iOS App Rejected by Apple

Need help Mobile
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Hey Everyone, I’m trying to get an iOS app on the app store but have been rejected by apple.

I used copilot (cobubble) for their deploy service which is a webview wrapper that gives you an app that loads your website. The android app was accepted on the play store no issues but the iOS one was rejected by apple. I asked copilot about it but they didn’t have much advice and reckon they haven’t seen apps rejected for that reason (see apple’s message below).

I’d love to hear from others who have gone through this process (either with copilot or another service). Has anyone else had a similar problem and how did you get around it? Anyone not had this issue - What advice do you have?

Apple gave me the following message:

BINARY REJECTED:

    1. 2 Design: Minimum Functionality

Guideline 4.2 - Design - Minimum Functionality

Your app provides a limited user experience as it is not sufficiently different from a mobile browsing experience. As such, the experience it provides is similar to the general experience of using Safari. Including iOS features such as push notifications, Core Location, and sharing do not provide a robust enough experience to be appropriate for the App Store.

Next Steps
To resolve this issue, please revise your app to provide a more robust user experience by including additional native iOS functionality.
If you cannot - or choose not to - revise your app to be in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines, you may wish to build an HTML5 web app instead. You can distribute web apps directly on your web site; the App Store does not accept or distribute web apps.
For more information about creating web apps, refer to the Configuring Web Applications section of the Safari Web Content Guide.

For a description of the HTML elements and attributes you can use in Safari on iPhone, check out Safari HTML Reference: Introduction.

So I noticed some people on the forums claiming they just redesigned their landing page for the app compared to a browser and were able to get through so I did that but got rejected again:

Your app still provides a limited user experience as it is not sufficiently different from a mobile browsing experience. As such, the experience it provides is similar to the general experience of using Safari. Including iOS features such as push notifications, Core Location, and sharing do not provide a robust enough experience to be appropriate for the App Store.

Specifically, with tacked- on feature, push notifications, does not bring the app into compliance with being sufficiently different than web browsing experience. We would advised add more functionality in addition to Push Notifications.

So I’m feeling really frustrated and disillusioned with the whole process and really need some advice/help on how to fix this?

If it is a matter of adding more native iOS features - how can I do that? I am already using all the native features that copilot offers (push notifications, native sharing).

If it is more about design and I need each page on my website to just look different in the app compared to the browser - How different? what kind of changes?

Any tips/advice/experience welcome.

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I can’t offer any advice, but I do recall reading [somewhere a while ago] that Apple was clamping down on submitted apps just as described in the quoted text above. If there’s no real value added by your “app” over that which can be obtained from a browser, then your efforts are likely perceived as trying to “game” the system just to get in front of Apple’s app store audience.

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Apple doesn’t likes Webview apps. That should be clear from every webview provider.
I’m not dealing with that right now, but soon I probably will and my plan A involves trying to add native functionalities like offline content viewing and such.
See what happens.

A tool I advised against is Thunkable, but now I changed based on new experiences with them. While they’re still nowhere near Bubble’s level (both as a company and as a product), if you input some extra effort you can extract some juice and make a good solution.

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4

Just sharing, my ios webview app just been approved 2 weeks ago. I have no programming background at all and this is the first time dealing with app store.

I use bdk native service with only one signal push notif and camera/galery img upload using bdk plugin, that’s all.

I don’t mean to compare the wrapper (even I have to say thanks to gaurav for his great support) but I made my app looks as closed to native app as possible, including navigation. Moving from one to other page speed is not that fast in bubble so i made my app in single page so that navigation between forms are very quick by using cust state.

In flight test apple’s comment is just asking the purpose and function of the app (because it is not in english😊), and after submit to production their comment is only app screenshoot image which i uploaded android screenshoot.

Here is home page, hope it can help

Screenshot_20190807-075450_Antara%20Warga
Screenshot_20190807-075450_Antara%20Warga1080×2340 489 KB

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THIS IS GENIUS and gives me hope. Thank you and Im definitely going to use the bottom bar for navigation as well.

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Congrats! :+1:

Is this available only as a mobile app, or is there a web app as well?

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The caveat is that messaging is the thing that puts you over the edge. Can your app send notifications?

Aside: I’d not play this game. Let app stores die the death they richly deserve.

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web app, technically yes available…this is just as a normal bubble web app. can be accesed via the url trough browser…but native push notif and img upload will not work since I use bdk native plugin

so my business model is market it via website with link to download to appstore n playstore…subscription and all other app function shall be run by native app

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native push notif yes, can

in addition (bubble app part) as you can see on the bottom bar i put a button to display all of notifs and user can click each notif to directly go to each of issue…so i create 2 actions in notif wf: send native push notif (one signal) and create a list of notif receiver in db to display notif report in bubble

10

I’m in the same process as well, just uploaded my app to the apple store and waiting for their review.
My android version just got approved and now live.
Honestly apple treat their developers like shit, this my first time developing anything for their store, just nonsense and ridicules process compared to the play store.

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Do not play the App Store game. That is all. :man_shrugging:

12

what does that mean?
what should i do if my business relies on publishing to the App store?

13

Oh boy.

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okay so i have been searching and reading about this,
I’ve found so many cases of rejection (dates back to 2012 in stack overflow as one example, and another one here - so its not a new policy)
notice how all these issues are from Apple only and not from google, I blame Steve Jobs.

I’d advise you to make an effort to make your app looks like a native mobile app, add colored header with menu icon and a footer with push notification as well, if it is got rejected try again, it might be the reviewer is the problem and not the app itself.

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@anwarsby - How do you get the bottom menu bar to display at the bottom of the screen for every user? Won’t different users devices be different heights?

@keith

I get why you’d say that, especially after the experience I’ve had not just with this but the entire process of registering to be an apple developer. But I’ve spent months on this whole process so I’d really prefer to power through and get it on the app store so that all that time i invested wasn’t for nothing.

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I getcha. We can only hope that, at some point, Safari adds the requisite components to support notifications. (This is - at the end of the day - the only real differentiator between a web app and an app store app.)

Of course, it is likely that Apple will keep dragging their feet on that because that poses a risk to the volume of dollars they can run through the app store. Whaddyagonnado, right?

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@funkyaeroplane - use floating group

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Hi @funkyaeroplane,

Look and feel is a key element if you want to publish your wrapped web app in the App Store. Plus, you might need to spend sometime explaining why you use sensitive features such as user location, upload etc.

Here is an example of a successfully published bubble app in both Google Play and App Store: https://apps.apple.com/ae/app/eskoun-com/id1497731105
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eskoun.com
Real estate ads - eskoun

You would notice that it fits most of iOS requirement.

It was converted with nativator.io which btw gives full support.

Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Sam

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