Dan The builder

After 9+ years as an iOS developer, Apple flagged my entire developer account for termination under Section 3.2(f). The reason? Repeated App Review violations. But my app was approved in 2025, with 4 subsequent updates approved without rejection. No updates for over a year.

This might be the scariest Halloween I’ve ever had. Not because of ghosts, horror movies, or anything supernatural. But because, after almost 10 years as an independent iOS developer, I might lose everything I’ve built. On October 26, 2026, I received a Pending Termination Notice from Apple saying that app submissions from my account had “repeatedly violated the App Review Guidelines in an attempt to evade the review process” and that the violations remained unresolved after multiple resubmissions. I’m trying to understand how my review history matches that conclusion. Here is the full story. I started learning Objective-C at the beginning of 2017. At the time I had an iPhone 5c and simply wanted to build an app for myself because I couldn’t find anything in the App Store that worked the way I wanted. For around 3–4 months I learned every day from documentation, videos and whatever resources I could find. YouTube had far fewer good iOS development tutorials back then, and a lot of learning material was paid. Eventually I reached the point where I thought: I can actually build this. I still remember how amazing it felt writing some code and then seeing something I had created running on my own iPhone. I released my first app on August 11, 2017. That app is still maintained today. It is written in Objective-C, which is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain, and one of my plans has been to finally rewrite it in Swift/SwiftUI. That was the beginning of my journey as an independent developer. I’ve never been a developer who releases dozens of apps every year. I’ve started many ideas and abandoned many of them because somebody built something better, because I decided the idea wasn’t good enough, or simply because I no longer felt passionate about making it. That is why the notice I received this week was so difficult to understand. The app connected to the termination notice was first submitted as version 1.0 in April 2025. During the initial review I had five rejections. Unfortunately, App Store Connect no longer shows me enough detail to reconstruct every rejection from that period. But from what I remember, they were mainly related to screenshots and App Store metadata. One issue was that my screenshots were too marketing-oriented and did not show enough of the actual app experience. I changed them. Another rejection concerned content shown inside the screenshots. One screenshot showed a man and woman kissing. I replaced it with an image showing a marriage proposal. That was rejected too. As I remember, the reviewer cited the Objectionable Content guideline, explaining that the content could be considered objectionable by some users. The reviewer also referred me to screenshots attached to the rejection message, which pointed to the particular App Store screenshot I had been trying to correct. I suspected that the title or wording displayed on that screenshot might also have contributed to the rejection. So I changed the screenshot's text as well. After making these adjustments, the app eventually passed review. During those submissions I also made changes to the binary and uploaded new builds. The important part is what happened afterwards. Version 1.0.1 — approved April 28, 2025. Version 1.0.2 — approved May 5, 2025. Version 1.0.3 — approved May 27, 2025. Version 1.0.4 — approved August 7, 2025. Those four updates passed App Review without rejection. Then more than one year passed. I did not submit another update to this app. And on October 26, 2026, I suddenly received a notice saying: “App submissions from your account have repeatedly violated the App Review Guidelines in an attempt to evade the review process.” It also says that after multiple resubmissions, violations described in previous correspondence remained unresolved. That is the part I cannot reconcile with the history I can see. After the initial review process in April 2025, Apple approved the app. Then Apple approved four additional updates. The last one was approved in August 2025. As far as I can determine, none of my other apps have a history of repeatedly being rejected for the same unresolved issue either. I have never intentionally tried to hide functionality from App Review. I don’t use A/B testing to show reviewers a different paywall. I don’t dynamically switch to a different paywall for review. I don’t intentionally use dark patterns. In this app, I have never shown a paywall during onboarding or immediately after onboarding. I also don't use promotional paywall screens that interrupt users after they enter the app. Users are not forced to make a purchase just to get past onboarding. My intention has always been to provide a transparent experience where users can explore the app and understand its functionality without being pressured into purchasing. My apps are not built around hard paywalls — I normally provide free functionality so users can actually use and evaluate the app. I also regularly check my privacy policy and support pages to make sure they continue working, because I know broken or misleading links can themselves cause App Store problems. The difficult part for me is that this is not just an app. Independent development has been my work for almost a decade and is how I support myself and my family. Almost ten years of work could potentially disappear because of a violation that, at least from the information currently available to me, I still do not understand. I appealed approximately 30 minutes after receiving the notice. Looking back, I probably should have waited until the next morning. I received the message around midnight and didn’t sleep that night. The appeal form also limits the response to 2,000 characters, so I had to repeatedly shorten what I wanted to explain. The next day I realized there were things I could have explained much more clearly. For now, I’m waiting for Apple’s response. I hope Apple reviews the account manually and that this can be resolved. P.S. I also want to clarify a few things about the app involved in this termination notice. This was not an AI girlfriend / boyfriend app. Its name and icon did not imitate, copy, or attempt to resemble any other apps, brands, or popular services. It was a simple AI image-to-video generator. Users could upload their own photos and generate AI videos from them. The app did not offer pre-made templates or similar content. I also implemented safety checks for both uploaded images and text prompts before processing generation requests, with the intention of preventing NSFW or otherwise prohibited content. Every new user received their first AI video generation completely free. I personally covered the cost of that generation, so users could try the app and see the results before deciding whether to spend any money. After using their free generation, users could optionally purchase additional credits through Apple's In-App Purchase system. The app never offered subscriptions of any kind. There were no recurring payments or automatic renewals, only one-time purchases of credits when users wanted to generate more videos. I also never actively promoted or advertised this app. I didn't create TikTok or Instagram accounts for it, run social media campaigns, or use paid advertising to attract users. And importantly, Apple's stated reason for the Pending Termination Notice was not any of these issues. The notice specifically alleged repeated App Review Guideline violations, attempts to evade the review process, and unresolved violations after multiple resubmissions. That is precisely what I am trying to understand, because the initial rejections were addressed, the app was approved, and all four subsequent updates passed review without rejection. #Apple #AppleDeveloper #AppStore @AppleSupport @Apple #IndieDev #BuildInPublic