Apple App Store Rejection Reasons You Should Know in 2025

Apple App Store rejection reasons are more common in 2025 than ever, and even high-quality apps are getting blocked due to privacy, design, and policy missteps.

Introduction:

Each year, many innovative mobile applications get rejected from the Apple App Store for seemingly random, minimal, or easily corrected mistakes. With the Apple Review Process getting review (and potentially even more strict) in 2025, even apps that demonstrate creativity and originality risk getting blocked, especially considering the new Apple Review Process standards surrounding business privacy, apps design, and policies. For business people, developers, and product managers looking to sell their services or expand potential business relationships with millions of iOS customers, it’s crucial to identify the reasons behind disappointing app review results and more importantly… how to avoid them in the first place. No need to sweat it though, on the plus side, most of the reasons for rejection in app reviews are rather easy to avoid with the inclusion of some business standards. With this guide, we are about to provide the 7 most common reasons for app rejection from Apple in 2025. More importantly we are also going to provide effective solutions to avoid getting rejected for the app in the first place.

Why Were Apple’s App Review Policies Tighter in 2025?

Over the years, Apple has incrementally changed policies surrounding the app review process so users can have higher confidence in the quality of apps and Apple’s mechanism for reducing app spam. In 2025, Apple began implementing even more fine-tuned reviews and guidelines. Additional review processes utilizing AI paired with human reviews were employed. Apple is focusing even more on *privacy, security, content safety* as recent data privacy regulations in the United States and Europe require Apple to integrate privacy. (source: Statista 2024)

All of these changes mean that Apple’s App Review process is even more scrutinizing, which means even more developers need to focus on the potential mistakes that can be made when working to develop apps that Apple’s App Review process can approve.

Reasons in 2025 For Why Apple Was Rejecting Apps and How to Fix Them

1. Privacy Violations and Mishandling User Data

Why it happens: Apple’s #1 concern for apps is privacy. Apps that have a raw request for personal data without adequate reasoning and updates to app privacy info are blocked. For example, apps that request access to users’ contacts in addition to the location without adequate reasoning are often blocked.

How to avoid:

• Describe data collection honestly, and use Apple’s App Privacy Labels appropriately.
• Limit the permissions you request to only those required for the app’s core functionality.
• Use privacy controls offered by Twinr’s built-in features to streamline compliance.
• Check Apple’s Privacy Guidelines (Apple Developer Documentation, 2025) on a frequent basis.

Insider Tip: With Twinr’s privacy management tools, you won’t have to code, and you’ll avoid compliance-related headaches and legal risk.

2. Poor User Interface & Content Violations

Why it happens: Apple wants apps to have a polished and seamless user experience. If an app has poorly designed User Interfaces–i.e. has spellings and grammatical mistakes, has broken layouts, or has irrelevant content–Apple is likely to reject it. If an app contains content that is inappropriate or unsafe, it will fail the review as well.

How to prevent:

• Use Twinr’s industry-leading templates for a well-designed, legally compliant user interface.
• Test on as many different devices as you can to ensure that you have achieved a successful cross-device user experience.
• Check Apple’s Interface Guidelines (Apple HIG 2025) to ensure that you are compliant to the designing standards required by them.
• If you have any mature or sensitive content, consider removing or editing it. If you are uncertain, review Apple’s Content Policies.

3. Not Having Enough or Poorly Optimized Metadata

Why it happens: An app that has insufficient description, lacks the required keyword data, or has bad quality screenshots appears to be untrustworthy. If there are inconsistencies in the branding, or if a lot of typos are present, Apple will likely assume that the app has quality-related issues.

How to avoid:

• Take advantage of Twinr’s custom app preview features to create branded and high-quality screenshots.
• Choose target keywords and craft your titles and descriptions in a clear manner, putting emphasis on “no-code app builder” and relevant keywords in your industry first.
• Apply appropriate ALT text to every image: e.g., “2025 Apple app review rejection reason” to the image used here.
• Ensure compliance and reflect accurately in your app store assets to avoid app store assets becoming stale.

4. Hidden or Malicious or Deceptive Functionality

Why it happens: Apple’s review has a very low tolerance for apps that are concealing features or inserting malicious back doors or covert SDKs. Apps that attempt to camouflage some of their functionality or SDKs are putting themselves at risk of rejection for trust violation.

How to prevent:

• Ensure that all SDKs and plugins you have embedded in your app are reputable.
• Make sure to have an actual manual audit of your app’s functionalities, and in particular Twinr, to ensure that there is nothing hidden.
• Be transparent about your app and all of its features, so there is no attempt to scrounge anything using your app description.
• Make use of the sandbox testing functionalities in Twinr as far as you can, so that you can gain a comprehensive preview of the app before you submit it.

