[iOS] Discussion: App Store Rules

[gbougakov]

Added by contributors of the repo

IMPORTANT NOTICE ABOUT iOS APPS

Apple will reject or remove your sticker app from the App Store if it uses the UI sample that WhatsApp provides. When creating an iOS sticker app, please make sure to develop a unique user interface with your own styling to comply with Apple's App Store guidelines. Do not use our sample app's UI as is, please significantly modify the UI before submitting. You should also consider adding additional functionality to your app (sharing stickers to other apps, to iMessage, etc) or any other features that you deem suitable. This will assist you in passing Apple's App Store review.

https://github.com/WhatsApp/stickers/tree/master/iOS#important-notice-about-ios-apps

---

Please read before replying

Right now there is no proper strategy to avoid rejection. Period. I am not a WhatsApp employee nor am I affiliated with WhatsApp in any way

If your app was rejected, please upvote this issue. Do not reply

UPDATE: WhatsApp team is discussing the situation with Apple. Do not appeal your rejection too many times or they might close your developer account.
UPDATE 2: My app was approved

---

Today, I received a message from Apple App Review Team that said that my app was rejected because it "repeated the functionality of other apps and just changed content" and was spam.

Had anyone experienced the same? What can I do to work around this?

[gbougakov]

Update: sent an appeal explaining that this app is no different from iMessage sticker apps, but just for WhatsApp.

[MarsVard]

@gbougakov that's not gonna work. I've been trying to get my app approved for 2 weeks now, have added extra features like adding allowing user to add stickers to their photos but still no luck. It's almost as if Apple is boycotting this.

[lwangeli]

Hi there, I redesign it and right now Im uploading it to AppStore Review. I was apealling the review for 2 weeks and I bellieve that they just want we change the design of the app, because if you analize it, they will have tons of apps identically just with content diferent, as they say in 4.3 guidelines.. By the way, dont you mention about iMessage, because its Apple template, and they will threat you on close dev account (they did it to me).
Now I undesrtand what they mean with 4.3 guidelines. Lets see what they will tell me about my 7th intent review.

[gbougakov]

Well, the reason is pretty clear: Apple (and maybe Google, see #153) doesn't want competitors (ab)using their infrastructure. Now, either WhatsApp makes their own sticker distribution platform like @TelegramMessenger did or WhatsApp stickers are dead

[gbougakov]

Agreed about the unfair part. But imagine this: you have a product, in this case iMessage, and your main competitor (WhatsApp) starts using your infrastructure for free to power their app, of course you're gonna do something about it! (Not defending Apple, but I see why they did that)

[al3bsi]

Is the project presented by the WhatsApp actually matches the requirements of Apple?

[gbougakov]

The thing is that making apps from templates is actually against Apple's rules

[gbougakov]

Excerpt from App Store Review Guidelines that caused my app to fail the review:

4.3 Spam
Don’t create multiple Bundle IDs of the same app. If your app has different versions for specific locations, sports teams, universities, etc., consider submitting a single app and provide the variations using in-app purchase. Also avoid piling on to a category that is already saturated; the App Store has enough fart, burp, flashlight, and Kama Sutra apps already. Spamming the store may lead to your removal from the Developer Program.

[al3bsi]

Excerpt from App Store Review Guidelines that caused my app to fail the review:

4.3 Spam
Don’t create multiple Bundle IDs of the same app. If your app has different versions for specific locations, sports teams, universities, etc., consider submitting a single app and provide the variations using in-app purchase. Also avoid piling on to a category that is already saturated; the App Store has enough fart, burp, flashlight, and Kama Sutra apps already. Spamming the store may lead to your removal from the Developer Program.

Perhaps the reason is (create multiple Bundle IDs of the same app)

[gbougakov]

I actually had an iMessage sticker pack with the same stickers before, but I pulled it down before submitting the new app for review. Also, my new app contained a sticker pack extension, so it would be a 2-in-1 (iMessage and WhatsApp sticker pack)

[gbougakov]

Incase you want to add functionality to your app by adding iMessage stickers

Instructions to do just that:

1. Open the Xcode project
2. File > New > Target...
3. Select Sticker Pack Extension
   
4. Fill in the name and click Finish
5. Open Stickers.xcassets
   
6. Drag in the sticker PNGs
7. Run app on your test device
8. Boom! iMessage stickers

[gbougakov]

[al3bsi]

Does it mean that there is no point in adding imessage to the project?

