[This documentation is preliminary and is subject to change.]
Follow these guidelines to prepare your app's packages for submission to the Windows Store.
Note You can register for a Windows Store developer account only if we sent you a registration code. We currently send registration codes only to the developers who are helping us test the Windows Store.
Package metadata requirements
If you don't use Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012 RC for Windows 8 to create your package, you must manually edit the app manifest to make sure that it contains the correct data as described in the table.
Note These values are case-sensitive. Spaces and other punctuation must also match. Take care to enter the values correctly if you edit them manually.
| App manifest element | Required contents |
|---|---|
| Package/Capabilities |
Your app must declare only the minimum list of capabilities that your app needs for its core functionality. Your app can't declare capabilities that serve only advertising. More info about Windows app capabilities. |
| Package/Identity/ @Name |
The Package name value from your Windows Store developer account. Your apps must use a package identity name that the Windows Store assigned you when you reserved the name of your app. This value is not critical until you submit your app to the Windows Store. |
| Package/Identity/ @Publisher |
The Publisher ID value from your Windows Store developer account. This value is not critical until you submit your app to the Windows Store. |
| Package/Identity/ @ResourceId |
Must be empty or undefined. |
| Package/Identity/ @Version |
When the app you are submitting is an upgrade to an app that is already in the Windows Store catalog, this value must be greater than the corresponding value in the version of the app that is already in the Store. This value is not critical until you submit your app to the Windows Store. |
| Package/Properties/Logo |
The URI of a PNG, JPG, or JPEG image that is 50 x 50 pixels. For more info see App images. |
| Package/Properties/DisplayName |
The App name that you reserved for this app. This value is not critical until you submit your app to the Windows Store. For more info, see Naming and describing your app. |
| Package/Properties/Framework |
Must be undefined or have a value of false if defined. You can't submit framework packages to the Store. |
| Package/Properties/PublisherDisplayName |
The Publisher display name value from your Windows Store developer account. This value is not critical until you submit your app to the Windows Store. |
| Package/Resources |
Must contain a Resource element for each language the app supports. The languages that an app must support to be listed in the Windows Store are listed in App langs. The Language attribute is not critical until you submit your app to the Windows Store. |
| Package/Applications/Application/VisualElements/ @Logo |
The URI of a PNG, JPG, or JPEG image that is 150 x 150 pixels. For more info see App images. |
| Package/Applications/Application/VisualElements/ @SmallLogo |
The URI of a PNG, JPG, or JPEG image that is 30 x 30 pixels. For more info see App images. |
| Package/Applications/Application/VisualElements/ DefaultTile/ @WideLogo |
The URI of a PNG, JPG, or JPEG image that is 310 x 150 pixels. This attribute is optional. For more info see App images. |
| Package/Applications/Application/VisualElements/ @BackgroundColor |
Must contain a valid color value and the color defined by this value must provide sufficient contrast with the color of the @ForegroundText. The contrast value is computed by the ratio of the relative luminance of the foreground text color and the background color. Light text has a color value of 0xFFFFFF and dark text has a color value of 0x000000 |
| Package/Applications/Application/VisualElements/ @ForegroundText |
Must contain a valid value and the color defined by this value must provide sufficient with the color of the @BackgroundColor. The contrast value is computed by the ratio of the relative luminance of the foreground text color and the background color. Light text has a color value of 0xFFFFFF and dark text has a color value of 0x000000 |
If your app has more than one package, that is when it runs on more than one processor type, these app manifest elements must be the same in each package:
Package format requirements
Your app’s packages must comply with these requirements.
| App package property | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Package size | 2 gigabytes maximum per package |
| Block map hashes | SHA2-256 algorithm |
App languages
Note For the Windows 8 Release Preview, you can submit apps to the Windows Store in over 100 languages. We divide these languages into two groups:
- Certification languages. These are the languages that we support when confirming your app meets our certification requirements. Your app must support at least one of these languages.
- Allowable languages. These are languages that we support, but do not use as part of the certification process. Your app can support as many of these languages as you like, as long as you support at least one of the certification languages.
