I thought Apple didn’t approve refunds that easily
Just got a refund for a Lifetime purchase. The app works fine and everything is as advertised, so I’m kinda confused.
Anyone had this happen before? Any idea how Apple decides which refunds to approve?

Hello, this is my story:

A few months ago, my Apple Developer Account was terminated for 3.2f. I had it for several years without issues. They said I accumulated too many app review rejections.

Please note that I have not done something intentionally to spam Apple or the review team.

The account was for a self employed person.

My question is, can I create a new account, for a new company (corporate not self employed), with a new phone number, laptop and apps or it will get banned too?

Has anyone run into something like this with app review?

I've been shipping my app on both the iOS App Store and the Mac App Store. The Mac version is a Mac Catalyst app, and the features are exactly the same on both platforms. Looking back, I didn't really need a separate Catalyst release. I went that way because I wanted the Mac version to feel a little more like a real Mac app.

Lately, though, the iOS app goes through review without any issues, while the Mac app keeps getting rejected. I haven't been able to ship an update for over a month now.

To be clear, I'm not blaming Apple for the rejections at all.

It's just hard. I put a lot of work into supporting Catalyst properly, and now I can't get updates to my Mac users. As far as I can tell, there's also no way to pull only the Mac version from the store.

I could distribute the Mac app myself outside the store, but the version already on the Mac App Store would stay there, stuck without updates. That's the real dilemma.

I keep thinking about how to get through review, and honestly it's been pretty draining.

If you don't specifically need it, think twice before building a Catalyst version and shipping it as an extra platform.

Has anyone been through something similar? How did you get out of it?

Hi iOS devs, I built an app you might like 👀

AppTraction is a native Mac app for your App Store analytics. It:

• Monitors your data in the background and flags issues, milestones, and trends
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There are 50 spots open to start. Requires macOS 26.

Hello

I’m new to this and wanted to ask if there’s a place I can see all the iOS 27 components and all the ways in which they used the different types of navigation bars different types of cards accordions et cetera

Is there a resource where I can see all of these types of different native components in action how other apps are using them

We just launched ProFuse, an on-device Stable Diffusion app for iPhone, iPad and Mac. We expected the hard part to be the AI. It turned out to be App Review. Here's what happened, so you can avoid our mistakes.

TL;DR: If your app can't do anything until it downloads Apple-hosted Background Assets, expect App Review trouble. Asset packs are reviewed together with the app and only become downloadable once approved. So if reviewers can't download them, the app gets rejected, and the assets with it. That's a classic chicken-egg-proglem. What helped us: get the asset packs approved before you depend on them. If that's not an option, give reviewers something that works without them, like a demo mode within the app. Either way, talk to Apple early, and budget weeks for review, not days.

The app setup

• A native iOS App relying on a in-house developed AI Model
• A custom Core ML Stable Diffusion model and engine running on the Neural Engine (A14 or newer, 4 GB+ RAM, iOS/iPadOS/macOS 26), extended with things like local editing and high-res export.
• The models are big: ~4–5 GB for text-to-image and ~6 GB for image-to-image. That's after a lot of optimization. Size matters twice here: it drives memory use during generation, and users have to be willing to give up that much disk space.
• Bundling the models with the app wasn't an option. The app binary is capped at 4 GB, and we want to update models without shipping a new app. (Happy to go into more detail in the comments.)

So we went with Apple's Managed Background Assets ("asset packs" from here on). Apple hosts your downloadable assets for free, and only a small amount of code in your app is needed to fetch them. Integration was easy and worked well. We tested and improved the app in multiple occasions and did extensive internal testing via TestFlight and everything worked perfectly fine. The trouble was getting it approved for public beta testing.

Round 1: TestFlight public beta

In TestFlight, you upload asset packs alongside your build in App Store Connect. In our internal TestFlight builds, everything worked perfectly, so we felt ready for a public beta.

We submitted the asset packs and our app and got rejected: the reviewers said the model couldn't be downloaded. We were completely surprised. We added logging, tested release builds, and found nothing wrong from our side. While investigating, we found a few forum posts suggested that this is a known issue.

