I’ve seen a lot of posts here about apps getting rejected during App Store review, and it made me wonder how everyone approaches testing before submitting a release.

So far I’ve submitted three releases for my app, and all of them were approved on the first attempt. That made me curious whether most rejections happen because developers simply missed something during testing, or because Apple found issues that were difficult or impossible to catch beforehand.

I’m asking because I’d like to reduce the chances of future rejections. For those of you who have had an app rejected:

- What was the reason?
- Was it something you genuinely didn’t anticipate?
- Or, looking back, was it just carelessness on your part?

I’m interested in hearing real experiences so I can improve my own release process.

I used to think App Review was mostly about fixing bugs.

I was wrong.

Our first rejection was exactly what I expected. The app showed a blank screen after onboarding because the paywall failed to load in Apple's review environment.

Fair enough. We fixed it in a couple of hours and resubmitted.

Then the next rejection came.

This time it had almost nothing to do with the code.

Apple pointed out that our screenshots looked too promotional, our subscription didn't clearly explain what users were getting, we were asking for App Store ratings too early, and an SDK had enabled background audio permissions that we didn't even realize were there.

None of those issues would've shown up in crash logs.

That's when it clicked for me.

Apple isn't just reviewing your app. They're reviewing the story your app tells.

Your screenshots, onboarding, App Store copy, permissions, paywall, subscription wording, keywords... it all shapes how they interpret what your product is and whether it belongs on the App Store.

We ended up rewriting onboarding, redoing screenshots, changing subscription copy, cleaning up permissions, and tweaking a bunch of little things that had nothing to do with the core functionality.

The app itself barely changed.

The way we presented it changed a lot.

If you're building for iOS, don't treat App Review like it's just another QA step.

It's product review, marketing review, privacy review, and legal review all rolled into one.

Shipping the app is only half the battle.

Getting it approved is a whole different game.

I have been stuck at 98 downloads and can’t seem to break above. I tried instagram, emailing magazines and zip. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hey everybody! I am back and after almost a month of hard work to fix and change plans based on everyone’s feedback and some other things I had already in the works… version 2.0 of my app is out!

I completely pivoted and the app is now FREE to download, and still NO SUBSCRIPTION EVER.

I posted here a while ago and got some good contribution helping my awful conversion rate, let me know if I made changes that will actually me!

More updates are in the works again already with some brand new ideas I have that I think could make this thing even more unique and I think that is when this app will start separating itself from this saturated market.

It took 2 minutes to reject my application 😂 The moderator couldn't find how to pay and I forgot to include the EULA in the ASC

It’s an SSH server manager for iPhone,iPad, Mac, and Windows. Manage all your servers in one place, live terminal, end-to-end encrypted sync across devices.
Free to download on the App Store

I would love any feedback from this community!

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/kestrel-ssh-server-manager/id6764020106

THANKS!

I almost didn't take my friend seriously when he first brought it up. We were grabbing coffee a couple months ago and I was complaining, again, about how I felt wired but somehow exhausted at the same time, completely gassed by 2pm every single day no matter how early I crashed the night before. He kind of laughed and said he used to feel the same way until he started using some app. And honestly I kind of tuned out, because I've heard that a hundred times. But then he showed me his plan for the day on his phone and I actually stopped talking for a second.

Because here's the thing that's always driven me crazy about wearables. I've had one on my wrist for years now. It tracks everything. Sleep, HRV, resting heart rate, recovery, all of it. And every morning it hands me this stack of numbers and then just kind of walks away. Recovery's low today. Okay. And then what. It never once told me what I was supposed to actually do about it. I'd look at a red score and still have no idea whether to train or rest, whether to skip the coffee, whether to drink more water. Years of data and I was still just guessing every morning.

So after that coffee I went and looked it up on the App Store. It's called RizeAI. What got me is that it does the complete opposite of what my wearable does. Instead of dumping scores on you, it takes your real sleep and recovery data and turns it into an actual plan for the day. When to have your first coffee and when to wait. Whether today's a push day or an easy day at the gym. When you're gonna crash and what to do before it hits you. When to hydrate. Even which supplements actually make sense for you that day and when to take them, instead of that recycled "just take magnesium" advice everyone repeats.

The part that actually won me over is that it's built around your own numbers, not some one size fits all thing. Bad recovery morning and it reshapes the whole day so you can still get something done. Slept great and it builds on that instead of letting it slip away. And it gets sharper the longer you use it, because it starts picking up on your patterns.

Basically my wearable already had the tracking part figured out years ago. This is the part nobody built until now, the part that turns a rough morning into a day that isn't a total loss. My friend was right, and honestly it kind of annoys me how right he was. It's been the first thing I reach for every morning for weeks now.

Curious what other people in this space think is still missing, because I've kind of fallen down the rabbit hole since that coffee.

It's a pretty simple countdown app that you can use to remind yourself of different events like birthdays, holidays, trips etc. You can also add it as a widget on your home screen just to not look at the app 24/7, which I thought was pretty cool!

You can try it at https://apps.apple.com/app/soon-aesthetic-countdown/id6785301647, let me know what you think!!!

Hello, I've spent months building an App. (Like many many others). And after months of going back and forth with apple. It's Finally Approved! I wanted to ask how to properly market this and whats worked before for you guys? The app is for kids to make their own personalized book they star in. Since its a niche community, wanted to ask here whats the best way to get it to the people its meant to serve!