These are the certification languages the Windows Store supports.
| Language name | Supported language codes |
|---|---|
| Arabic | ar, ar-sa |
| Chinese (Simplified) | zh-Hans, zh-cn |
| Chinese (Traditional) | zh-Hant, zh-hk, zh-tw |
| English | en, en-au, en-ca, en-gb, en-ie, en-in, en-nz, en-sg, en-us, en-za |
| French | fr , fr-be , fr-ca , fr-ch , fr-fr , fr-lu |
| German | de, de-at, de-ch, de-de, de-lu |
| Japanese | ja , ja-jp |
| Korean | ko, ko-kr |
| Portuguese | pt , pt-br , pt-pt |
| Russian | ru , ru-ru |
| Spanish | es, es-cl, es-co, es-es, es-mx |
| Swedish | sv , sv-se |
Here are the allowable languages that the Windows Store supports.
| Language name | Supported language codes |
|---|---|
| Afrikaans | af, af-za |
| Albanian | sq, sq-al |
| Amharic | am, am-et |
| Arabic | ar-eg |
| Armenian | hy, hy-am |
| Assamese | as, as-in |
| Azerbaijani | az-latn, az-latn-az |
| Basque | eu, eu-es |
| Belarusian | be, be-by |
| Bangla | bn, bn-bd, bn-in |
| Bosnian | bs, bs-latn-ba |
| Bulgarian | bg, bg-bg |
| Catalan | ca, ca-es, ca-es-valencia |
| Cherokee | chr-cher, chr-cher-us |
| Croatian | hr, hr-hr |
| Czech | cs, cs-cz |
| Danish | da, da-dk |
| Dari | prs, prs-af |
| Dutch | nl, nl-nl |
| Estonian | et, et-ee |
| Filipino | fil, fil-ph |
| Finnish | fi, fi-fi |
| Gaelic | gd, gd-gb |
| Galician | gl, gl-es |
| Georgian | ka, ka-ge |
| Greek | el, el-gr |
| Gujarati | gu, gu-in |
| Hausa | ha-latn, ha-latn-ng |
| Hebrew | he, he-il |
| Hindi | hi, hi-in |
| Hungarian | hu, hu-hu |
| Icelandic | is, is-is |
| Igbo | ig, ig-ng |
| Indonesian | id, id-id |
| Inuktitut (Latin) | iu-latn, iu-latn-ca |
| Irish | ga, ga-ie |
| isiXhosa | xh, xh-za |
| isiZulu | zu, zu-za |
| Italian | it, it-it |
| Kannada | kn, kn-in |
| Kazakh | kk, kk-kz |
| Khmer | km, km-kh |
| K'iche | qut, qut-gt |
| Kinyarwanda | rw, rw-rw |
| KiSwahili | sw, sw-ke |
| Konkani | kok, kok-in |
| Kurdish | ku-arab, ku-arab-iq |
| Kyrgyz | ky, ky-kg |
| Latvian | lv, lv-lv |
| Lithuanian | lt, lt-lt |
| Luxembourgish | lb, lb-lu |
| Macedonian | mk, mk-mk |
| Malay | ms, ms-my |
| Malayalam | ml, ml-in |
| Maltese | mt, mt-mt |
| Maori | mi, mi-nz |
| Marathi | mr, mr-in |
| Mongolian (Cyrillic) | mn-cyrl, mn-mn |
| Nepali | ne, ne-np |
| Norwegian (Bokmål) | nb, nb-no |
| Norwegian (Nynorsk) | nn, nn-no |
| Odia | or, or-in |
| Persian | fa, fa-ir |
| Polish | pl, pl-pl |
| Punjabi | pa, pa-arab, pa-arab-pk, pa-in |
| Quechua | quz, quz-pe |
| Romanian | ro, ro-ro |
| Serbian (Cyrillic) | sr-cyrl, sr-cyrl-ba, sr-cyrl-cs |
| Serbian (Latin) | sr-Latn, sr-latn-cs |
| Sesotho sa Leboa | nso, nso-za |
| Setswana | tn, tn-za |
| Sindhi | sd-arab, sd-arab-pk |
| Sinhala | si, si-lk |
| Slovak | sk, sk-sk |
| Slovenian | sl, sl-si |
| Spanish | es-ar |
| Tajik (Cyrillic) | tg-cyrl, tg-cyrl-tj |
| Tamil | ta, ta-in |
| Tatar | tt, tt-ru |
| Telugu | te, te-in |
| Thai | th, th-th |
| Tigrinya | ti, ti-et |
| Turkish | tr, tr-tr |
| Turkmen | tk, tk-tm |
| Ukrainian | uk, uk-ua |
| Urdu | ur, ur-pk |
| Uyghur | ug, ug-cn |
| Uzbek (Latin) | uz-latn, uz-latn-uz |
| Vietnamese | vi, vi-vn |
| Welsh | cy, cy-gb |
| Wolof | wo, wo-sn |
| Yoruba | yo, yo-ng |
Build date: 5/31/2012
