Iris Rejected From the App Store
Rejected after six days waiting for review, and four minutes after launching the app for the first time.
The app uses one or more entitlements which do not appear to have matching functionality within the app.
com.apple.security.network.server
I guess they never opened the Settings window during all the time they spent reviewing the app?
App Review rejected Iris for a second time, this time for two reasons.
They again claimed the app uses the com.apple.security.network.server entitlement without matching functionality - even though I responded to the first rejection with an annotated screenshot and detailed explanation showing the server feature in the app.
They asked for more information about how Iris uses face recognition data - asking me to quote from my privacy policy - despite both the privacy policy and the app itself explaining that no data (including face data) ever leaves your Mac and all processing happens entirely on-device.
Ironically, their rejection included a screenshot of Iris’s Settings window—showing the Privacy tab that explains exactly this.
My MAS app used to go through in under an hour, now takes close to a week.
And there’s a big difference between waiting a week to be approved vs. waiting a week just to begin the process of arguing over specious violations.
I’ve always found it odd that Apple appears to be bragging about these statistics, yet if you do the math, the statistics turn out to be somewhat embarrassing. Based on the 2024 numbers, over 130K app submissions every week reviewed by nearly (in other words, fewer than) 500 “dedicated experts” (a characterization I would question) means 260 reviews per week on average by each reviewer. If we assume, extremely generously, that 500 reviewers work 40 hours every week with no meetings, no training, no breaks, and no vacations, that leaves less than 10 minutes of review time on average for each submission.
[…]
You might ask why Apple, the most profitable corporation in history, with a 77% gross margin in “services” revenue, that could obviously afford to hire more app reviewers, doesn’t also hire better reviewers, more qualified, actual experts in app development and the market? The answer to my rhetorical question is that app reviewer is an unpleasant job, mostly mindless rule-following, repetitive, facing constant deadlines, reminiscent of assembly-line work. It’s a virtual assembly line.
[…]
It isn’t intended to be true curation, and thus, by no surprise, it isn’t true curation. From Apple’s perspective, adding more reviewers would just add to their costs without adding to their profits, which is the point of the App Store, and reviewers were never particularly good at stopping scams, so the investment in more inescapably low-skill reviewers wouldn’t necessarily bring substantial returns. I’m sure that Apple wants to avoid the embarrassment of scams in the store, but Apple can’t do that without fundamentally changing the nature of the App Store and software distribution on iOS, so they live with the embarrassment and rely on Apple apologists to hand-wave away the problem as “a few bad apples.”
Previously:
- Inkwell Rejected From the App Store
- Apple’s Q2 2026 Results
- The App Store Scammer Strikes Back
- Small Ways the App Store Could Be Improved for Developers
- Mac App Store Review Times Increasing
Update (2026-05-26): Richard Buckle:
This perfectly encapsulates why I no longer develop for Apple platforms.
I also got this rejection for my app Localmost…which is a local web server manager!
one of my apps was submitted and approved, but the first update I pushed was rejected because they wanted “test account details” to which i replied “the app does not have an account system” and then it was approved. it’s just so amateur hour. AND they still haven’t got me on the 15% track, the email said “sorry we’re busy right now so there are delays”
Our app resembles a marketplace, so we are always worried of reviewers being overzealous. We had to deal with a few rejections in the early versions. Also, we publish some apps with the branding and name of some big companies (think intellectual property red flags). What seems to work (maybe it is pure chance ?!) is that we provide a nice QA anticipating possible critiques in the Notes section next to the login/password.
I had the (unfortunate) opportunity of submitting 3 updates to MAS for @due in 4 days and want to provide another data point[…] Even before this week, my experience has been similarly speedy. But of course, the trouble with the App Store is that you never know when you’re on the unlucky side of things.
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2 weeks from now we'll hear "We can't wait to see what you do!" and I'll think about rejections like these and try to find reasons to stay on the platform.
I had an app rejection for using NSApplication .presentationOptions after I'd been using it for years. "Nonstandard UI" or some dumb note. I had to explain users requested it.
I had another app rejection because exactly one NSTextField in an app with probably 100 of them over 10 xibs mistakenly didn't use .labelColor or a semantic color for Dark Mode. A UI mistake for sure, but nothing as bad as Liquid Ass (and that didn't hold up Apple from releasing).
Meanwhile, if you work for a ShitterCo or a Mag 7 (same thing), your 500 MB Electron filth, with 5 different analytics frameworks for maximum fingerprinting, gets auto-approved by Apple's reviewers every 3 hours you add a new JS dependency. Truly a showcase of the best of the platform.
"Meanwhile, if you work for a ShitterCo or a Mag 7 (same thing), your 500 MB Electron filth, with 5 different analytics frameworks for maximum fingerprinting, gets auto-approved by Apple's reviewers every 3 hours you add a new JS dependency"
I actually find this genuinely confusing. I'm guessing stuff like the flagged network.server entitlement, presentationOptions, or missing labelColor is detected programmatically, and bad actors are just good at submitting apps that don't trigger any of these automatic rules?
Because I just can't believe that a human reviewer notices a missing labelColor in one app, and then completely blanks on a scam app.
I've got rejection 2 weeks ago which stated that "we can't log in". They attached a screenshot displaying an alert with text "You don't have an account. Register first". I just don't know what to think about that, but it's disturbing. It was always a challenge, but nowadays it seems that they reached a new low.
@Plume
I don't know, I never downloaded any scam apps to check them. Maybe Apple's internal tools are more detailed against native apps and braindead Reviewers follow every warning emitted to chase their weekly rejection KPIs?
Whatever it is, no amount of bad PR, Congressional panels, or WWDC announcements have meaningfully improved the App Store or App Review.
Big Co Slop Apps don't ever seem to be affected, though. They sail through App Review and get featured regularly. Did you watch [NEW THING] on Amazon? Have you heard of a little new product called Office 365? This is why I go to the App Store! Truly the curated experience it was sold as 15 years ago.
I don't blame Tyler and others who'd rather walk away. He knows his resolution is going to be:
A) A "we approved it" email with no explanation.
B) A new com.apple.security.temporary-exception.network.server.in.settings.window entitlement.
A future reviewer will regress and reject it again for the same (or another dumb) reason.
App Review is a humiliation ritual.
I literally stopped shipping a game through the Mac App Store years ago because I couldn’t deal with App Review anymore and crucially I had *options* (I went with Steam). Since I still release on iOS/tvOS, I can easily compare the experiences and without fail every release is nearly instantaneous on Steam while at least 1 in 3 releases cannot even pass Apple’s review on the same day. Do you know what the longest hiccup ever was with Steam? That’s right, failing to pass APPLE’S worthless notarization step because it was broken for a few hours. I frequently am in the situation of wondering if I should announce an update that is technically released for Mac but still waiting on iOS/tvOS (and since tvOS builds are also separate, I have also been in the situation of waiting across THREE different days before all 3 builds were actually out).
Apple should be embarrassed but I don’t think they are capable of that.
I really think, as Apple users ourselves, we should revolt against the App Stores entirely. They're horrible for developers on so many different levels. They're bad for users because they give Apple too much control over what can or can't be installed. They provide a false sense of security because they allow scams yet say they protect users from scams.
Overall, it's bad and we should push back
How? I mean on the Mac there are alternatives. But on iOS there's nothing to do about it.
And the bay majority of people who pay for our in, apps don't give a shit. They're not even aware of what's going on.