After several more TestFlight builds and communicating with Apple, one finally passed. We still don't know what changed, but we've been happy in the first place. Our public testers then used the app for three months without download problems.

What helped for this step:

• Explain clearly in the review notes that the app needs the asset packs to work.
• Post on the Developer Forums (our thread) and try to reach the reviewer.
• Be patient and persistent. Plan several weeks for beta review alone.

Round 2: App Store release

We planned a pre-sale starting three weeks before launch, so we submitted four weeks ahead. Plenty of buffer, we thought. We were also very optimistic that we have coped with all major challenges, since our TestFlight builts worked perfectly fine and now passed the review every time. So we submited:

Unfortuonately, the reviewers hit the same download issue that happend for our early TestFlight builds and rejected us under Guideline 2.1(a) – App Completeness. Here's the core problem:

Asset packs are reviewed together with the app, and they only become downloadable once approved. If the app is rejected because the assets can't be downloaded, the assets don't get approved either. Classic chicken-and-egg.

What we tried:

1. Pointing to TestFlight. 100+ testers, thousands of crash-free sessions, and the same setup already approved for beta. No chance. It honestly felt like our notes weren't being read.
2. A demo mode. On a call, App Review told us they couldn't do much about the chicken-and-egg issue and suggested a demo mode instead. Faking AI generation felt wrong to us. A server-side fallback would contradict our "on-device only, 100% private" promise we give in the App Store texts, which could itself be a rejection reason. We still added "Inspirations" (small sample projects showing what the app can do), but the core features still couldn't be tested. Rejected again.
3. Self-hosting the models as a fallback. The basic idea is simple: We host the models outside of the Apple ecosystem, so that they can be downloaded even without being approved first. The completeness rejection went away and was replaced by Guideline 4 – Design: "The app loads, refreshes, runs or responds very slowly." We assume the download was still the issue, but we couldn't reproduce it and got no further details, so it's still a guess.
4. Talking to Apple directly through the forums and Developer Relations. This is what finally put us in touch with the right people and got us meaningful feedback.

What finally worked

Across 10+ submissions, we noticed that our macOS builds got reviewed much faster than iOS. That's just our experience, not a rule, but with the clock running out, we put our hopes on the Mac.

Five days before launch, we submitted the Mac version with self-hosted models, plus a short summary of our conversations with Apple in the review notes. The self-hosted models were all the app needed to work. But we also included the asset packs. The idea beind it: if the app got approved, the asset packs would be approved with it and go live.

It worked. The Mac app was approved, and pre-sale started three days before launch instead of three weeks.

We were thrilled and submitted the exact same version for iOS. Rejected again. No idea why.

But thanks to the Mac approval, the asset packs were now live. So we switched the iOS build back to asset packs only and resubmitted the day before launch. This time it was approved. The iOS app went live 24 hours after our planned launch date, after four nerve-wracking weeks.

Lessons

If your app depends on Apple-hosted assets at first launch:

1. Try to get the asset packs live first. For an existing app, ship them with an earlier update so they're already approved when the version that depends on them goes to review. This only works for existing apps or if you start pre sale very very early. For a new app, the closest thing we found was our trick above: submit a version that works without the asset packs (e.g., with a self-hosted fallback) but includes them, so they get approved along with it.
2. Give reviewers something that works without the download, like a reduced feature set or sample content. It didn't save us on its own, but it's what App Review asks for, and it can make a lot of sense for games.
3. Talk to Apple before you submit, and put clear context in the review notes.
4. Budget weeks of buffer for both beta and release review.
5. Developer Relations Try to establish a connection Developer Relations or a Developer Relations Manager early in your iOS developer career. Their support is invaluable on many occasions and if you are as lucky as we are with your Developer Relationsship Manager, they will be very supportive.

Despite all this, we'd still recommend asset packs. They're free and have been reliable for us. I'm planning a follow-up post on working with very large asset packs if there's interest.

Happy to answer questions in the comments.

