App Store Compliance: 5 Pre Submission Checks Developers Must Run
App store compliance means meeting Apple's App Review Guidelines across five categories: Safety, Performance, Business, Design, and Legal. The single highest-leverage move before you submit is running a short pre-submission check: confirm privacy disclosures, provide working demo access, verify every link, and test for crash-free builds on real devices.
TL;DR:
- Ensuring privacy disclosures and legal compliance are often overlooked yet critical, especially regarding third-party SDK data collection and regional laws.
- Testing the app on the oldest supported device and OS version can prevent crashes and incomplete features from causing rejection, regardless of UI polish.
- Accurate matching of screenshots, app descriptions, and in-app purchase flows to the current build significantly reduces repeat rejections related to misrepresentation or transaction failures.
- Monitoring app status changes in App Store Connect carefully and addressing any delays or stuck statuses promptly can prevent missed deadlines.
- Preparing a detailed review pack with recordings and test credentials improves response quality and speeds up resubmissions for guideline violations or technical issues.
Table of Contents
- The five guideline categories that decide your approval
- Following your app through App Store Connect's status changes
- Common rejection reasons and how to fix each one
- Getting privacy labels, ATT, and SDK disclosures right
- Payments, In-App Purchase, and the Small Business Program
- Keeping your app compliant after it's approved
- What working with a development partner on compliance actually looks like
- How YS Lootah Tech supports your App Store submission
- Sources
- FAQ
The five guideline categories that decide your approval
Apple organizes its review criteria into five categories, and most rejections trace back to a gap in one of them. Knowing which bucket a requirement falls into makes it much easier to build a repeatable internal checklist instead of reacting to each rejection individually.
Safety covers how your app treats people, particularly around user-generated content. If your app allows posts, comments, or media uploads, you need active moderation for hate speech, illegal content, and abusive behavior, plus a reporting mechanism a reviewer can actually test.
Performance is about whether the app works as shipped. Reviewers test on real hardware, so a build that crashes on an older iPhone or that ships with placeholder text, broken buttons, or unfinished screens gets rejected regardless of how polished the rest of the app looks.
Business rules govern how you present and monetize the app. Metadata has to match actual functionality, in-app purchase items need to be wired correctly to StoreKit, and you cannot use private entitlements to unlock features Apple has not approved for your account.
Design guidelines require that your screenshots and previews match what a user actually sees, that onboarding flows complete without dead ends, and that basic accessibility support (VoiceOver labels, readable text scaling) is present rather than bolted on later.
Legal requirements are the ones developers underestimate most. You are responsible for complying with local laws in every region where your app is distributed, and Apple's review process does not substitute for your own legal diligence, a point Apple states directly in its App Review Guidelines. That includes age-appropriate content controls, rights clearance for third-party content, and export control rules if your app includes encryption.
A practical checklist to run against these five categories before every submission:
- Confirm moderation and reporting tools work for any user-generated content feature.
- Test the build on the oldest supported device and OS version, not just the newest simulator.
- Match every screenshot and app description line to the current build's actual behavior.
- Verify in-app purchases complete a full transaction cycle, including restore purchases.
- Check that content rights, age ratings, and any required legal disclosures are current for every launch region.
Our mobile app development checklist walks through the same categories in more technical detail if you're building the review process into your sprint cadence for the first time.
Following your app through App Store Connect's status changes
Once you submit, App Store Connect tracks your app through a defined sequence of statuses, and each one signals a specific action on your side. Apple documents these states in its app and submission statuses reference, and misreading a status is one of the more common reasons teams miss deadlines.
- Waiting for Export Compliance appears when your app uses encryption and you haven't yet answered the export compliance questionnaire; answer it accurately in App Store Connect or the build stays stuck.
- Ready for Distribution confirms the app passed review and is cleared to appear on the App Store, though it may take additional time to actually go live depending on your release settings.