5. Violating In-App Purchase (IAP) & Payment Policies

Why it happens: Apple has clear and strictly enforced rules that state that apps cannot attempt to bypass in-app purchase functionality or reference external payments for digital goods. Violations are common in apps that try to avoid Apple’s 30 percent fee.

What to do:

• For app models with digital goods, subscriptions, or features use Apple’s built-in IAP system.
• Use clear communication when displaying prices, and explain to customers how, when, and why they would make an in-app purchase.
• Use Twinr’s native features to implement IAP quickly and easily, and remain compliant with Apple policy.
  Pro Tip: Apple has begun using AI to track apps that do not use in-app purchase systems and it can result in app removals or app store rejections.

6. Crashes, Bugs, and More App Poor Performance

What happened: Apple has a very low tolerance for apps that crash or perform poorly. Apps can get rejected for crashing on launch, freezing, or having an unresponsive or slow platform.

What to do:

• Test on using different devices, iOS versions, and in different scenarios with Twinr’s live simulation.
• Fix app bugs, reduce the amount of code used, and optimize images so they take up less space.
• Conduct quality assurance tests on a weekly basis. Apps that are tested more will receive less rejections.
• Use Xcode on your device to get and review crash logs, or use Twi[r’s debugging.

7. There is or is not a lack of appropriate materials or other IP violations

What happened: Lower quality or unlicensed images get apps rejected. In addition, topics that are controversial can get an app rejected. Apple has very strict guidelines that must be followed.

How to Prevent – Steps to Avoid Future Issues

• Avoid this issue by using original and/or licensed materials
• Perform a copyright review prior to submission.
• Utilize copyright-friendly media via Twinr’s media library.
• Avoid adult, political, controversial, or offensive content in your app to comply with Apple’s Inappropriate Content policy.

Getting Apple’s Approval – Steps to Achieve This in 2025

It is better to prevent issues than to have to fix them. Implement the following best practices to achieve this.

• Quickly construct and iterate your app with Twinr’s no-code builder and ensure your app works correctly and at a sufficient quality level.
• Be thorough and ensure a high level of compliance when it comes to privacy, permissions, and content prior to submission.
• Directly utilize Apple’s guidelines and ensure you have removed any ambiguity.
• Perform internal beta testing using TestFlight or Twinr’s preview features.
• Explain and document the compliance measures you have made (you may need to refer to them in your review explanation).

How Twinr Helps With Implementing Your Strategy to Avoid Rejections

With the opportunity of streamlining app development to meet specifications provided by Apple, Twinr’s platform does just that. It is built to enable app creation that is privacy compliant, built from quality templates, and makes it easy for previewing live versions so you can build compliant apps in no time with no coding. This will ensure you are reducing the number of surprises you will have during the review process and will allow your app to go to market faster. Additionally, to save your team from a lot of unexpected rework, Twinr’s modular architecture allows for quick adjustments to be made to prevent issues from accumulating.

Conclusion

Apple might have stricter policies around app development in 2025, but that doesn’t mean that your app will be automatically rejected. Learn about the common mistakes developers make that cause privacy design missteps, incomplete metadata, etc. so you don’t get caught in the same traps. Using Twinr’s no-code tools, you will be able to create your app correctly the first time. With solid groundwork, you will be able to pass Apple’s inspection, get your app to market faster, and make it in the competitive landscape.

Nothing will stop you more than rejections that you should have been able to avoid. Use Twinr to develop your app to meet Apple’s guidelines and get building now!

 

FAQs:

Q1: What will be the strictness of Apple actions in 2025?

15% of the apps submitted are now rejected due to Apple enforcing more strict guidelines to protect the privacy of app users, the stability of apps submitted, and the content analyzed using AI-assisted reviews. Please read the guidelines to achieve more app and system stability to help you get approved.

Q2: Can a rejected app be fixed?

Absolutely. Please ensure you carefully look at the reason that the app was blocked as well as all of the requirements you will need to modify and then submit it again. Compliance revisions are easy to make with the tools that Twinr provides to aid you in building and previewing your app.

Q3: What actions can be taken to avoid privacy violation?

Make your privacy policies more visible to your users, ask for permissions in a more controlled way, and to fill your app privacy labels correctly. For privacy tool compliance, you will get automation to help you with privacy policies from Twinr.

Q4: Do third-party SDKs increase the chance of getting rejected?

Yes, and also yes. To ensure you stay within the guidelines of Apple you need to check all SDK sources, keep them updated, and avoid all suspicious and unneeded SDKs.

Q5: How does the stability of the app affect the review?

If your app has bugs or it crashes that will be a zero-tolerance. Check the performance with Twinr, monitor the logs of your app to see if any crashes happen, and make sure to do the reverse if you have beta tests.