A template is the design. It decides what the pass looks like and which pieces of information it carries. A pass is one customer's copy of that design with their values filled in.
Get the template right and every pass issued from it is right. Change the template later and you can push that change out to passes already in people's wallets.
What a template controls
- Pass layout - the broad kind of pass. This affects how Apple presents it.
- Fields - the labelled pieces of information, arranged into regions on the front and back. See Fields and regions.
- Colours and images - your logo, icon, banner and the three colours. See Colours and images.
- Barcode - whether there is one, what type, and what it encodes. See Barcodes.
- Locations - places where the pass can surface on an iPhone lock screen. See Location messages.
- Notification header - the title used for messages pushed to passes from this template.
How many templates do you need?
One per kind of pass, not one per customer.
If you run a members' club with three tiers, that's usually still one template - "tier" is a field whose value differs per pass, not a different design. But a members' card and an event ticket are genuinely different things and should be two templates.
A good test: if two passes would show the same labels in the same places, they want the same template.
Creating one
Open Pass templates and choose New template. You'll be offered a gallery of presets. Starting from a preset is almost always faster than a blank template because the field layout is already sensible. See Starting from a preset.
Editing one
Open the template and change what you need. The preview updates as you type, and you can flip between Apple and Google and between the front and back of the pass.
Field labels are safe to change at any time. The field ids underneath them are not - they're fixed the first time you save, because they're the key that each pass's values are stored against. This is why editing a label doesn't disturb existing passes, but deleting a field and adding a replacement does.
What happens to passes already issued
Changing a template does not silently rewrite passes people are already holding. Existing passes keep their own values.
What does propagate is design - colours, images, labels - because that comes from the template rather than the pass. When a pass is next updated, the phone picks up the current design.
If you've made a branding change and want it out immediately rather than at the next natural update, re-save the affected passes or send a notification, which prompts the wallet to refresh.
Duplicating
From the templates list you can duplicate a template. This is the right move when you want a variant - a second tier design, a seasonal version - without risking the original. The copy starts with fresh field ids, so it's genuinely independent.
Archiving
Archiving a template takes it out of circulation without deleting anything:
- Passes already issued from it keep working exactly as before.
- You can't issue new passes from it.
- Its issuance form, if it has one, stops accepting submissions.
It's reversible - unarchive at any time. Use it for a template you've replaced but whose passes are still in people's wallets.
Before you archive a template, check whether it still has active passes on the Passes list, filtered by that template. Archiving doesn't harm them, but it's worth knowing what's still out there.
Where to go next
- Fields and regions - the part that most affects how the pass reads.
- Colours and images.
- Issuing a pass once the design is right.