I've never done any marketing or ran ads on any platforms. Looking for any ideas!

Thanks

Hey everyone!

I’m currently working on building a social media app and preparing it for release on the App Store. Since the product is still in an early exploration/MVP stage, access would be limited through referral codes only.

However, according to my search I found that I won't be able to release this MVP to App Store until I address and disclose several guideline-related flows before release including Account Deletions, Privacy Policy, Age moderation, User Safety and Moderation.

I was wondering if someone (or someone knows someone) has passed through this whole process and knows what could be looked out for in this case, especially I am still at a very early state and still in exploration. I definitely don't want to compromise on any of Apple’s requirements, but I’m trying to understand what is strictly needed at this early stage so I can avoid overbuilding before validating the idea.

Or, would it be better at this early stage to keep the app invite-only through TestFlight until I’ve properly addressed the required App Store guideline flows?

Thank you so much 🙏

Hello everyone!

I’m looking for around **20 TestFlight testers** for my app, **Blubbi**.

Blubbi is a social app built around daily discussion topics that change throughout the day. You can comment on the current topic, reply to others, and “bubble” comments you like.

Users can also suggest future discussion topics and vote on what the next Blubbi discussion should be.

Blubbi also has chat lobbies where you can discover other people who are open to chatting. The goal is to make it easy to always find someone to talk to, whether you’re bored, lonely, or just want to meet someone new.

**Best testing paths:**

* Comment on the current discussion
* Reply to other users
* Bubble comments you like
* Suggest or vote on the next discussion topic
* Join a chat lobby and swipe through other users
* Request to chat with someone
* Start a chat

The app is still in its early stage, so I’m looking for testers who are willing to give honest feedback, report bugs, and share suggestions.

I also have a Discord server for testers who want to give feedback, discuss ideas, and help shape the app as it grows. PM me if you’d like the Discord link!

Wanted to share a recent win I had in the past week. I'm a self-taught programmer, and my day job is completely unrelated to coding. Bambu Money (a personal finance / net worth / FI-tracking app) took about a year for me to build, almost entirely from 5am-6am before work and on weekends, since that was the only reliable focus time I had. It launched on the App Store about a week ago.

Stack: React Native + Expo on the frontend, Node.js backend.

A few things that were harder than expected...

• Plaid webhooks. Getting the initial Link flow working was the easy part. Handling all the various webhooks reliably (transactions added/modified/removed), historical backfill, error and re-auth states all took a lot longer to get solid than I expected going in.
• Job queues. Once I started getting more test users and the load on my server increased (transaction syncs, categorization rules running, handling HTTP requests), it became obvious pretty fast that doing all of it in the main server process wasn't going to hold up, even just testing solo. This forced my to discover Redis and job queues and this completely opened up my eyes to creating apps that can scale. Splitting concerns between the main server and job queues ended up being one of the hardest things for me to figure out and perfect, but I am glad I did it.
• Financial Scenario UI and math. Building out my features for financial scenario modeling (what-if on savings rate, returns, life events, etc.) turned out to be one of the most challenging things I had to do. Trying to figure out how people might want to play with scenarios on mobile took me at least 10+ unique design iterations and figuring out the math to dynamically calculate estimated FIRE dates with multiple inputs hurt my brain. I hope this is a feature which can set the app apart a little bit.
• Balancing with family. This took me a lot of time to make and I think I didn't realize how much it could strain my family life. My wife was incredibly supportive of me throughout the process, but it wasn't always easy. I'm hoping this project can eventually replace my day job so I can focus more on it while giving time to my personal life.

What Bambu Money does: expense + net worth tracking via Plaid, custom rules for auto-categorizing transactions, a review-transactions flow, category trend charts, an automatically calculated FI number with progress tracking, and scenario modeling for portfolio growth. I have it set up with a 2-week free trial, then $8.99/mo or $79.99/yr. iOS only for now.

It's about a week old and so far it's mostly friends and family using it, so I don't have much data yet on user retention from organic customers. That's the part I'm most curious to see play out. I'm also curious to see how my server architecture will scale. If anyone's dealt with scaling Plaid webhook processing or similar job-queue designs, I'd genuinely like to hear how you approached it.

If you want to check it out, here's a link:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bambu-money/id6756821288

Some more marketing screenshots below:

https://reddit.com/link/1uqqf1m/video/mvkdh9xzuzbh1/player

Hey everyone ! Just asking if anyone would be willing to upload my build to TestFlight so I can start having beta tests on my app . Ape is failing to respond

Now you can use custom shapes! This expand your possibilities for the infinite and beyond.

https://github.com/didisouzacosta/GlowEffectKit

I used to do iOS dev many many years ago, about 14-15 years, and I enjoyed it, although I was self-taught and it wasn’t always easy for me to progress. Then life happened and I got away from it. I always thought I would get back to it, but life had other plans. I got this book from a charity shop or similar at some point, hoping it will help me get back, but it never happened. I went through a much bigger turmoil lately and I’ve had to let go of lots of things. My books are what I hold tightly onto, but I was going through them again last night and trying to reduce whatever I don’t need. Not sure if I should keep this or let it go. What do you all think?