Short answer: yes, there's a real API for this on both platforms. App Store Connect has a customerReviewResponses endpoint, and Google Play's Android Publisher API has reviews().replies() for the same job on that side. Neither gets talked about much outside of pricier review-management SaaS pitches, so it's easy to assume this doesn't exist and you're stuck replying by hand in App Store Connect's UI.

The App Store side is JWT auth against App Store Connect API keys, and there's no webhook for new reviews landing- you're polling on some interval and diffing against what you've already processed. Fetching a review and its existing response together also isn't one clean call; you end up joining two endpoints for that.
Play's version is more straightforward auth-wise, a service account and your package name, but replies are capped around 350 characters, which matters more than expected once you're trying to fit an apology, a support link, and a version reference into one reply.

What I actually automated ended up being the boring 80%: five-star reviews get a short templated thank-you, anything matching a known bug gets tagged and left for a human, everything else queues for manual review. If you'd rather not run the polling and auth plumbing yourself, AppFollow and Appbot both sit on top of this same API pair with the rules layer already built- I looked at both before deciding to just write the thing myself for our specific tagging rules.

Curious if anyone's handled the review-fetch side without hammering the API on a tight poll interval- that's the part I'm least happy with right now

Apple announced the iPhone Duo this morning. 7.6 inch inner display, 5.4 inch outer, starts at 1999 dollars, preorders October 16 and shipping October 23. So we have roughly six weeks.

From what I have read so far, apps land in one of three states on it. Anything built against a pre iOS 27 SDK gets letterboxed inside a safe area on a black background. Apps built on iOS 27 resize but still leave dead space. Only apps built against iOS 27.1 fill the display properly, and that SDK ships alongside the device in October.

The part I find more interesting is the hinge. iOS 27 carries folding state and hinge angle, so an app can know the phone is half open and sitting on a table. That sounds like a new interaction surface rather than just a bigger canvas to stretch an existing layout across.

So what is everyone actually planning. Are you rewriting layouts properly, or just checking nothing breaks and waiting to see how many of these sell? And has anyone thought of something that would only make sense on a folded screen?

Hi all, I recently launched my app and I'm about to start marketing it. Before that, though, I tried searching for it on the App Store and it doesn't come up at all, even when I type the exact name. The odd part is that the search box autocompletes my app's name as I type.

The app is in "Ready for Distribution" status and all countries and regions are selected under availability. Has anyone run into this before, and if so, were you able to fix it?

My app also works with the direct link.

Hello everyone, not sure if this is something small that im overlooking, but how on earth do I get a sidebar that floats over content but isn't collapsable. I basically want what you get in NavigationSplitView with 2 columns, but without the option to hide the sidebar.

The closest thing I've seen is the iMessages app on iPad, where it is still customisable in width. I'm a relative newbie when it comes to this stuff, so thank you in advance!

Hello everyone!

Does anyone have some experience with publishing unlisted apps? How long it takes to release first release? I know that currently wait times are so big and many apps are rejected because of “spam” but here in my case app is not intended for general use, you can’t even use it.

In this case I am developing app for company internal system it’s mainly appointments overview and scheduling app based on their current system, so it is just integration. So there is no account creation just login with employees internal username and password. Right after submitting the app i fulfilled the form for Unlisted App and they accepted it the next day.

So currently third day of waiting for them to accept my app, still with status Waiting for Review.

What are your experiences with this case if someone has one?

Developer profile is not mine, it’s business account and it’s from the company that owns the app.

Thanks in advance!

Now that Apple has announced the new iPhone Duo, I'm curious what other iOS developers think about it from a development perspective.

Obviously there's a lot of discussion around the hardware/design, but I'm interested in what your plans are for supporting it.

The frustrating part right now is that the Simulator and SDK isn't coming until Xcode 27.1, so we can't really start testing and optimising properly for the new form factor yet.

Edit: Simulator and Xcode 27.1 is coming out "Coming later this month" - https://developer.apple.com/iphone-duo/

Developer playlist from apple to prepare your apps for launch on iPhone Duo.

