URL for redeeming Mac App Store promo codes

Question

I want to be able to send out a link for a free download of my app in the app store using a promo code. This can be done with the iOS app store using this URL https://phob

Answer 1

If you use itmss it works OK when opening the link in iOS and Mac/PC.

itmss://buy.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/freeProductCodeWizard?code=THE_CODE

Answer 2

The Mac App Store has two URL schemes, macappstore: and macappstores:. It looks like you need to use latter (with the trailing s) for secure links. The following link format seems to work for sending out direct links to redeem a promo code:

macappstores://buy.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/redeemLandingPage?code=YOUR_PROMO_CODE

Answer 3

You can visit http://redeem-now.com Making It Easy To Generate, Send And Track Promo Codes

Redeem links makes it easy to manage your promo codes for iBooks, iOS and Mac apps. It is free to use and you do not need to enter your iTunes Connect account information.

The website will create a link that you can easily share on social media or in an email. It will also track all of your links to see which ones have been redeemed.

Answer 4

As of Mac OS 10.15, the url is

macappstores://?action=redeem&code=YOUR_PROMO_CODE

Answer 5

I've tried macappstores://... which didn't work.

but this works:

http://buy.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/redeemLandingPage?code=YOUR_PROMO_CODE

(I tested on iOS 7 on the iPhone)

Answer 6

I don't quite have the answer yet, but here's some info that may help:

If you right-click on the "redeem" link within the Mac App Store and select "copy link", you get this:

https://buy.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/redeemLandingPage?s=143444

Opening that link in a browser doesn't launch the Mac App Store, but it launches iTunes on the same page that the link you posted goes to. If you mash-up that link with the one you provided, you get:

https://buy.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/freeProductCodeWizard?code=YOUR_PROMO_CODE

Which also seems to work. I'm guessing that means you can use that link to purchase Mac Apps from within iTunes, but you'd have to try it.

Now the last piece of the puzzle would be to open that link in the Mac App store instead of iTunes. You can launch the Mac App Store application easily enough using a URL like:

macappstore://itunes.apple.com/app/someappid

But I have a feeling that the App Store app has a much less developed set of deep-links than iTunes because most of the paths that work with iTunes seem to return an error if you use the macappstore:// scheme.

Hopefully I'm wrong though.