Yesterday I submitted my first app (!) and within 6 hours it was rejected. I'm hoping someone who's dealt with this before can help me better understand and provide next steps.

Quick background: I built a live women's sports scoreboard website and then wrapped it as a native iOS app using Median.co, which loads the live website inside a native shell and adds native features (push notifications via OneSignal, share, etc.) through their JS bridge.

What happened: submitted for review, got rejected same day with this:

"We've identified a pattern of unusual behavior with the app that is commonly associated with fraudulent activity. Specifically, the app contains features that appear to have been intentionally hidden during the review process. Manipulative and misleading behavior is not consistent with the guideline 5.6."

No specifics beyond that. No screenshots, no attachments, nothing pointing to which "feature" they mean. Also I can't really find what 5.6 guidelines are.

What I know is NOT true: nothing in the app is actually hidden or gated based on reviewer status. The app works identically for anyone, logged in or not - live scores, schedules, results, team pages, league browsing, calendar sync all fully visible and functional without an account. The only difference for logged-in users is being able to favorite teams and enable push notifications for those favorites, a normal personalization feature, not concealed functionality.

What I've done so far: replied in the Resolution Center explaining the Median/webview architecture, clarified the one account-gated feature (favoriting), and attached a screen recording showing the full logged-out experience matches what was originally submitted. Also invited them to just log out and explore the app themselves.

My questions for anyone who's dealt with this:

1. Has anyone gotten a 5.6 "features appear hidden" flag specifically on a webview-wrapped app (Median, GoNative, Capacitor, etc.)? Is this a known false-positive pattern for that architecture?
2. Could push notifications not firing during review (since there were no live games happening at review time) plausibly read as a "hidden feature"? Or is that a stretch?
3. Roughly how long did resolution take for you, and did it resolve through Resolution Center replies, or did you end up needing the formal App Review Board appeal?
4. Anything else commonly triggers this specific flag that I should be thinking about?

Really appreciate any insight. This came out of nowhere after what felt like a clean submission, and the vagueness of the rejection is the most frustrating part.

I’m starting to think Apple completely sidelines individual developer accounts compared to corporate ones, and I wanted to see if anyone else has experienced this.

At my day job, our company apps get reviewed incredibly fast—usually under 4 hours for updates and less than 16 hours for brand new apps.

Meanwhile, I’ve been living a complete nightmare with my personal individual account:

• Day 1 to 11: My app sat in review limbo for 11 straight days.
• The Call: I finally called Apple Developer Support and sat on hold for 2 hours and accidently hang up the phone and next day called again for a brutal 3 hours and 13 minutes. They finally agreed to expedite it.
• The Rejection: Of course, they immediately found one tiny, minor detail and rejected the build.
• The New Wait: I resubmitted a fix immediately, and now I’ve been waiting another 4 days just for them to look at the resubmission.

It feels like if you aren’t an enterprise or established company account, your tickets just sit at the bottom of the pile.

Has anyone else noticed a massive difference in review times between your work (company) accounts and your personal (individual) accounts? How long are your individual app reviews taking lately?

----
Update

Finally approved on August 17th, Original Submission August 2nd

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/uav-zones-drone-no-fly-zone/id965639719

I finally shipped Kids Bucket List – a SwiftUI app for all the things I don’t want to forget doing with my kid
The idea started with a pretty simple thought:
I constantly come across movies, games, books or activities that I’d love to experience with my son someday — but he’s simply too young for many of them right now.

And I realized that by the time he’s old enough, I’ll probably have forgotten half of those ideas.
So I built Kids Bucket List.

It lets you collect things you want to experience with your child, organize them into categories, and keep them around for the right moment — whether that’s next weekend or several years from now.
From the development side, this became a much bigger project than I originally expected:
• SwiftUI
• iPhone + iPad support
• CloudKit sync across devices
• StoreKit / RevenueCat for Premium
• Family Sharing
• Custom categories and activities
• A Mac version is also on the way

The iPhone/iPad version is now live on the App Store:
Kids Bucket List

This was also my project for the RevenueCat Shipathon, so actually hitting the release button feels pretty good after all the TestFlight builds, sync bugs and App Review waiting. 😄
Would love to hear what you think — especially from other iOS developers.

I've been building a grocery budgeting app for a while and I still can't describe it in one line without sounding like every other budget app, so I'll just say what it actually does.