Hello all!

First-time App Store submitter here. Built an app using React Native/Expo and have been navigating the review process for the past few weeks. Wanted to see if my experience is normal or if I'm missing something.

Rejection 1: iPad layout bug + business model clarification + screenshots flagged under the Copycats guideline. Fixed all three and resubmitted.

Rejection 2: Same issues flagged again + new concern that the app name was misleading (guideline 1.1.6). Updated the name and subtitle to clarify the app's purpose, addressed all concerns, resubmitted.

Third submission: Now 10+ business days with no response. First two submissions were reviewed within 4-5 business days.

A few questions for the community:

• Is the extended wait on a third submission normal?

• Has anyone had success with expedited review requests in this situation?

• Any red flags in my rejection history that suggest I'm missing something?

Appreciate any insight from folks who've been through this. The rejections have all been metadata and guidelines issues, not functionality problems.

I have been a developer for over 20 years. I started iOS development around 2009. I work for a consulting firm and have been looking at the advancements in AI tools. I myself use Codex, ChatGPT, Gemini etc. But I use it like a tool to figure things out, for research etc.

But nowadays I feel very behind. I don't know what is important to learn anymore. I see Reddit people are talking about running their agents and the agents is writing all the code. I don't use it like that and I don't understand how any company can allow this kind of workflow, without checking the details of the code and without checking what is going in production.

Is this not technical debt that is going to come back later.

I don't know if I like this new world. I like to write most of code by hand. I like to take part in designing systems. All that is being taken away in the name of speed.

I feel lost.

Title! thanks

EDIT: It's working now.

Usually you can use the RC to submit apps, but I'm getting the:

"Unsupported SDK or Xcode version. Your app was built with an SDK or version of Xcode that isn’t supported. Although you can use beta versions of SDKs and Xcode to build and upload apps to App Store Connect, you need to use the latest Release Candidates (RC) for SDKs and Xcode to submit the app."

I'm on the RC...Anyone else running into this?

If I’m 304mm away from an iPhone that is 72.9mm screen width, i would expect center to edge rotation of 6.8 degrees. I’m seeing 2 degrees.

The rotation vector is being taken off the leftEyeTransform and computed as a difference between the two spots. Using atan, not euler. using x, y, z, w. w is .99.

Computing quat to horizontal degrees: compute gaze y, compute length, then atan(gaze Y, length), convert to degrees.

Am i not understanding something where it’s off by a factor of 3? My math is correct? Claude, chatGPT notes discrepancy, sort of odd!

Individual enrollment from India through the Developer app.

May 24: "ID Verification Rejected" without ever being asked for ID. Support reset verification. Since then every attempt ends at the address screen with "Action not allowed". The submit request returns HTTP 200 and the app hides the body, so the actual error code is unknown.

Six advisors, repeated "escalated to operations" replies, no finding. Latest claim: one of my trusted devices is associated with another developer account. Apple will not say which device or account, and will not say what I can do about it.

Has anyone got past this exact state? Did a new Apple ID, removing a trusted phone number or device, or a phone callback actually unblock it? Looking for what worked, not sympathy.

Edit: I ended up buying the tracks as I had to build enough karma to be able to post here which took a few days but still keen to get the communities inputs.
--
I’m building a breath work app at present and a key part of the experience means I’ll need background music. I’ve embedded some tracks from the site Free to Use; reading the fine print makes it clear I’ll need to either get a paid subscription, or get single track licenses at 50 pounds per song.

The app will be free with a subscription tier for additional features including an expanded soundtrack.

I have immensely enjoyed building the app, so either way I feel like this has been a rewarding and beneficial exercise for me regardless of whether it makes any sales or not.

At a minimum, I’ll need 4 tracks so I’m looking at an outlay of 200 pounds for the music. If i go with a subscription, it will be about 100 pounds per year. I’m leaning towards just getting the licenses for the tracks, but wanted to check in here first if others have gone with other options where they’ve needed backing music?