- Processing shows up right after you upload a build, while Apple validates the binary; this typically resolves within an hour but can take longer during high submission volume.
- Not Available means the app was pulled or never released, often because of a manual removal request or an unresolved agreement issue tied to your developer account.
Monitor these statuses from the App Store Connect dashboard rather than relying on email alone, since notification delivery can lag. If a status sits unchanged for more than 24 to 48 hours outside of Processing, that's the point to open a case with Apple Developer Support rather than resubmitting blindly, since resubmitting a stuck build can restart the queue instead of fixing it.
Common rejection reasons and how to fix each one
Most rejections fall into a small number of repeat patterns, and knowing the fix in advance saves a full review cycle, which typically costs a day or more of turnaround. Apple's own distribution guidance points to app completeness issues, crashes, and placeholder content as some of the most persistent causes.
- Crashes or incomplete functionality. Reproduce the crash on the exact device and OS version cited in the rejection notes, fix it, and include a short changelog in your reply that maps each fix to the guideline number Apple cited.
- Placeholder or incomplete content. Remove "lorem ipsum" text, stub screens, and disabled buttons entirely before resubmitting; reviewers treat unfinished UI as a completeness failure, not a minor cosmetic issue.
- Privacy or App Tracking Transparency (ATT) failures. Check that your ATT prompt fires before any tracking begins and that your privacy label matches actual data collection, then resubmit with a note confirming what changed.
- Misuse of entitlements. Remove any private API or entitlement not explicitly granted to your account; this is rarely negotiable through appeal, so fix and resubmit rather than argue.
- Guideline 4.3 (b) "copycat" flags. If your app is flagged as too similar to an existing one, respond with specific, documented differences in functionality, design, or target use case rather than a general defense of originality.
- Broken support links or missing privacy policy. Test every link in your metadata from a clean browser session before submitting; a single dead link is enough to trigger rejection.
For faster, more convincing responses, include a compact App Review pack with your resubmission: a short screen recording of the fixed flow, working demo credentials, and any test data a reviewer needs to reach the affected screen. Reserve expedited review requests for critical bugs affecting live users, not for routine rejection cycles.
Pro Tip: Write your App Review reply as if the reviewer has never seen your app before: state the guideline number, what changed, and exactly where to look.
Getting privacy labels, ATT, and SDK disclosures right
Privacy is where App Store Connect submissions most often go wrong, because the data collected by third-party code frequently isn't visible to the team filling out the label. Apple's app privacy details documentation requires you to declare every data type collected, whether it's linked to a user's identity, and whether it's used for tracking.
Start by inventorying every SDK in your build, not just your own code, since third-party analytics and ad libraries often collect data your team never explicitly requested.
- List every data type your app or its SDKs collect, from contact info to device identifiers to usage data.
- Mark clearly which data is linked to user identity versus collected in an anonymized or aggregated form.
- Trigger the ATT prompt only when tracking actually occurs, and write the purpose string in plain language explaining the specific benefit to the user.
- Respect a user's "Ask App Not to Track" choice everywhere in the app, not just at the point of the initial prompt.
- Re-audit your privacy label every time you update or add a third-party SDK, since a new library version can quietly change what data it collects.
Third-party code carries real compliance risk on its own. Apple's app privacy details requirements make SDK owners disclose their own collection practices, but the app publisher, not the SDK vendor, is the one accountable to Apple for an inaccurate label. Teams building on multiple ad or analytics SDKs benefit from a lightweight audit process similar to the one described in our data privacy compliance guide, and outside security resources like this roundup of security tooling are useful supplemental reading on vetting third-party code more broadly.
Payments, In-App Purchase, and the Small Business Program
Payment compliance shifts depending on which route you choose, and each option carries different administrative weight. Apple's standard In-App Purchase system handles tax calculation, refunds, and receipt validation for you, which is why most apps selling digital goods use it by default.
