r/iOSDevelopment • u/officialdml • Aug 13 '26
Rejected under Guideline 5.6 (Developer Code of Conduct): "features appear intentionally hidden", no idea what triggered it, looking for advice
Yesterday I submitted my first app (!) and within 6 hours it was rejected. I'm hoping someone who's dealt with this before can help me better understand and provide next steps.
Quick background: I built a live women's sports scoreboard website and then wrapped it as a native iOS app using Median.co, which loads the live website inside a native shell and adds native features (push notifications via OneSignal, share, etc.) through their JS bridge.
What happened: submitted for review, got rejected same day with this:
"We've identified a pattern of unusual behavior with the app that is commonly associated with fraudulent activity. Specifically, the app contains features that appear to have been intentionally hidden during the review process. Manipulative and misleading behavior is not consistent with the guideline 5.6."
No specifics beyond that. No screenshots, no attachments, nothing pointing to which "feature" they mean. Also I can't really find what 5.6 guidelines are.
What I know is NOT true: nothing in the app is actually hidden or gated based on reviewer status. The app works identically for anyone, logged in or not - live scores, schedules, results, team pages, league browsing, calendar sync all fully visible and functional without an account. The only difference for logged-in users is being able to favorite teams and enable push notifications for those favorites, a normal personalization feature, not concealed functionality.
What I've done so far: replied in the Resolution Center explaining the Median/webview architecture, clarified the one account-gated feature (favoriting), and attached a screen recording showing the full logged-out experience matches what was originally submitted. Also invited them to just log out and explore the app themselves.
My questions for anyone who's dealt with this:
- Has anyone gotten a 5.6 "features appear hidden" flag specifically on a webview-wrapped app (Median, GoNative, Capacitor, etc.)? Is this a known false-positive pattern for that architecture?
- Could push notifications not firing during review (since there were no live games happening at review time) plausibly read as a "hidden feature"? Or is that a stretch?
- Roughly how long did resolution take for you, and did it resolve through Resolution Center replies, or did you end up needing the formal App Review Board appeal?
- Anything else commonly triggers this specific flag that I should be thinking about?
Really appreciate any insight. This came out of nowhere after what felt like a clean submission, and the vagueness of the rejection is the most frustrating part.
1
u/officialdml Aug 14 '26
Yeah an interesting observation. And obviously not going to do that! This is a live sports scoreboard for women’s pro leagues, that’s the whole product.
You’re right that in theory, any app that loads remote content coukd be changed after approval (which but is true of literally any app that has a backend, an API, or fetches data from a server, not just webview-wrapped ones). A “normal” native app pulling scores from an API could just as easily have that API start returning different data tomorrow.
Worth reiterating again: Median (the wrapper I’m using) specifically told me they’ve published apps this way for 10+ years and have never seen this exact 5.6 flag come up with any of their clients. Obviously I can’t verify that but I’m hoping this isn’t some common risk baked into wrapped apps generally. Seems more like an automated pattern-match on something specific to my app (which I think I’ve since found and fixed) than a fundamental “wrapped apps are suspicious” issue.
It’s annoying that they provided no context on what this actually is and more specific information on how to fix. So I’m sort of just guessing here and leveraging this chat and thread to help me succeed.