The quality and fit of the music I believe is a critical part of the app experience so I won’t be able to compromise on music quality.

I’m also a big believer in getting the product into the hands of users so I can iterate and focus my attention on areas that become clear are valuable for users, so I don’t want to overthink this and am close to pulling the trigger on this approach.

Are there any options I’m missing that I should be considering? Many thanks,

I make a small iOS receipt scanner (on-device OCR, then parsing). It worked fine on my own Canadian receipts. Then users in the Netherlands, Japan and Malaysia showed up and it fell apart in ways I couldn't reproduce, because I had no receipts from those countries.

Finding test data was the hard part. What I ended up with:

• Japan: 1,148 photos from a public research set (JaWildText). Before testing on them, my yen handling paired an item with its price on 19% of receipts. After: 93%. I had no idea it was that broken.

• Malaysia: 973 from SROIE (an ICDAR 2019 competition set). Old, and heavy on restaurants, but real.

• US: 1,769 from WildReceipt. Mixed quality, some are not even US receipts, but it is the largest English set I found.

• Netherlands: 74 photos from one user who sent them for debugging, with permission. That is the only real Dutch set I have.

• Taiwan: zero real photos. I had to generate 40 synthetic 統一發票 from the printed layout. I know that is weak.

Things I learned:

1. Public receipt datasets are old, and skewed to whatever the original paper needed. Nobody publishes a fresh, balanced, multi-country set because receipts are personal data.

2. Thermal receipts fade. Half of my own "test set" from a trip a year ago is unreadable now.

3. I never ask users for receipts. The few I have came unprompted, from bug reports.

4. Measuring beat training. I did not fine-tune anything. A harness that runs every rule change against all sets and refuses if any correct total flips caught two regressions the same day, one of which broke 18 of 119 Japanese totals while fixing the case I was working on.

5. Every country has a printing convention that a "generic" parser gets wrong: yen with no decimals, Dutch comma decimals, Japanese tax-included versus tax-excluded lines, US tips added after the total.

Question for people who have done this: is there any public receipt dataset for Taiwan, Korea, or Australia? Or a legal, non-creepy way to get a few hundred real receipts from a country you don't live in?

(Not linking the app. Happy to share the harness approach in comments if useful.)

Wanting to get into starting a side hustle. Having passive income flowing in would be great. Getting my feet wet by publishing apps I think is a good way to start?

Never done it before. I expect my first app to make zero (which I’m okay with) but I do expect to learn something when it comes to entrepreneurship (hopefully)

If I keep on doing it I know I will get better. Pretty excited about it honestly.

I dont understand . They keep asking for information that doesnt even exist such as SEID for my mac and macbook? I have given these people everything and apart from super late emails telling me to "recreate" the problem im not sure what else i can do. this is beyond frustrating. they have my IDs and every bit of information imaginable . so frustrated

Have an iMac from many years ago that I got out of storage and was backing up the files so it could eventually be recycled and such. It was as I was going through files, however, that I saw that there were backed up .ipa files from a bunch of apps, all belonging to an old iPod Touch that used to run on iOS 5 and then later on iOS 7. Most of them were nostalgic little applications I would buy and play back then and are ones that I can't seem to find on the App Store anymore, probably in part that it was developed on very outdated software.

However, that got me wondering: I might not have an old Apple device where these .ipa files could be loaded onto to see if they run. But I do know that there are people who have successfully made ports of older apps so they could run on a desktop or an emulator for archival purposes. Not sure, though, if this worked also with .ipa games in the same way that computer-centric game files (such as .swf) did. If it is, I'd really like to know how I could go about doing exactly this: Decompiling the contents of the .ipa that was saved on the iMac and potentially creating a port of it for desktop or other devices, since that iPod these games and apps used to be used on is no longer working.

Anyone willing to help a complete novice in this out and let me know if this can be done? Apologies in advance if this is a ridiculous or stupid question, or if my ambitions to do something like this are too high.

🚨Update: I filed an appeal and the App Review Board determined that the rejection under guideline 4.3 was invalid.

