Mastodawn

tylerhall May 14

Planning on submitting Iris to the Mac App Store this weekend. Not quite ready for release, but I dread whatever App Review throws at me and hope to get ahead of it.

I don’t particularly want to distribute via the App Store (there will still be a direct download version for purchase from my website), but for the users who would rather buy it there, I’d like to make it available.

Rejected after six days waiting for review, and four minutes after launching the app for the first time.

"The app uses one or more entitlements which do not appear to have matching functionality within the app.

com.apple.security.network.server"

I guess they never opened the Settings window during all the time they spent reviewing the app?

After eighteen years of App Review, none of this is surprising anymore.

tylerhall 5d ago

I wonder if App Review is a victim of Goodhart’s Law:

“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

Too often, reviews seem optimized for finding the first rejection reason and moving on, rather than fully evaluating the app.

Wouldn’t it be more efficient for everyone to identify all rejection issues in a single review? That would reduce the number of review cycles and speed up the process overall.

Instead, it feels like reviewers are measured on reviews completed per day - or average review time.

Wenzel Massag 5d ago

@tylerhall Sounds like a Tim-thing

tylerhall 5d ago

App Review rejected Iris for a second time, this time for two reasons.

1. They again claimed the app uses the com.apple.security.network.server entitlement without matching functionality - even though I responded to the first rejection with an annotated screenshot and detailed explanation showing the server feature in the app.

2. They asked for more information about how Iris uses face recognition data - asking me to quote from my privacy policy - despite both the privacy policy and the app itself explaining that no data (including face data) ever leaves your Mac and all processing happens entirely on-device.

Ironically, their rejection included a screenshot of Iris’s Settings window—showing the Privacy tab that explains exactly this.

tylerhall 5d ago

I think I'm done. Even when/if Iris gets approved, I don't want to have to go through this with every app update.

If anyone at Apple wants to have a real discussion about this, feel free to reach out.

tylerhall 3d ago

✅

@tylerhall is the plan to release Iris on your site opposed to the App Store now?

tylerhall 5d ago

@mingistech Yes, however, I also have iOS and tvOS companion apps that have to go through App Review. Past experience tells me they’re gonna be difficult to get approved when I explain they require a direct-download Mac app.

Pasi Salenius 5d ago

@tylerhall Tyler the review times for Mac apps seems to have jumped a lot in past months. My MAS app used to go through in under an hour, now takes close to a week. Probably because of AI.

On the difficulties passing app review. They are probably going through a checklist which your app just happens to trigger many times. They’ll eventually run out of things to nitpick about.

I’d systematically collect a good explanation for each of the things they reject you for, then add it all to the reviewer notes. They seem to go through that text on every review.

Also, they aren’t really going to use your app (add photos etc). So unless the functionality that they ask about is right there for them to see, I’d prepare a good long demo video. I made one for my app and it has since passed review without trouble.

The reviewer notes and demo video are the cheat code to force them to spend more time looking at your app review instead of rejecting.

Daniel Kasaj 3d ago

@pasi @tylerhall as if they read the reviewer notes...
EDIT:
I think they should be compelled to read through them, scroll to the bottom, and check "I have read and comprehended the reviewer notes" before they can start the review

@tylerhall I submitted a minecraft map explorer back in 2010 and apple rejected it for the following reason "2.8 Apps that are not very useful or do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected"

That was the last time I ever submitted anything to the MAS.

@tylerhall so sorry to hear that. Apple fumbled that story a long time ago. It is disheartening. Our app resembles a marketplace, so we are always worried of reviewers being overzealous. We had to deal with a few rejections in the early versions. Also, we publish some apps with the branding and name of some big companies (think intellectual property red flags). What seems to work (maybe it is pure chance ?!) is that we provide a nice QA anticipating possible critiques in the Notes section next to the login/password. Hopefully this helps (the hard thing is that there is no guarantee 😓)

Craig Grannell 3d ago

@tylerhall Given your troubles and similar that have affected so many others, I wonder how much of this is just automated and “computer says no”. Quite a lot, I imagine.

Given that the MAS needs more great apps, it’s quite something that Apple is throwing up barriers, not least from devs like yourself with a known track record of creating quality software.

