I’d like to raise how our app’s review has gone, in the hope that someone at App Review sees it, and to ask whether other developers are seeing the same thing.
Our app is Suan, a sleep audio app. It’s iPhone-only. It has no server and no account, and one auto-renewing yearly subscription shown with Apple’s own SubscriptionStoreView.
What has happened:
30 Oct: submitted.
3 Nov: rejected under 5.1.1(iv) for the wording on our Apple Health screen. Fair enough. Fixed and resubmitted the same day.
5 Nov: rejected on three points:
5.1.1(iv) again, for a button label that was already there in the first review and wasn’t mentioned then;
2.1(b): the reviewer couldn’t find the In-App Purchase;
2.1(a): every audio download failed on an iPad Air (M3) on iPadOS 27.
We fixed all three. Every track now ships inside the app, so nothing downloads at all. The review notes say step by step where the subscription is: it appears straight after onboarding, it’s the first section in Settings, and it opens when you tap play on any track.
8 Nov: rejected under 2.1(a) for “an error during onboarding”, again on the iPad Air (M3). The reviewer’s screenshot shows Apple’s SubscriptionStoreView reporting “NSURLErrorDomain error -1009”. That error means the device is not connected to the internet. The screen is Apple’s own, loading our subscription from the App Store sandbox. Our onboarding makes no network requests.
So of the issues raised, two came from the review device having no connection, one was a subscription that the review notes explain how to find, and one was a button that passed the first review. None of them happen on our own iPhones. We’ve replied to every rejection in App Store Connect, and resubmitted each time within hours.
The Android version of the same app, with the same features, content and subscription, went through Google Play’s review and was approved.
Each round costs us two to three days, and we’ve now spent about two weeks on a launch that was ready at the start. I’d be grateful for a few things:
When the error in a screenshot is a network error like -1009, could reviewers check the device’s connection, or try again, before rejecting?
Could every issue be raised in one review, rather than a new one appearing after each fix?
Could reviewers read the review notes? For us they answered the question the rejection asked.
Has anyone else had StoreKit or network failures in review on iPad Air (M3) with iPadOS 27? I’ve seen a few threads describing the same thing. If anyone found a way past it, I’d love to hear it.
The quality of the testing effort has been pretty poor.
Thank you.