[gbougakov]

I don't think that's the reason they rejected my app. It certainly won't help you if your app was already rejected.

[Zandor300]

@diegotl Is your apps purpose only to provide stickers for WhatsApp, or does it also provide other functionality?

[diegotl]

@Zandor300 Only stickers for WhatsApp and iMessage (and export as images). But they approved 2 builds before this...

[Zandor300]

@diegotl Exporting the images isn't exactly a major feature I would say. Adding iMessage stickers doesn't count towards main app functionality since it's an extension of the app, meaning it only exists in iMessage and not in the main app.

What I mean by this, major functionality as in a navigation app, to which you add WhatsApp (+ iMessage) stickers.

Your current best bet at going through the review process is by having the WhatsApp stickers not be the main point of your app. If providing WhatsApp stickers is the main purpose of the app, you will most likely end up in this situation where Apple will give you a headache going through the review process, or not getting through at all.

Thats my personal advice for going forward with iOS apps containing sticker packs.

DISCLAIMER: Note that I am saying this from what I've been reading up on during moderation of the issue threads on this repo. I am not an employee of WhatsApp, nor have I personally been in contact with Apple regarding this matter. I AM NOT WRITING THIS ON BEHALF OF WHATSAPP NOR APPLE.

[diegotl]

@Zandor300 Thanks! What sounds weird for me it that they "changed their minds" just now. They should've rejected the app from the begining based on that guideline.

I plan on implementing a feature to create your own stickers within the app, but I wonder if this fulfils that guideline.

[nApps4UI]

How many of you have "WhatsApp" in the title or subtitle? I have opened #479 for this

[peterdk]

Any info from the WhatsApp team?

Are there people who recently got their sticker app approved? If so, what did you do?

We are hesitant to add WhatsApp support to our paid imessage sticker app (for a high profile webcomic), because of the horror stories regarding deletion. But many users want it.

[dnhyde]

Please any news on this, same issue here I understand that Apple has its own messaging app, but there is NO OTHER way than creating a dedicated app to share stickers on Whatsapp.
We even added a feature to create your own stickers with CoreML, so if you think that adding features will solve Apple ban it's useless...

[maplexmovie]

Any news on that? My app is very successful on android and my fans are constantly requesting me to upload the app for ios users (Apple/iPhone) as well.

@simonzhexu ?

[wegylexy]

It's not good that WhatsApp is exploiting the clipboard for this functionality when iOS 14 catches TikTok spying on the user.

[MarsVard]

@wegylexy how do you know WhatsApp is abusing the clipboard for stickers?

[wegylexy]

Anyway, if you only aim at publishing stickers, publish them to existing sticker stores. Don't make an app solely for installing a pack of stickers after which the app becomes useless.

[Tarekajaj]

@wegylexy can you link some of the "Sticker Stores"? we tried to release our own sticker store and still got rejected.

Don't make an app solely for installing a pack of stickers after which the app becomes useless.

• Some artists are already making $10K per month from ads and iap by constantly releasing stickers packs through their application.

There is no justified reason for this ban, it's really just pure money for apple and they decided they don't want it. shame

[al3bsi]

what about sticker with admin backend website ? rejected it too ?

[Tarekajaj]

Oh, one more thing, we decided to build an iOS version of our texticker application and try our luck with the appstore, since it allows you to generate text stickers easily, we though it would have a chance (its not a one time use and it was very successful on the playstore), the first version we release was for iMessage only, it got accepted and all good, we added support for whatsapp and submitted an update, and guess what, it got rejected, and after a while it was removed from the appstore with no luck getting it approved ever since.

[Tarekajaj]

what about sticker with admin backend website ? rejected it too ?

