By default, Superwall handles basic subscription-related logic for you:

  1. Purchasing: When the user initiates a checkout on a paywall.
  2. Restoring: When the user restores previously purchased products.
  3. Subscription Status: When the user’s subscription status changes to active or expired (by checking the local receipt).

However, if you want more control, you can pass in a PurchaseController when configuring the SDK via configure(apiKey:purchaseController:options:) and manually set Superwall.shared.subscriptionStatus to take over this responsibility.

Step 1: Creating a PurchaseController

A PurchaseController handles purchasing and restoring via protocol methods that you implement. You pass in your purchase controller when configuring the SDK:

Here’s what each method is responsible for:

  1. Purchasing a given product. In here, enter your code that you use to purchase a product. Then, return the result of the purchase as a PurchaseResult. For Flutter, this is separated into purchasing from the App Store and Google Play. This is an enum that contains the following cases, all of which must be handled:
    1. .cancelled: The purchase was cancelled.
    2. .purchased: The product was purchased.
    3. .pending: The purchase is pending/deferred and requires action from the developer.
    4. .failed(Error): The purchase failed for a reason other than the user cancelling or the payment pending.
    5. .restored: The purchase was restored. This happens when the user tries to purchase a product that they’ve already purchased, resulting in a transaction whose transactionDate is before the the date you initiated the purchase.
  2. Restoring purchases. Here, you restore purchases and return a boolean indicating whether the restoration was successful or not.

Step 2: Configuring the SDK With Your PurchaseController

Pass your purchase controller to the configure(apiKey:purchaseController:options:) method:

Step 3: Keeping subscriptionStatus Up-To-Date

You must set Superwall.shared.subscriptionStatus every time the user’s subscription status changes, otherwise the SDK won’t know who to show a paywall to. This is an enum that has three possible cases:

  1. .unknown: This is the default value. In this state, paywalls will not show and their presentation will be automatically delayed until subscriptionStatus changes to a different value.
  2. .active: Indicates that the user has an active subscription. Paywalls will not show in this state unless you remotely set the paywall to ignore subscription status.
  3. .inactive: Indicates that the user doesn’t have an active subscription. Paywalls can show in this state.

Here’s how you might do this:


subscriptionStatus is cached between app launches

Listening for subscription status changes

If you need a simple way to observe when a user’s subscription status changes, on iOS you can use the Publisher for it. Here’s an example:

subscribedCancellable = Superwall.shared.$subscriptionStatus
  .receive(on: DispatchQueue.main)
  .sink { [weak self] status in
    switch status {
    case .unknown:
      self?.subscriptionLabel.text = "Loading subscription status."
    case .active:
      self?.subscriptionLabel.text = "You currently have an active subscription. Therefore, the paywall will never show. For the purposes of this app, delete and reinstall the app to clear subscriptions."
    case .inactive:
      self?.subscriptionLabel.text = "You do not have an active subscription so the paywall will show when clicking the button."
    }
  }

You can do similar tasks with the SuperwallDelegate, such as viewing which product was purchased from a paywall.