Hooray! You’ve officially decided to pursue your entrepreneurial longings and build the app you’ve been thinking about for years. 

But will it be accepted into the Apple App Store?

Below, we’re briefly going over the basic rules you need to follow to make sure your new app gets approved by the App Store and provide you with a tool to increase your chances of getting your app published.

1. Made for the Public

Your app has to be made for public sign-up or instant use by anyone who downloads your app. Members-only apps can only be published to the Enterprise App Store (invite only). 

2. Useful and Unique

There are over a million Apps in the App Store. If your App doesn’t do something useful, unique or provide some form of lasting entertainment, it won’t be accepted.

3. Appropriate

Apple will reject Apps for any content or behaviour that they believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, “I’ll know it when I see it.” And Apple thinks that you will also know it when you cross it.

4. Good Faith

If you attempt to cheat the system (for example, by trying to trick the review process, steal data from users, copy another developer’s work or manipulate the ratings) your Apps will be removed from the store and you will be expelled from the developer program.

5. Original

Apps that duplicate Apps already in the App Store may be rejected, particularly if there are many of them, such as fart, burp, flashlight and Kama Sutra Apps.

Thankfully, if your App is rejected, there is a Review Board that you can appeal to. Be sure to check out the App Store Review Guidelines for a more complete explanation of the rules.

If your app does not adhere to all of these rules, it risks being rejected by Apple. Not what you want to hear, right? So, to make sure that you don’t get rejected by Apple you, it might be handy to go through the app store and fill out the following competitor profiling table:

When creating apps for the Apple Store at Digital8, we make sure during the whole app development process that we’ve adhered to all of the rules. 

This means that when the app is finished, we don’t have to go back and make sure it follows all of Apple’s rules – it already does. This means less work for us in the long run and lower costs for you, our clients.

If you are interested in creating an app that won’t be rejected by the Apple Store, contact us today.

These guidelines may change at any time.