Nah, don't even bother bro

[al3bsi]

is there away to add send to iMessage bouttn on wasticker ? maybe apple proved it :)

[Tarekajaj]

is there away to add send to iMessage bouttn on wasticker ? maybe apple proved it :)

As I said before, our iMessage sticker app got removed after we added whatsapp functionality to it

[al3bsi]

is there away to add send to iMessage bouttn on wasticker ? maybe apple proved it :)

As I said before, our iMessage sticker app got removed after we added whatsapp functionality to it

can please share you playstore app link ? or removed too ?

[wegylexy]

https://timtim.hk/wastickers/ and https://shkpclubstickers.com/ use PasteCoder
https://whatsticker.online/ uses 五色學倉頡 ONLINE
Basically, we use apps which their primary purpose is not an one-off copy of stickers and to pollute the App Store.

Otherwise, publish an iMessage-only app like 譚仔三哥表情貼紙 that does not pollute the home screen.

[al3bsi]

https://timtim.hk/wastickers/ and https://shkpclubstickers.com/ use PasteCoder
https://whatsticker.online/ uses 五色學倉頡 ONLINE
Basically, we use apps which their primary purpose is not an one-off copy of stickers and to pollute the App Store.

Otherwise, publish an iMessage-only app like 譚仔三哥表情貼紙 that does not pollute the home screen.

is there anyway to buy or share source cod this apps ?
thank you

[JonnyBurger]

@MarsVard We can see that WhatsApp is using Clipboard because when you add a sticker pack in iOS 14, a banner appears at the top of "WhatsApp pasted from [app name]"

I can also add my app https://anysticker.app to the list of sticker stores. Currently allowing free publishing and I am also working on an App Clip for iOS 14, so you can distribute the stickers without having to install an app at all.

[wegylexy]

is there anyway to buy or share source cod this apps ?

@al3bsi Do you get that the idea is to make no more apps just for stickers?
You could publish your sticker pack to your website and let users open the link with PasteCoder which will download it to the iOS built-in Pasteboard ready for WhatsApp to install.

WhatsApp's sample code demonstrate how you could send a sticker pack to WhatsApp. You could add that to your existing apps, but they do not suggest you to pollute the App Store with an one-off app that violates Apple's policy.

[chuiizeet]

@al3bsi They rejected my app (download + create stickers) this sucks, I will take advantage of the backend to do it on android

[amrit-1901]

Hi all,

It's been a while since I have posted here, but I'm doing so now to make sure that we are all on the same page. Last time I said that we are working with Apple to resolve this situation: this is not happening anymore. So don't expect the App Store Review team to mellow out anytime soon.

I'm really sorry that iOS third party apps ended up the way they did, especially since a lot of you guys are clearly very excited to ship your stickers to iOS users (and some of you even wanted to build a business model around them). In the meantime, we unfortunately have nothing else to announce, but stay tuned when we do in the future.

[Spetruk]

Hello I have made sticker app. I passed review and I am in AppStore. But when I tried make an update with bugs/crashes fixes - apple rejected my app:
We noticed that your app provides the same feature set as other apps submitted to the App Store; it simply varies in content or language, which is considered a form of spam.

since this message I tried to send 2 updates: I added dark mode and added widgets.
But Apple always says about spam.
Link on my app: https://apps.apple.com/dk/app/stickers-box-wastickerapps/id1576071817
users download it and my analytics shows that they love it! But Apple doesn't)
Could somebody help me with it?

[ranrinc]

I believe the complaint need to addressed to Apple since they will be the one who decided to allow or to reject. Many of us got this issue during our early development, so I leave this project already. Its a waste of time.

[wegylexy]

Hello I have made sticker app. I passed review and I am in AppStore. But when I tried make an update with bugs/crashes fixes - apple rejected my app: We noticed that your app provides the same feature set as other apps submitted to the App Store; it simply varies in content or language, which is considered a form of spam.

since this message I tried to send 2 updates: I added dark mode and added widgets. But Apple always says about spam. Link on my app: https://apps.apple.com/dk/app/stickers-box-wastickerapps/id1576071817 users download it and my analytics shows that they love it! But Apple doesn't) Could somebody help me with it?

It's interesting they keep it up in the Store but reject updates. Nevertheless, I don't think new apps focusing on stickers (but not for iMessage) will get approved.