Picture this: six months of development, a launch date locked in, the marketing campaign queued up. You hit Submit on App Store Connect. Forty-eight hours later, your inbox has a rejection notice instead of an approval.
To avoid these costly delays, many teams partner with mobile app development experts who understand Apple’s review guidelines and submission process in depth.
It happens to roughly 1 in 4 submissions. And in 2026, that rate is climbing not because Apple is being unreasonable, but because the rules around privacy, AI disclosure, and app quality are tighter than they've ever been.
According to Apple’s own App Store Transparency Report, 1,931,400 out of 7,771,599 app submissions were rejected. That’s nearly 2 million rejected apps and the majority were turned away for issues that were entirely preventable.
Here, we’ll walk you through a guide that covers every major app store rejection category tell you exactly why it happens, and give you the specific fix for each one.
Let’s get into it.
TL; DR: 5 Things to Know Before You Read On
- Nearly 2 million apps were rejected in 2024. Performance issues alone caused more than 1.2 million of those rejections on their own.
- The bar is higher in 2026. New AI consent rules (November 2025), updated age rating categories (July 2025), and a mandatory Xcode 26 SDK requirement (April 2026) have added new hard stops to the review process.
- Privacy Manifests are the sneakiest blocker. Now every third-party library bundled in your app needs it. Miss one, and you’re rejected before a human even looks at your app.
- TestFlight is your safety net. Running a beta before production submission catches the blockers that would otherwise kill your launch timeline.
- Most rejections are fixable in 24-72 hours. But do not make unrelated changes out of panic. Be specific and document your fix.
Why App Store Rejection Rate Is 30% And Why It’s Rising
We know Apple’s 2024 Transparency Report gives us a rare look at the actual breakdown. But here’s what the numbers actual say:
- 1.93 million total rejections in 2024
- 1.24 million performance violations
- ~25% raw rejection rate
Performance violations including, apps that crash, freeze, or fail to demonstrate their features account for more rejections than all other categories combined. But the category that's growing fastest in 2026 is Privacy.
As compliance requirements grow, working with a team experienced in enterprise mobile app development and compliance can significantly reduce rejection risks
And here are the 3 specific changes are pushing the rejection rate higher in 2026:
1. AI Consent Requirement (November 2025)
If your app sends any user data to an external AI service such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, or anyone else, you must display a clear consent screen naming the provider and explaining what data is shared. Apps built before this rule existed are being caught on their first update submission.
2.Mandatory Xcode 26 SDK (April 2026)
Starting April 2026, all new submissions and app updates must be built with the iOS 26 SDK using Xcode 26. Teams running older build pipelines are getting automated upload rejections before a single reviewer sees their app.
3. Age Rating Categories (Updated - July 2025)
Apple expanded age ratings to include 13+, 16+, and 18+ tiers. All developers had until January 31, 2026 to complete the updated questionnaire. Teams that missed the deadline are still being tripped up on submissions.
The 15 Most Common Apple App Store Rejection Reasons (And How to Fix Each)
Privacy Manifest Requirements (iOS 17+): What Changed and What OSSPL Does About It
Here’s a scenario that catches teams off guard every week: A developer submits a polished, fully tested app. No crashes. Clean UI. Accurate privacy labels. It gets rejected anyway with an automated error code (ITMS-91053) before a human reviewer even opens the app.
The cause? One of the analytics or advertising libraries bundled inside the app hadn't been updated to include its own privacy declaration file.
What’s a Privacy Manifest, in plain terms?
It’s a file called PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy that lives inside your app and acts like a formal declaration: it tells Apple exactly what data your app collects, which sensitive system features it uses, and why. Think of it as the honest fine print your app is required to show Apple before it can be distributed.
Apple introduced this requirement at their 2023 developer conference, issued warnings throughout early 2024, and made it a hard enforcement gate from May 1, 2024 onward.
The part that trips most teams: it applies to your libraries too
Every third-party library bundled inside your app needs its own manifest not just your code. That means if you’re using Firebase, Adjust, Amplitude, or dozens of other common SDKs that haven't shipped an updated version with a manifest, your submission is blocked.
The fix is a three-step process:
- Audit every library in your app. Check your Podfile or Package.swift and verify each SDK has released a manifest-compliant version.
- Update or replace non-compliant SDKs. If a library hasn’t been updated, contact the vendor or evaluate switching to one that has.
- Run Xcode’s Privacy Report before every submission. In Xcode: Product → Generate Privacy Report. This gives you a single PDF summary of every manifest in your app. If anything is missing, it appears here, before Apple sees it.
As compliance requirements grow, working with a team experienced in enterprise mobile app development and compliance can significantly reduce rejection risks
What OSSPL builds into every project from day one?
At OpenSpace Services, privacy manifest compliance isn’t a pre-launch checklist item; it's part of our architecture from the first sprint. We map every dependency against Apple’s list of required-manifest SDKs, flag any non-compliant ones before they're integrated, and run automated manifest validation in our CI/CD pipeline on every build. By the time a client's app reaches submission, this is already solved.
