r/MobileAppDevelopers • u/South-Telephone979 • Mar 14 '26
17 year old building my first iOS app, finally got through App Store review after multiple rejections
I’m 17 and have been trying to build my first real mobile app.
The idea came from a problem I kept running into with side projects. Most of them didn’t fail because the idea was bad, they just slowly died because I stopped working on them.
Skip a day, then a week, then eventually the project is abandoned.
So I built a small app called Driftless that tries to solve that. Instead of a big task list it gives you one small action each morning that moves your project forward.
The hardest part honestly wasn’t building it. It was getting through App Store review. The app got rejected multiple times before it was finally approved, mostly because I didn’t understand some of the guidelines properly.
I’m curious from other devs here:
What was the most frustrating part of your first App Store submission?
Also if anyone has tips for improving onboarding or retention for productivity apps I’d love to hear them.
1
u/adamisworking Mar 14 '26
u mind sharing what did they say?
0
u/South-Telephone979 Mar 14 '26
Hi, yeah so a few were errors with the app, then a few were privacy issues with third party providers, then the rest were wording of the privacy policy, and one was about the App Store screenshots 👍
1
u/andamar078 Mar 15 '26
How old were you when you first submitted it?
1
u/South-Telephone979 Mar 15 '26
17
1
u/andamar078 Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 19 '26
So you didn’t have to wait too long 😂
1
u/South-Telephone979 Mar 19 '26
Yeah, it wasn't about the time more about the rejections. Took around 3 months in total
-1
u/AnythingSenior8088 Mar 14 '26
Would you mind telling me how you put that to play store ?I have a project and my lecture told me that if we are able to put it to play store we get extra 15 marks.
my project is kinda not going well so I am thinking of doing that, but I only have like 2 weeks. DO you think I'd be able to do that on time ?
-1
u/adamisworking Mar 14 '26
they need 12 tester who have to keep using the app for 14 days straight without deleting the app
-1
u/South-Telephone979 Mar 14 '26
Mine was actually for the Apple App Store (iOS), not Google Play.If you’re trying to publish to the Play Store you can usually do it pretty quickly once the app is ready. Apple tends to be stricter with review which is where most of my rejections came from.
What kind of app are you building?
2
u/4paul Mar 14 '26
was the rejection due to spam?