App Rejection 4.2 - Design - Minimum Functionality

Question

Created Mar ’19

Replies 4

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Our app has been rejected three times now after adding additional functionality each time. We keep receiving the same generic rejection.

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Guideline 4.2 - Design - Minimum Functionality

We found that the usefulness of your app is limited by the minimal amount of content or features it includes.

Next Steps

We encourage you to review your app concept and incorporate different content and features that are in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.

We understand that there are no hard and fast rules to define useful or entertaining, but Apple and Apple customers expect apps to provide a really great user experience. Apps should provide valuable utility or entertainment, draw people in by offering compelling capabilities or content, or enable people to do something they couldn't do before or in a way they couldn't do it before.

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It's a weather app (called Whether). It compares yesterdays weather with today's weather or tomorrow's weather with today's weather. We provide funny custom illustrations or quotes for each case. Users can submit their own quotes to see them in the app. Feel free to take a look: https://testflight.apple.com/join/l2mIXfWx

There are several other apps that inspired us to create Whether. They have fewer features than Whether. Examples are

Mr. Chilly (by Alexander Chia), Daylight (by Bakken & Bæck), and Moon (by Charlie Deets).

We're frustrated by the lack of transparency in the process. We've considered adding additional features like notifications or a lock screen widget but it's unclear that would make a difference. Any advice or feedback the community could provide would be greatly appreciated!

Boost

Answer 1

Atro OP

Apr ’19

I feel your pain bro. Working on the same issue.

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Answer 2

nemoryoliver OP

Jan ’20

Any updates? Was your approved after all? If so, What was the last thing you added that got it approved?

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Answer 3

adib OP

Feb ’20

Have you taken inventory of the app's functionality and see what cannot be done should the app was implemented as a progressive web application? A lot can be done through JavaScript in the browser nowadays – that also includes getting the user's current location (which I presume relevant for showing the local weather). Aguing with the reviewer using precedents (i.e. app X was approved) isn't going to bring your app closer to approval.

Should your app have these platform-leveraging functionalities, have you make sure that App Review know about these features and understand how to use it? An intro screen highlighting these features may prove useful as app reviewers has only about five minutes to glance through your app.

That said, have a look at these tips on how to design an app that can pass "minimum functionality" clause.

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Answer 4

arkxkra OP

Dec ’21

The problem is PWA only can't do push notification, and the app need push notification, yet when we appeal, they ignore this native functionality

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