The Silent Slaughter of App Store Rejections

So my job is to help our clients get accepted by google and apple which is why I went down a rabbit hole this week looking at app store and play store rejections. Google blocked around 1.75 million apps in 2025 and Apple rejected close to 2 million. The scale isn't the thing that we need to care about, it's actually the reasons behind and surprisingly, they're mostly the simplest of things.

1. Apps crashing during review is a big one, it works fine on your device, but the reviewer opens it on a different phone or software version and it crashes.

2. In app purchases not working is another, buy button doesn’t respond, subscriptions don’t load, or restore purchases fails during testing.

3. Privacy policy issues come up a lot too, either the link is broken or it doesn’t match what the app actually collects.

4. Permissions, apps ask for camera or location without clearly telling the user why.

5. Account deletion button is something many apps still miss, if users can sign up, they now expect a way to delete the account inside the app.

6. Then there’s metadata mismatch, where screenshots or descriptions show features that don’t exist.

and more..

What’s interesting is all of this is testable before submitting, you can check crashes on different devices, go through the purchase flow, open your privacy link, test permissions, try account deletion, and compare your listing with the actual app, but most teams don’t really do this properly. They test what they just built, maybe run the app once, and submit, then they wait, get rejected, fix it, and repeat the cycle.

Or you can be me, conduct app testing like crazy, post on reddit to find more rejection cases to prevent in future. Most common ones I’ve seen are crashes and payment issues, but I’m sure there are some frustrating ones out there.