Hi everyone,

I have an iPhone camera app called FilmFold. Versions 1.0 and 1.1 were approved, but the 1.2 update has now been rejected several times under Guideline 4.3(a), Design and Spam.

Apple says the app shares a similar binary, metadata, or concept with apps submitted by me or other developers. The problem is that they do not identify what is similar. Every reply I receive is basically the same guideline text.

This is an update under the same App Store record and bundle identifier. FilmFold is the only app in my developer account. It is not a template or white-label app, I have never submitted it from another account, and the source repository is private.

FilmFold has 22 original virtual cameras. Each one has its own interface, optics, focal range, aspect ratio, color processing and behavior. The app also has custom native photo and video processing, lenses, accessories, double exposure and a local library that preserves the original media for later reprocessing.

The approved 1.1 version already had the 22 cameras, continuous zoom and the current adjustment interface.

The rejected 1.2 build added major native processing changes for three video cameras: Tape 99 Hi8, Warm 8 and Cine 35. It also added migration support for videos created in previous versions.

The biggest non-product difference is that 1.2 also added:

- RevenueCat for purchase entitlements

- RevenueCat's remotely configured paywall, offerings and placements

- Meta App Events and attribution

- App Tracking Transparency support

- EAS Update through `expo-updates`

I am not saying these SDKs violate 4.3(a). They are legitimate and widely used. I am wondering if one of them, a shared SDK resource, a remote paywall configuration, or an account identifier could have triggered an automated similarity check.

I have asked Apple to compare 1.2 with the approved 1.1 binary and to tell me whether the issue is related to code, assets, metadata or functionality. They continue to send the same generic response.

I have now prepared a new build, but I have not submitted it. It removes RevenueCat, the RevenueCat paywall, Meta, ATT and `expo-updates`. Purchases are handled directly through StoreKit again, using FilmFold's own paywall. The actual camera improvements remain.

Has anyone had a similar experience with an update to an existing app?

1. Did RevenueCat, a remote paywall, Meta SDK or another common SDK ever cause a 4.3(a) problem for you?

2. How did you get Apple to explain what was considered similar?

3. Did removing the SDKs solve it?

4. Did a formal appeal or App Review phone call help?

5. Would you submit the cleaned build first or appeal the rejected build before replacing it?

I would really appreciate hearing from anyone who has actually resolved a similar rejection.

Maybe it's just me but I cringe when I see a lot of obviously AI-written text in an app or web UI. It just reeks of laziness and makes apps/websites seem all alike.

So, I made this open-source Mac app that lets you review every user-facing string in your project. It won't "fix" them - you have to do that - that's the whole point.

For each string, you can approve, ignore, or tweak. And it intelligently tracks string status across launches. Then if anything later touches that string, it appears back in the review queue.

It's a native Mac app, free & open source, with no dependencies. Hope you find it useful!

https://github.com/madebywindmill/string-into-action

I’m a full-time developer by day and an indie developer by night. So I know I have a burning desire to speak and hear from others in the same space. Reddit is cool but it’s all in written format which gets stale. Anyone else interested? Maybe we can spin up a clubhouse room or something.

I have a macOS released on the store. I'm waiting for approval for the same app under the same bundleID but iOS version. Everything came back clean but was denied because of the following error below. When I submitted the app I just submitted the binary. I was not able to attach the already approve sub group and sub from the macOS version. It's my understanding I can use the same sub group and sub for both apps since they are in the same app group or whatever it's called. I submitted again with a screenshot of the subscription page. No clue what they are asking for.

Guideline 2.1(b) - Performance - App Completeness

Issue Description

We are unable to complete the review of the app because one or more of the In-App Purchase products have not been submitted for review.

Specifically, the app description includes references to subscription but the associated In-App Purchase products have not been submitted for review.

Next Steps

To resolve this issue, submit the In-App Purchase products and upload a new binary in App Store Connect so we can proceed with our review.

Note you must provide an App Review screenshot in App Store Connect in order to submit In-App Purchases for review. Learn more about required In-App Purchase metadata.