Apple updated a safe user experience in early July last year to give a great opportunity to the developers for success. Apple usually does this for experts and the editorial team to come up and highlight new apps. According to the Washington Post, approx. 2% of 1000 highest-grossing apps in the app store turn out to be scams, reported as $48 million in end-user cost. This change was due to the developers’ increasing scams and fraud activities.
This blog will give you the knowledge regarding Apple Store Review Guidelines updated rules 2022.
Essential updates in App Store Review Guidelines
The most recent update has loosened some of the tight grips on app policies. Typically, Apple updates its guidelines to either introduce new rules or clarify existing rules to developers by adding more details. But mid-June’s update instead removes a handful of rules around subsets of apps — including lottery apps, apps used for charitable donations, apps that use location, and others.
With the update, Apple removed the requirement (rule 4.2.3) that says an app must “include sufficient content in the binary for the app to function at launch.”
Though designed to ensure that apps have some sort of minimum functionality and are usable upon installation, Apple has also wielded this rule to block apps that would require another app to function or that first need to call resources from the internet. As to why Apple is now removing this rule is less clear, but presumably, this would now mean that apps could prompt users to download additional resources at launch, as some games already do, and wouldn’t be required to be functional before that download completed. It could possibly pave the way for HTML5-enabled games to return to the App Store, after being restricted in 2019.
Common mistakes with App Store Review in 2022
In-App purchases
Epic games vs. Apple trial, for example, when Epic games application Fortnite was removed when Epic Games bypassed In-App Store purchases guideline. It is one of the oldest reasons for app rejection as the App Store was getting 30% of the revenue. In December 2020, due to increased pressure, Apple announced to lower their fees for app developers by making $1M or less from 30% to 15% of developers who had to fill out applications for lower revenue cut.
Digital goods should be sold via In-App Purchase, and if an efficient interest or service is offered, you can use any payment mode, including Apple Pay or third parties like Stripe Vipps, etc. One can download about 1.8 million apps from the App Store, of which 1% of top apps generate 93% of the revenues across the App and Google Store.
Mobile websites look like apps
In the greed for cost-saving, companies or businesses try to create an inexpensive or quick mobile application by skipping the design part, which as a result, looks like a mobile website. This issue is pretty standard as a lot of applications have been removed from App Store due to the reason being that Web View is used to present business websites. The developers should always consider the UI guidelines when developing an application.
Same design and functionality with the application
This was the first time this kind of rejection was received. The problem was that a few applications shared the same UI but had different functionality. To recover this is to write a cover letter where the developer details the main differences between the apps by providing a video displaying the app’s functionality.
What to do if your application gets rejected
Reason and information regarding the rejection can be found on the Resolution Center. You can always reach out to the Reviewers team and discuss the reasons behind it. If it’s straightforward, it can be fixed and re-submitted depending on the reason for the app rejection. Other causes include being rejected due to low-quality images, inability to trademark use, or inability to log into the App.
Resolution Center displayed the first reason that is not specific and general simultaneously. Always try to reach for clarification and google related similar cases for Apple. Human makes mistakes reviewers are also human. Make sure that rejection is a mistake in their decision. If so, keep writing to the reviewers.
