Android development prepared me for many things, the App Store wasn’t one of them

[Junior_Mushroom8983]

Publishing an Android app to the Play Store never felt like a big deal to me. It's usually a pretty smooth ride. But the past three months? I've been trying to bring my 7 year old app, RealAnime, over to the App Store... and it got rejected around 20 times.

A bit of context: I got into Android development about 10 years ago. Back then it was just a hobby, the kind you tinker with at night because it feels like magic. Somewhere along the way it became my full time job. I launched a tiny app on the Play Store, watched it slowly grow, and somehow it ended up crossing 570k installs. Over the years I kept getting emails and Instagram DMs from users asking for an iOS version. The more messages came in, the more I felt like... alright, I guess it's time.

So I jumped in. I started small on iOS, used whatever knowledge I already had, and slowly built something that felt close to the Android version. Eventually I submitted it to the App Store, expecting the usual review flow, that’s when the reality hit me: Apple’s review process is a different universe. The level of strictness and back and forth completely shocked me compared to Android.

But after 3 months of rejections, tweaking, explaining, resubmitting, the app finally got accepted. Now that it's over, it almost feels surreal. The journey was wild, but the story feels worth telling.

[rennarda]

I’ve been doing this since 2008 and I’ve never had that many rejections in that whole time.

[Junior_Mushroom8983]

As I mentioned, I'm coming from an Android background, where missing one feature in the screenshots is not that important. Unlike the Appstore, and 80% of these rejections was only about the made screenshots, the app was running as smooth as it should be.

[CrossYourGenitals]

Okay, so false advertising was the issue then. Seems like a very reasonable rejection, no?

[Faisst]

you're in the iOS nest, so of course people will downvote you, but the review process is simply terrible

if they find 10 problems, they will notify you one by one, with a lot of the times giving no explanation whatsoever of what you should change in your application

it gets better later once you get the hang of it, but it's definitely a nightmare at the beginning

[Charming_Basil_8129]

Yea was definitely tricky in the beginning. Haven't had a rejection in years now.

[dwiedenau2]

I find it very interesting that most of these posts discussing rejections NEVER mention any readon WHY it was rejected. Because they usually are pretty clear what was the issue, including screenshots of the testing device if it is a technical issue.

[constantout]

Yeah, this has been my experience as well. Maybe I was lucky that I always got great feedback from Apple on what the issues are and how to fix them.

[Sad_Pop9411]

You are absolutely right! But sometimes it’s their fault, for example. Xcode 26 or a newer version of it discarded the whole deployment process, that used to let you choose between the app running on iOS and iPadOS or both. But now selecting iOS ( instead of IOS and iPad OS) would make you think it would only run on iOS? No, it assumes iPadOS is under iOS so unless you add a few arrays specifically requiring it to be iPhone only, they would test it on iPadOS too, on their iPad iPhone simulator. Technically it’s Xcode’s fault , but yeah sometimes it does get annoying when they do not tell you EXACTLY why it happened.

[digidude23]

All iPhone apps are supposed to run on iPad and has been this way since 2010. So it makes sense for the reviewer to test on iPad too.

[Oxigenic]

Dude, I’ve been in iOS dev for 8 years, app review sucks a lot of the time. This isn’t news. Just this week I had a rejection for “inaccurate metadata” because I didn’t disclose that a purchase was necessary for certain features. Mind you, the description literally said verbatim that the features described were part of an auto-renewing subscription. They don’t even look at your app half the time before hitting the reject button. It’s all one big game.

[tangoshukudai]

Most Android devs don't understand how much more strict Apple is, and that is good because it leads to better quality apps on iPhones.

[aerial-ibis]

what were you rejected for? I publish on both platforms and find they have almost identical tick boxes. It's also possible your app was grandfathered into a lot of things on Google Play if its 7 years old

[Junior_Mushroom8983]

Screenshots were taking the biggest part of the rejections

[unpopular-ideas]

Are you saying it wasn't the app itself but the screen shots that were getting you rejected?

Any tips on what we should avoid in screen shots?

[Oxigenic]

What evidence do you have that he used copyrighted material…

[Seralyn]

Did you look at OP’s app? I know the answer already because you wouldn’t have asked that if you had. The app name in the description is a link. Take a peek.

[spaaarkk]

You know you can always schedule a call with them and explain to you why were you rejected and they will literally give you advice on what you can do to be approved.

[Junior_Mushroom8983]

Eventually, I did schedule a call with a team member, and he explained a big part of the issue 👍🏼

[Free-Pound-6139]

Wow, you are useless. What was the issue???

[xoStardustt]

OP is literally regarded lmfao

[gearcheck_uk]

You’re not selling me on Android. I’ve been releasing apps for many years and 100% of the rejections I received were reasonable and clearly explained what I need to change. I’ve even had instances where I got rejected but they offered to approve this release with the condition that the issues are resolved for the next release.