- Use Apple's In-App Purchase for digital goods and subscriptions unless you have a specific, approved reason to route around it.
- Check eligibility for the App Store Small Business Program, which reduces the standard commission to 15% for developers who earned up to $1,000,000 in proceeds in the prior calendar year.
- List every Associated Developer Account under a single business entity when applying, since the program's eligibility rules apply at the entity level, not per app.
- If you adopt alternative payment options where Apple permits them, such as the arrangements described for the EU market, expect the tax, refund, and customer support burden to shift to you directly.
- Confirm your payment service provider meets PCI requirements and that you've implemented the required StoreKit External Purchase APIs before enabling any alternative payment flow.
Alternative payments can lower your effective commission, but only after accounting for the operational cost of running your own billing support and reporting.
Keeping your app compliant after it's approved
Approval is a snapshot, not a guarantee. Apple updates its guidelines regularly, and a third-party SDK you didn't touch can quietly change its data collection behavior in a routine version bump, putting your privacy label out of date without any code change on your end.
- Set a recurring review of your metadata and privacy label tied to every release, not just major version updates.
- Add an SDK version check to your CI pipeline so a dependency upgrade triggers a manual review of its data practices before merging.
- Document who owns compliance sign-off for each release, and keep that record available in case Apple opens an account-level compliance review.
- Keep your business registration, bank details, and account holder information aligned, since mismatches during a legal entity change are a common trigger for compliance holds.
Pro Tip: Treat your privacy label like a dependency file: review it every time you update an SDK, not just once a year. Our mobile app maintenance playbook covers the broader cadence for keeping a shipped app healthy beyond just compliance.
What working with a development partner on compliance actually looks like
Application development, UX/UI design, and IT consulting can be combined into a single engagement, which matters for compliance because a broken privacy label is often a design or architecture problem, not just a paperwork one. A typical compliance-focused workflow runs through discovery, an audit of the current build against Apple's guideline categories, remediation of flagged issues, guided submission, and a monitoring period afterward to confirm the app stays in Ready for Distribution status.
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How YS Lootah Tech supports your App Store submission
Getting an app approved on the first attempt saves a full review cycle, and that time adds up when you're coordinating design, engineering, and legal sign-off across a small team. YS Lootah Tech's application development service builds compliance checks into the development process itself, rather than treating App Review as a separate hurdle at the end.
- Application development covers the build itself, including StoreKit integration and export compliance handling.
- UX/UI design aligns your screenshots, onboarding flow, and accessibility basics with what reviewers expect to see.
- IT consulting supports privacy label audits, SDK review, and the change-control process that keeps you compliant release after release.
A typical engagement starts with a review of your current build against Apple's guideline categories, followed by a remediation plan, then hands-on support through submission and the first monitoring window after launch. If your app is heading toward its next submission or resubmission, start with our application development page to see how an engagement is scoped.
FAQ
What are the App Store requirements?
Apple requires apps to meet its App Review Guidelines across five categories: Safety, Performance, Business, Design, and Legal. This includes working functionality on real devices, accurate metadata, proper privacy disclosures, and compliance with local laws in every region the app is distributed.
What is app compliance?
App compliance means an app meets Apple's technical, privacy, and legal requirements well enough to pass App Review and stay approved afterward. It covers everything from crash-free performance to accurate Privacy Nutrition Labels and correct in-app purchase implementation.
Does Apple still take 30%?
Developers enrolled in the App Store Small Business Program pay 15% commission if they earned up to $1,000,000 in proceeds in the prior calendar year. Rates and eligibility can change, so confirm current terms directly with Apple before budgeting around a specific figure.
How to get rid of App Store restrictions?
There's no way to bypass Apple's review requirements, since every app must meet the App Review Guidelines to stay listed. The practical path is fixing the specific issue a rejection cites, whether that's a privacy label mismatch, a broken link, or a missing disclosure, and resubmitting with clear evidence the issue is resolved.