r/iOSProgramming

Apparently stuck in App Review hell?

UPDATE: Finally got it in review and approved today. Took almost exactly 5 days. I’m not sure if it was due to me pestering support daily and being a little pushy (but not rude) about it but it finally went through.

Submitted an expedited App Review on Wednesday last week as we discovered an issue with our subscriptions and needed to re-release quickly to coincide with some marketing stuff we had planned.

Support says the App Review (allegedly) was expedited but we’ve seen no movement in 5 days. Typically our non-expedited App Reviews have cleared in 1 or 2 days at most.

What is going on? Is anyone else experiencing delays with App Review? Is there anything else I can do besides emailing support every day asking for an update?

reddit.com
u/JiveWookiee5 — 10 days ago

Anyone ever have an app reviewer actually purchase the app? lol

Before anyone asks - I've check a bunch of times and confirmed this isn't RC Sandbox.

Mostly curious - I asked the same thing in apple developers but figured there are more experienced people here.

Here's what happened:
I saw my app go into review. It got approved and a few seconds later Revenue Cat showed a notification that someone purchased the lifetime package. This new lifetime price is only available with this update (i.e. no one else could even purchase this) - I've confirmed it's in RC production and not sandbox. I've also confirmed in Posthog that the country from RC matches the alleged reviewer's.

I've had reviewers "purchase" the app before but always with their sandbox account and nothing ever showed up in RC.

Anyone else seen this? lol

u/Solid-Resident-7654 — 9 days ago
▲ 48 r/iOSProgramming+1 crossposts

Free, open source ASO CLI: keyword popularity, difficulty and rank tracking

I didn't want to pay a monthly subscription for keyword data, so I wrote a CLI that gets it straight from Apple.

What it does

  • Popularity from Apple Search Ads (free Apple Ads account, no campaigns or billing needed). Terms Apple floors at 5 get re-checked through recommendations, which often returns the real value
  • Difficulty based on the top 10 apps for a term, plus keyword suggestions
  • Rank tracking with history in a local SQLite file
  • Metadata linter for title, subtitle and keyword field (duplicate words, wasted characters, plurals)

Install

npm i -g hristo2612/aso-cli && aso setup

Try it

aso keywords "white noise,sleep sounds"
aso suggest meditation
aso search "habit tracker"

Runs locally, no account, no telemetry. MIT.

Repo: github.com/hristo2612/aso-cli

Curious how the difficulty numbers line up with whatever tool you use today.

u/chrisBhappy — 10 days ago

Beginner confused about Apple device support

Hello!

Android developer here who's looking to get into iOS development. I'm considering buying an M1 or M4 Mac mini, but I'm trying to understand how the hardware/software support cycle works on macOS.

From what I've read, eventually an older Mac stops supporting the latest macOS, which means it also stops supporting newer versions of Xcode. Is that correct?

More importantly, does this eventually mean that you're forced to buy a newer Mac in order to continue publishing new apps/updates to the App Store? Or is there some way to keep using an older Xcode/Mac indefinitely?

I'm asking because I'm considering an M1 Mac mini as a relatively cheap way to get started. However, I've seen people say that M1 Macs may become problematic for iOS development in 2–3 years, whereas an M4 should have several more years of support.

Would you opt for an M1, to save money, or opt for an M4 for longer support? I am concerned about how long I can realistically expected to develop, build and publish before the Mac itself becomes an issue.

reddit.com
u/DryGround7693 — 9 days ago

PSA: Xcode 16 synchronized groups ship your Configuration.storekit in the release bundle

If your project uses Xcode 16 synchronized folders (the blue folder icons), every file inside the target folder ends up in the app bundle unless you exclude it. That includes Configuration.storekit and your .xcconfig files. My membershipExceptions listed only Info.plist, so the StoreKit configuration had been riding along in every archive I ever made, Release included.

Why it matters

My first submission got a Guideline 5.6 (Developer Code of Conduct) rejection: "a pattern of unusual behavior commonly associated with fraudulent activity" and "features that appear to have been intentionally hidden during the review process". My backend logs showed zero requests during the review window, so nobody had opened the app. It came from a look at the binary.

Read that file the way a scanner does: a mechanism for simulating purchases outside of Apple, listing more products than I had submitted. Apple never tells you the exact trigger, so I can't prove it was the only one, but it fits every word of the rejection, and after removing it the next review was completely ordinary.

Check yours (10 seconds)

unzip -l YourApp.ipa | grep -Ei "storekit|xcconfig|\.env"

Fix

Select the file -> File Inspector -> Target Membership -> uncheck your app target. With synchronized groups this adds it to membershipExceptions in project.pbxproj. Local StoreKit testing keeps working: the scheme points to the file (Edit Scheme -> Run -> Options -> StoreKit Configuration), it does not need to be in the bundle.

One more thing if you ever get a 5.6

Don't resubmit without replying in the Resolution Center of the current rejection. My first reply ended up attached to a submission that had been closed, Apple never saw it, and the resubmission got a second 5.6 for the silence, not for the file.

Happy to answer questions about this or StoreKit 2 in general.

reddit.com
u/Kyiv0x7c — 10 days ago

"Preparing build for App Store Connect failed" every time with workflow that used to work

Used to work no problem. Anyone else experiencing this? I can validate the build no issues in xcode

reddit.com
u/draftkinginthenorth — 10 days ago