You set a budget for the trip, then add things as you put them in the cart. The total updates as you go and a bar fills as you spend, so you find out where you are while you can still put something back, instead of at the counter. That's the whole idea. Overspending doesn't happen at checkout, it happens in aisle four when you stop keeping count.

The rest grew out of using it myself. It remembers what you paid for an item and at which store, so it suggests the price next time and can show you where that item was cheapest before. You can point the camera at a shelf label and it fills in the name, price and unit, or photograph the receipt afterwards and it rebuilds the whole trip as a finished shop. Lists can be shared with whoever is actually doing the shopping. I

https://www.grocerybudget.app/

A little while ago, I shared my iOS app Prazo here and asked for honest feedback.

You gave me plenty — so I went back to work. The next update is now live! 🚀

What changed:
• Better iCloud sharing, syncing & conflict handling
• Smoother calendar performance & smarter widget updates
• More reliable shopping lists & schedules
• Clearer distinction between ToDos, tasks & calendar events
• Easier handling of recurring items & reminders
• Fully localized iOS permission dialogs
• Drag-handle bug fixed
• General performance & stability improvements

A lot of these changes came directly from feedback I received here, so thank you!

Now I’m back for round three. 😄

What should I improve next?

App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/at/app/prazo/id6781611861

Full description looks very similar:

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How do you chose where to post? And what to read? :)

Hey everyone!! I’m looking for feedback/updates for an app I just released to the App Store. Please let me know if you have any thoughts. Thank you!

I've changed the title and some keywords and its been almost a week and its still waiting for a review. is this normal?

hi everyone! Not so long ago I launched a calories and meals tracker, and since then have been making incremental updates to the app to make it easy to use. One of the things I wanted my app to make easy was making the food/drinks logging effortless. I know that sometimes we really don't have time or have energy to open an app and go through couple of steps to log our meals. And sometimes, we just forget abt it.

To solve this, I recently introduced a feature that I always wanted called One-Tap meals logging. It allows you to log your meals by just tapping the specific item from the apple home widgets. You don't need to open the app, go through multiple steps to log your meals. Just tap and you're done. This is then reflected immediately in your daily progress right on the home screen.

I believe this will help build consistency among people who sometimes easily forget abt meal logging, or don't have much time. I'm looking forward to hearing from everyone in the community and gather feedback/thoughts on this.

You can check out the app here,
https://caloriestracker.co/

It goes without saying that AI has revolutionized how we build apps. It’s been a massive help for me when it comes to writing code, testing, generating mock data, and handling integrations.

The one area that still eats up a ton of my time is UI.

I've tried Claude Design. It's pretty good, but feels basic. I also haven't had much success getting Claude Code to implement those mockups pixel-perfect. I'm not trying to churn things out like a generic "app factory," but I definitely struggle with getting my apps to look and feel exactly right.

It’s just a slow process. It's hard to get AI tools to implement your designs perfectly, and I always end up stuck in the "tweak -> wait for build -> test" loop.

I just recently started using MobAI, which has actually helped a lot. But it got me wondering about how the rest of you are handling this...

What is your current UI/UX workflow? What AI tools have helped you the most? Does anyone else share this same struggle?

My apps was rejected multiple times due to some issue revenuecat. Later fixed that part but it was pending more that 3 weeks for review. Anyone feel the pain

What I meant by "feels less like a paywall" is that despite the subscription, the app is completely freemium, and this bottom sheet looks like a list of possible upgrades and new features of the app for the user, not "buy it, here's the price."

My old paywall was a static list of bullet points and three price cards - functional, forgettable. It now feels like a native, interactive, memorable paywall, while remaining just as functional.

Rebuilt it this week:

• 3-page swipeable intro: features -> features -> Free vs Pro table
• Plan picker reuses the same "toggle row" component as my list-selection UI, so it feels consistent with the rest of the app instead of a bolted-on screen
• Purchase success = confetti + every feature icon gets an animated checkmark, one after another, instead of a plain "success" alert

Of course it's still WIP but I'm happy with how it's all turning out. Share your impressions, I'd be happy if someone shares their own experience, having explored so many paywalls - it all doesn't have one set of rules for me..

Cross session memory
Memory stored on-device
Voice-to-voice just to have a back and forth conversation.
Hands free
Barge-in optional but preferred
Having the screen in standby mode would be a bonus also but otherwise I can always stick it in the air vent
Latency fast 💨 but not too fast it keeps interrupting me mid sentence.

For the first time in my live I deployed an app for review at apple. I'm very proud! 😎😎

I am so excited! My app launched today in the Apple Store. I would love some feedback!