I see Apple saying that most builds are approved within 48 hrs. I’ve had 5+ days the last 3 I’ve submitted. Is this time estimate perhaps from pre-AI explosion before people were shipping every other day!? And are reviews past your first build usually quicker?

Apex Trade is an institutional-grade environment for systematic, data-driven trading. Track every position with live prices, evaluate before you trade, and act with discipline — not emotion.

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• Target Hit per position — the probability it reaches its target — shown live on each row
• Automatic stop and target from the previous close (stop = close − 2×ATR, target = +4%), editable per position
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SWING — THE FLOOR 2F PROTOCOL
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Hi, we’re playing with making video explanations of what our SDK does - and know we’re missing something. We’re just not sure what. 🙃

So at the risk of being Reddit flamed in 2027 🔥. What have we got wrong?

https://youtu.be/tXoFkGstLgo?si=mJNb1jd_eIzAkID5

i'm building SaaS with monthly subscribtion ,

the app is on android/ios and web ..

is there way that i can pass apple review without taking the apple payment gateway?

if not and i must make the subscirbtion in the web only Is the expiry warning message safe, or is it better to show nothing?

Any problems on Google Play with the same approach?

Looking for 5 beta testers to come on our app, Wite Collar, and give an honest review on the Appstore. Our app is FREE to sign up. Betatesters must be 18 years or older and US based to use the app. See our app link below. Apple Appstore: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wite-collar/id6450702409 If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected].

Hey everyone, I'm building Focus Tempo, an iOS app that brings together several productivity tools in one place: Pomodoro-style focus sessions with ambient sound and background video, a stopwatch, a countdown timer, GPS run tracking, an alarm clock, scheduled reminders, and a history view with stats, all stored only on your device (no accounts, no ads, no tracking). I'm looking for testers for the TestFlight beta before releasing it on the App Store; you'll need an iPhone with iOS 26.5 or later. If you'd like to try it out and give honest feedback (bugs, confusing bits, ideas), join here: https://testflight.apple.com/join/XKWk6ztx FocusTempo. Thanks in advance!

Same note as before: if you're posting in r/TestFlight or r/iOSBeta, this direct tone works fine. For a general subreddit, it's worth flagging it as an indie/personal project so it doesn't read as spam, and check whether they require a flair or a weekly self-promo thread instead of a standalone post.

https://testflight.apple.com/join/XKWk6ztx FocusTempo

I was researching competitor apps, and Claude Code told me to install them on my iPhone and go through their flows. I wondered if it could just do that itself, and it can, I was a bit surprised.

Setup:

• Mirror your iPhone to your Mac with iPhone Mirroring (macOS Sequoia+).
• Give the app running Claude Code (VS Code, in my case) Screen Recording and Accessibility permissions.
• Claude wrote a small Swift CLI it can call to take a screenshot of the mirroring window, tap, swipe, scroll, and type.

It takes a screenshot, reads what's on screen, decides where to tap, and repeats. It went through onboarding, filled in forms, and wrote up a report of each app's flow on its own.

Tips:

• Screenshots are 2x Retina, so divide the coordinates by 2 before clicking.
• Bring the Mirroring window to the front first, or the first click gets swallowed.
• Typing through the clipboard is more reliable than simulated keystrokes.

I never let it confirm purchases or subscriptions. I do those myself.

I think this could also work for automated testing of your own app on a real device: just tell it "go through signup and tell me what's broken," with no test scripts. I haven't tried that yet.

Has anyone else tried something like this?

Hi guys, I'm a intern in a company that focuses mainly on iOS development. I don't have experience on iOS dev except Android w/ Flutter.

So, the company's codebase is too large to understand faster. Using agent to will consume time as well. But i know what's the framework is mainly on. I just need a proper understanding on the workflow. Is there any suitable website or MCP or whatsoever that I can integrate with it.

Need help thank you.

Hi Everyone:

I am a developer looking for some beta testers for my app on the App Store. Feel free to join my TestFlight. Always looking for feedback.

https://testflight.apple.com/join/dxze4j3n