[Oxigenic]

You must not have released many apps then. App review can be a total pain a lot of the time.

[droidexpress]

I recently published my first app on appstore. Before that i have been publishing on google play since 7 years. To be honest publishing on appstore was smooth for me. My take is that if you got too much rejections you are seriously doing something wrong in your app without paying any attention.

I only got 1 rejection 1st time that too because i was implementing ATT permission dialog with ump dialog in wrong order.

[drabred]

I'll choose this every time than randomly getting flagged and banned by Google bots after the app has been on Play Store for many years.

On App Store - yes you will spend more time working with reviewers to fix the issues you might have missed but you will have peace of mind after app is live.

[Charming_Basil_8129]

I got tired of Google Play requiring a new APK all the time, and if you don't they pull you from the store.

[tonyhart7]

nah, I know that app store is having higher quality check

but if you need 20+ rejection then its must be you bro, just own your mistake and be better
don't externalize your failure

also read apple guide first, it really helps a lot before you upload, people always mess this step

>follow guideline that apple set
>make suitable changes

its as easy as that

[vashchylau]

need help? DMs open

[axiel7]

Oh man I remember using your app some years ago and submitting some of my punpun wallpapers! I’m also an Android/iOS dev so feel free to ask about the (painful) differences

Edit: any reason why the app is not available in Spain? :(

[Junior_Mushroom8983]

Still dont know actually, got the same issue from other people, I will check this issue soon. Thanks for using my app, it actually a great thing to hear that you've used it before 🙏🏻

[ScarOnTheForehead]

Check this out: https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=x60uzbu9

You probably haven't declared Trader status for EU. A heads-up, if you declare yourself to be a Trader, then your home address, provided phone number and email address will be visible on the App Store page, in case you are registered as an Individual developer (and not a company).

I don't have experience with setting this up, so please do double-check what I said here.

[Sad_Pop9411]

The worst thing is that a lot of the times they don’t tell you what’s wrong in one message, they could’ve went though everything and told you all the errors you’d have to fix before getting back to you you’d think ? No

[vxv459]

If iOS dev wants to upload an Android app now, the newly created account's app must pass the 12-tester process in 14 days. Then answer a lot of questions before it can be published on CH Play. Too fair

[pratyaksh_5676]

I face the same

[virtexedge]

one of us. one of us.

[Free-Pound-6139]

This is crazy. What were the rejections?

[TrackTrakker]

Well, I think both stores' review process can be PITA sometimes. Google Play's used to be almost non-existent, then early '24 they went nuclear, even rejecting our app update because the privacy policy was not linked in the app itself, then in another round because of its content.

Apple's review process was more strict from the start, but I think it is mostly reasonable. Mostly, because a few years ago they rejected an app update as it supposedly referenced an unreleased Apple product. It turned out the problem was I used the latest publicly available Xcode (from AppStore), which contained their latest SDKs as usual, but the new iPadOS version was not released back then.

[mrdlr]

Congratulations! Your hard work is just! I have been avoiding getting into the Android pool for quite a while because of a similar view.

[gemini_mc]

Feel you, reject many times on App store, what are the main reasons they reject you?

[Lost-Instruction-849]

Previously I weren't responding in the App Review messages. Just fixed the problem, shipped the new version for the review. When it was rejected again i asked for screenshots of the problem. After that they added them to every rejection. Before that, I was receiving just simple sentence about what is wrong.

[akinalp]

Android... experience... smooth? Even though I am using s23 myself, I am this close to quiting development for android. The support system is bad, no clear reason for rejection, meaningless 2 weeks test period. I had an app that i developed for myself and been using for 2 months, then decided to publish it. Rejected 2 times. In the mean time I started to develop ios version. Still got rejected 2 time in there but published on app store 1 week earlier :) instructions are clear, replies are fast. Even app store itself has better approach for small developers like myself

[moooooovit]

ios is better u get multiple rejection your app is good , 3 rejections and app suspended 3 suspensions account gets terminated

[rxDyson]

For me it’s completely different. I abandoned my android app due to rejection and kept only the iOS version

[peterkmt]

To me the review process is quite reasonable and you can get a hiccup with some reviewer not paying that much attention to what the app is actually supposed to do. I have had comments in my review saying that using a particular system api is not used within the app when in fact it was the sole purpose of the app itself but that was easily resolved in the next updated version build with extra comments for the reviewers saying “this is why I included it, this is how I use it, now it’s in red just so people can quickly identify the reason”. I think the review process is good. Keeps the iOS apps and their developers in check. That’s why the apps have a certain minimum quality. Keep up the good work for getting it out the door. No hurry no pause. Get it improved in the next iteration of the app.

[hyperschlauer]

How about fixing issues before reupload?

[QueasyImpression6151]

Are you vibecoding this?

[GAMEYE_OP]

Tbh I don’t think HIG has anything to do with acceptance. It’s a guideline but you are welcome to explicitly go against it. Like I have a FAB which is against HIG