Apple Updates App Store Guidelines With Enforced Rules Against Low-Effort Apps

Apple has updated its App Store guidelines, adding stricter enforcement against developers publishing low-effort apps. The company is now ensuring that those deemed low quality can be pulled from the App Store entirely.

Within the App Store Guidelines support page, Apple urges developers not to “submit apps that are indistinguishable from what’s already widely available.” The latest updates to the App Store guidelines now prohibit the publication of apps that oversaturate categories within the ecosystem. Apps that are not updated, do not offer improvements, or do not meet a consumer threshold may also be removed.

Apple’s new 4.3 Spam guidelines are as follows:

Don’t submit apps that are indistinguishable from what’s already widely available. Opportunistically creating variants of existing app categories or popular apps degrades App Store discovery, reduces overall app quality, and harms both users and developers. Certain kinds of apps, such as dating, flashlight, sound effects, wallpaper, simple timers, and fortune telling, are well established on the App Store and we will not accept new submissions unless they offer a meaningfully different or improved experience. We may remove these apps from the App Store going forward if they are not updated, improved, or do not attract customers. Other kinds of apps, such as drinking games, Kama Sutra, fart, and burp apps, are mediocre, low-quality, or low-effort and do not add value to the App Store. Repeated submissions of this kind may lead to removal from the Apple Developer Program.

Apple goes on to state that it won’t approve submissions for new fart, burp, flashlight, fortune-telling, dating, drinking games, and Kama Sutra apps unless they are significantly different from what’s currently available on the App Store. Apple deems these apps to be “mediocre, low-quality, or low-effort.” Any developer repeatedly submitting these kinds of apps may be removed from the Developer Program by Apple.

These apps typically clog up the App Store and reduce the discoverability of authentically unique apps. Apple’s latest updates make it clear that the company is taking a stronger stance to clean up its App Store, not only to improve the customer experience but also to assist developers.

The latest updates to the App Store Guidelines also include new details on apps featuring user-generated content. These guidelines now require developers to remove content that violates the App Store guidelines. This could include explicit, overtly sexual or violent content. “It is your responsibility to remove content that violates this guideline, your terms of service, or your community standards,” the guidelines say.