What are the most common App Store rejection reasons, and how do you avoid them?

App Store rejections cluster into a handful of predictable categories, and Apple includes the guideline number in the resolution, so an experienced iOS developer should be able to map almost any rejection to one of five or six buckets before even reading the reviewer's note in detail.

#Guideline 2.1 — crashes, bugs, and incomplete builds

The single most avoidable rejection: the app crashes on launch, a core flow errors out, or a feature is visibly unfinished — placeholder text, a "coming soon" screen behind a live button, debug menus left in from internal TestFlight builds. Reviewers test on real devices with a fresh install and no development environment attached, so anything that only worked because Xcode was attached, or because a debug flag happened to be flipped, fails in review even though it worked for you locally. Run the actual release-configuration build through a real TestFlight install before submitting, not just a debug build on a simulator.

#Guideline 2.3 — metadata that doesn't match the app

Screenshots showing features that don't exist yet, a description that oversells what the app does, or keyword stuffing in the app name or subtitle all fall under metadata rejections. This one is easy to avoid and easy to forget, precisely because metadata is often written by marketing, or written last, after the build itself has already been tested and approved internally.

#Guideline 3.1.1 — in-app purchase for digital content

If your app unlocks digital content or functionality — subscriptions, extra levels, ad removal, premium features — that purchase has to go through Apple's In-App Purchase, not a link to your own website's checkout or a third-party payment page, with narrow, explicitly-listed exceptions like "reader" apps and physical goods. This is the rejection with the most business impact, because fixing it isn't a bug fix, it's a monetization model change — decide the payment model against Apple's rules at the design stage, not at submission.

#Guideline 4.2 — minimum functionality

An app that's just a thin WebView wrapper around a website, with no meaningful native functionality, gets rejected for not providing enough value to justify existing as a native app. The bar isn't "must be 100% native UI" — it's "must do something a bookmarked website tab doesn't."

#Guideline 5.1.1 — privacy: labels, permissions, and account deletion

Three separate traps live under one guideline number. First, the App Privacy "nutrition label" filled in on App Store Connect has to match what the binary actually does — if a bundled SDK collects analytics data you didn't declare, that's a rejection, and worse, it can surface later as a pulled app once Apple's automated scanning catches the mismatch. Second, every permission request — camera, location, contacts — needs a purpose string that genuinely explains why, requested at the point of use rather than on first launch for a feature the user hasn't touched yet. Third, since mid-2022, any app that lets a user create an account must let them delete it from inside the app; a support email address is not sufficient.

#Communicating with App Review

A meaningful share of rejections aren't really bugs at all — they're a reviewer unable to test a login-gated flow because no demo account was provided, or a feature that depends on a physical device or a location the reviewer doesn't have access to. The App Review Information section of App Store Connect has a notes field for exactly this: leave working demo credentials and a short explanation of anything that needs context — a feature only available in certain regions, a hardware dependency — and answer follow-up messages in the Resolution Center promptly instead of resubmitting blind.

🧠 App Store rejections
0/3 · 0/3 answered
1. An app sells extra levels through a link to the developer's own website checkout instead of Apple's purchase flow. Which guideline does this violate?
5.1.1 - Data Collection2.1 - Performance3.1.1 - In-App Purchase4.2 - Minimum Functionality
2. A reviewer rejects a build because they couldn't get past the login screen. What's the fastest fix?
Provide working demo credentials and a note in App Review InformationAppeal directly to Apple executive relationsResubmit with no changes and hope for a different reviewerRemove the login requirement entirely
3. Since mid-2022, an app that lets users create an account must also let them:
Log in with Sign in with Apple exclusivelyDelete the account from inside the appExport their data as a CSVChange their password every 90 days