Craig Grannell 3d ago

@tylerhall (Bit of tinfoil hat, but I do sometimes wonder whether competition is something to do with it. Your app is “use this instead of Photos and iCloud”. Similarly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Korg Gadget featured in the UK iPhone/iPad App Store, despite it objectively being one of the best music creation tools on mobile.)

tylerhall 3d ago

@craiggrannell No matter which direction I think about it from, no matter how I try I square the behavior I’ve seen and discussed with other other developers, none of it makes sense. Every explanation contradicts another. I once had a video call with the head of App Review. They were very nice but seemingly unaware of how they’re perceived outside Apple. (But that may have just been the usual Apple media training putting up a wall.)

@tylerhall @siracusa it sucks that smaller devs have no power to change this with a boycott of the platform.

The big players get special treatment from Apple anyway and don’t have to deal with this. So they don’t leave. If smaller apps were to leave, it would make much of a difference.. so leaving only hurts them.

Randy Edmonds 3d ago

@tylerhall Apple's review process is horrid. I say that as an ios dev of almost 20 years. I'm about done with it, it's getting worse not better

Joe Lion 2d ago

@tylerhall submit a shovelware, usurious lottery game that targets kids and seniors that has people buying fake coins by the ton? Immediate approval! Submit a thoughtful, custom app that doesn’t generate a ton of recurring cash for Apple, and competes with their built-in apps? 😵

tj usiyan 6d ago

@tylerhall My app was rejected for using entitlements it didn’t need. Background audio. Except, my app uses Audio Units to play audio. The entitlement to enable setting up an audio session is… the background audio entitlement.

CraigLikes 6d ago

@tylerhall
“Internal note: rejected due to Friday’’

@tylerhall Have you thought of adding a note saying that the app uses AI to violate people’s rights by generating nudity? Apparently that gets through app review easily.

singledatapoint 5d ago

@troz @tylerhall Zing

Andy Flisher 6d ago

@tylerhall I just had an increasingly long set of review notes telling them what to click to see important bits they reject me for, common ones are privacy policies which they seem blind to finding - yet quick to reject for

@tylerhall Hey, I just saw your message and looked at Iris. Great idea and seems to combine old-school photo app ideas with some modern functionality. Very nice! Before I start downloading and trying it... How does Iris handle large libraries (100,000 or up to a million images)? Does it eat a lot of space for thumbnails/previews? My source/storage is also a local NAS, would that work? Wish you much success with your project :)

Ricardo Tavares 5d ago

@tylerhall @siracusa I've seen more than my fair share of reviews that didn't take longer than 14 seconds to reject an app.

Daniel Gomes 5d ago

@tylerhall Your Iris app looks amazing. Exactly how iPhoto should have been.

The only issue for me is that my Mac’s are stuck on Big Sur which Iris doesn’t support. 😞

I hope Apple approves your app sooner rather than later…

matt sephton 3d ago

@tylerhall I also got this rejection for my app Localmost…which is a local web server manager! Some other “classic rejection reasons” in my blog post. https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2026/04/17/today-i-shipped-twenty-apps-and-a-screensaver/

My “favourite” app review task was having to send them a video of me ejecting a physical CD using my app Driveaway that manages mounted volumes. 🙄

Today I shipped 20 apps and a screensaver ⌘I Get Info

Shipping software is hard. My secret to doing it successfully is a combination of careful scoping, with strict avoidance of feature creep. But even then, it’...

tylerhall 3d ago

@gingerbeardman It all feels so arbitrary. I've worked for three large companies that routinely submit demo videos for App Review, like you said. And yet, this morning, my tvOS app was rejected with "providing a demo video showing the app in use is not sufficient" 🤷‍♂️

matt sephton 3d ago

@tylerhall it’s maddening. one of my apps was submitted and approved, but the first update I pushed was rejected because they wanted“test account details” to which i replied “the app does not have an account system” and then it was approved. it’s just so amateur hour. AND they still haven’t got me on the 15% track, the email said “sorry we’re busy right now so there are delays” crazy you need to ask for that rather than it be the default and them push million makers over to 30% automatically.

tylerhall 3d ago

@gingerbeardman omg, yes! The tvOS reviewer also asked for login credentials. My reply to them ended with:

"Please let me know specifically what information is needed. Since the app does not support user accounts, I am unable to provide a username and password. However, I would be happy to provide additional instructions, screenshots, or videos."

matt sephton 2d ago

@tylerhall i randomly checked the old account attached to my Apple ID (not the email all my App Store stuff should go through) and I was accepted on to Small Business 15% on 16th May. Rejoice!

tylerhall 2d ago

@gingerbeardman 🎉🕺💸