TestFlight: Your Secret Weapon for Catching Issues Pre-Submission
Most teams use TestFlight to gather feedback from beta users. That's valuable. But TestFlight's more important function that most teams miss, is what happens before those users even see the build.
When you upload to TestFlight, Apple runs a basic automated review on the build. Hard blockers get caught here: missing privacy manifest entries, invalid entitlements, broken provisioning profiles. These are the exact issues that would kill a production submission. In TestFlight, they surface on a build you haven’t yet publicly committed to which means your launch timeline stays intact.
What to validate during your TestFlight window
- The complete new user experience: fresh install, permission prompts, sign-up, onboarding. Every step.
- In-app purchases and subscriptions: use Apple's Sandbox environment to test the full payment flow end-to-end.
- Account creation and deletion: the reviewer will test both.
- Every device and iOS version you support: crashes that only appear on older iPhones or specific iOS versions will surface in external beta.
- Xcode Organiser crash reports: check these daily during the beta window. Even one-off crashes matter if Apple's reviewer hits them.
OSSPL Pre-Submission Rule
Run a TestFlight external beta for a minimum of 5 business days before any production submission. Use the App Store Connect ‘Notes for Review’ field to brief the reviewer on complex features, required hardware, and demo account flow. Reviewers are human. So, giving context really helps.
Teams that integrate DevOps and CI/CD practices early are able to catch these issues much earlier in the release cycle.
The App Store Submission Checklist (2026)
Run through this before every submission. Each item that fails here is a day or more added to your timeline.
1. Build:
- Built with Xcode 26 + iOS 26 SDK (required for all submissions from April 2026)
- Tested on real physical devices
- Zero crashes across all supported iOS versions
- Demo/test account credentials added in App Store Connect reviewer notes
- All backend APIs live and reachable during the review window
2. Privacy:
- PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy manifest present and complete
- Every third-party SDK has its own privacy manifest and signature
- Privacy Nutrition Labels in App Store Connect match what the app actually collects
- Permission prompt shown before any tracking; user's 'no' is fully respected
- AI consent modal present if app sends data to an external AI service
3. Payment:
- All in-app purchases use Apple's StoreKit. No external payment links
- Price, renewal frequency, and cancellation steps clearly shown before purchase
4. Design:
- All tap targets are at least 44×44 points
- App provides genuine native value; not a web view shrunkdown
- In-app account deletion available (if the app supports account creation)
5. Legal:
- In-app account deletion available (if the app supports account creation)
- All media assets (images, fonts, music) are properly licensed
- Age rating questionnaire completed with updated 2025 categories
6. Content:
- Screenshots show real in-app UI taken directly on device
- App description only covers features that are live in this build
- Reviewer notes explain any complex features or required hardware
Got Rejected? Here’s How You Can Handle a Rejection Without Losing Timeline
It’s 2am. Your launch is in 36 hours. But the rejection email just landed. Here’s the five-step process in the order that actually matters.
Step 1: Read the notice completely, twice
Apple's rejection notices are specific. They cite the exact guideline, describe what the reviewer observed, and often include screenshots. The most common mistake is misreading the issue and fixing the wrong thing which wastes days and triggers another review cycle.
Step 2: Fix only what Apple flagged
Resist the urge to also clean up unrelated code, add a feature you've been meaning to ship, or update every SDK. Every additional change adds re-test surface area and can introduce new problems. Surgical fixes only.
Step 3: Respond in the Resolution Center with documentation
Don't just resubmit silently. Reply to the reviewer in App Store Connect's Resolution Center. Explain specifically what you changed and why it now complies. Include screenshots if the fix involves any UI change. Reviewers are humans reading dozens of responses that’s why clear, specific communication consistently gets faster re-review.
Step 4: Request expedited review if timing is genuinely critical
Apple offers expedited review requests for apps tied to time-sensitive events such as major launches, press coverage, seasonal campaigns. It doesn't guarantee same-day approval, but it flags your submission for prioritization. Use it when the stakes warrant it.
Step 5: Set stakeholder expectations immediately
A 2-3-day delay from a fixable rejection is manageable. A stakeholder discovering the delay at the planned launch hour is a crisis. Don’t wait. Send the revised timeline as soon as you know the scope of the fix.
Final Thoughts
App Store rejection isn’t a judgment on the quality of what you’ve built. In most cases, it’s a signal that something in the submission process wasn’t quite ready, missing or broken.
The pattern we see most often at OSSPL is that clients have great apps but rushed submissions, weeks lost in rejection-and-resubmission loops that could have been avoided with a structured pre-submission process.
So, if you’re planning a significant iOS launch in 2026, the best time to bring in architecture review is before you’ve built six months of technical debt into the submission, not after.
A rejected app is often a backend story with unstable APIs, missing reviewer credentials, undisclosed data flows. OSSPL brings architectural clarity to your iOS product before submission day.
If you need a rock-solid mobile backend? Get a free architecture review at OpenSpace Services today!
