App Appear as iOS 8 Suggested App at Lockscreen

Make app appear as iOS 8 Suggested App at lockscreen

I asked the same question on the Apple developer forums, the user Marlene Zenker quoted the answer to the question posed to the Apple Tech Support.

Here is the answer from Apple Tech Support - read it and weep!
Location relevant Apps are recommended on the lock screen and in the App Store based on a number of factors, including their popularity at the location, and there is no mechanism or process by which an App developer can add their App to the list of recommended Apps.
However, if your iOS App is directly related to the location or venue (such as a mall guide iOS App which is published by the mall owner or operator), and you believe your iOS App’s relevance warrants it being included the list of recommended Apps, then you are encouraged to submit an enhancement request via http://bugreport.apple.com/, and request that Apple consider whether your iOS App should be included in the list of recommended Apps for that location.
You should provide as much detail in the ’enhancement request' about the App and venue/location as possible, such as the App ID, App Name, URL to the App on the App Store, venue name, venue location (address & lat/lon), the relevance (if any) of your iOS App to the venue/location, and relationship (if any) between you as the developer and the owner/operator of the venue/location.
Submission of an enhancement request does not guarantee that a particular iOS App will be added to the list of recommended Apps for a venue or location, and the sole feedback from Apple on the request will come through the http://bugreport.apple.com/ bug report system.

How to add app to suggested apps for custom location in IOS 8?

I recently ran into the same set of question.

Below is a copy of the response I received from the Apple Developer Support Team. For a detailed look at my original question to them, please have a look at my answer here on SO:

iOS 8 Suggested Apps - How does it work?

Hello,

Location relevant Apps are recommended on the lock screen and in the App Store based on a number of factors, including their popularity at the location, and there is no mechanism or process by which an App developer can add their App to the list of recommended Apps.

However, if your iOS App is directly related to the location or venue (such as a mall guide iOS App which is published by the mall owner or operator), and you believe your iOS App’s relevance warrants it being included the list of recommended Apps, then you are encouraged to submit an enhancement request via http://bugreport.apple.com/, and request that Apple consider whether your iOS App should be included in the list of recommended Apps for that location.

You should provide as much detail in the ’enhancement request' about the App and venue/location as possible, such as the App ID, App Name, URL to the App on the App Store, venue name, venue location (address & lat/lon), the relevance (if any) of your iOS App to the venue/location, and relationship (if any) between you as the developer and the owner/operator of the venue/location.

Submission of an enhancement request does not guarantee that a particular iOS App will be added to the list of recommended Apps for a venue or location, and the sole feedback from Apple on the request will come through the http://bugreport.apple.com/ bug report system.

Regards,

Apple Developer Technical Support

Can I get my iOS app to appear on the lower left corner of the lock screen?

You must have your app already installed on an iOS device before you can trigger any functionality using iBeacons. There is no way to have the presence of a beacon automatically prompt a user to download your app from the AppStore, no matter what the user interface.

The only exception to this is that if the iOS device already has another app installed that prompts a user to download your app. You could even do this with a pre-installed app that responds to beacons like Passbook. But even in this case, you somehow have to get the third party app developer to put in custom code to link to your AppStore page on iBeacon detection, or somehow get a user to put in a new passbook entry for prompting to install your app.

The bottom line is that all of these exceptions are generally harder than getting people to install your app via other mechanisms.

Sorry.

EDIT: It seems that lots of reports of this are really referring to the new Suggested Apps feature of iOS8. This is an AppStore feature that uses geofences (not beacons) to find apps relevant to your location. The description of this feature in settings says:

Leaving this option turned on will allow iOS to offer suggestions for App Store apps that you do not already have installed. These can be based on what you already have installed or what people near you find interesting.

Again, this is based on geolocation not beacons, and it is unclear whether the suggestions are based on an algorithm (other folks regularly using an app in the vicinity), a database (known locations of major retailers), or paid marketing (e.g. Starbucks pays Apple to suggest their app when near one of their shops.) It could be a combination of all three.

How do I know that this technology is not based on beacons? Because I received an app suggestion for Starbucks (without having the app installed) and then I immediately used a non-iOS-based beacon scanner that verified no beacons were in the vicinity.

Make App Appear as iOS 8 Suggested App at Lockscreen