Binary Rejected :4. 2 Design: Minimum Functionality

Hello Apple Developers,


Some of you have been through 4. 2 Design: Minimum Functionality Rejection, how did you overcome this issue? Do you use react native componants or IOS native componants?


We are already approved by the Play Store and by Facebook Review, Apple Store doesn't consider us appropriate yet, we need more native iOS functionalities.

What kind of native iOS functionality do you have in your app that was accepted by Apple Store?


We have been working on this App for over a year with 3 developpers.

We are respecting the minimum functionality guideline,


https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#minimum-functionality

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ios/overview/themes/


Our App promotes Emotional Intelligence among Couples. We bring couple psychology theories to our digital reality using gamification.

We have 5 menus.

1 Play the Love Tank Game, Send appreciation to your partner and fill up each other's Love Tank. (they can add handwriting notes + chat)

2 Play the Question Tank Game, Who knows who better? Discover your partner's preferences. Answer the questions and let your partner rate your answers.

3 Discover your Emotional Profil, fill in the questionnaires to learn which love languages you use in priorities and more.

4 Develop Social Support Chat with your Couple Friends using the app.

5 Search for therapists, Couple Experts around you.


What can we do to be approved? Thanks for your suggestions.



The message we received:


4. 2 Design: Minimum Functionality


Guideline 4.2 - Design - Minimum Functionality


Your app provides a limited user experience as it is not sufficiently different from a mobile browsing experience. As such, the experience it provides is similar to the general experience of using Safari. Including iOS features such as push notifications, Core Location, and sharing do not provide a robust enough experience to be appropriate for the App Store.


Next Steps


To resolve this issue, please revise your app to provide a more robust user experience by including additional native iOS functionality.


If you cannot - or choose not to - revise your app to be in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines, you may wish to build an HTML5 web app instead. You can distribute web apps directly on your web site; the App Store does not accept or distribute web apps.


For more information about creating web apps, refer to the Configuring Web Applications section of the Safari Web Content Guide.


For a description of the HTML elements and attributes you can use in Safari on iPhone, check out Safari HTML Reference: Introduction.

Post not yet marked as solved Up vote post of PlusLess Down vote post of PlusLess
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Replies

They're saying there isn't much, if anything, that your app does that can't be done by a web page on the net that you could browse to with Safari. You need to think of things that only an iPhone app can do.

One thing an iPhone app can do that might be compelling involves location sensing. Is there something about relative location that you can bring into your "Emotional Intelligence among Couples" concept? Where and when were you last in the same location as your partner? How far apart are you, geographically versus opinion, right now? Do you 'like' the same places?

Thanks a lot PBK for your suggestions, I love your ideas we thought about it yes. As some apps already propose this feature we've decided not to add it.

From Apple message "features as Core Location do not provide a robust enough experience to be appropriate for the App Store", I thought using location sensing is not enought to be approved. You think by adding this it would be accepted? It would be great!

What else only an Iphone app can do? I am more an Android user.

Thank you for your participation in the disscussion.

What I think is only what I think - App Review is not on this forum.


An iPhone can communicate with other iPhones and can sense location and orientation. I'd add the core location stuff and try again.

Hello PlusLess,

We have run into this a few times as well. Sometimes it helps to push back on Apple just to explain more about the use case and the things happening behind the scenes that they might not be able to see while generically testing your application. Remember that a large magority of the review process is automated so the time that the review spends looking at the application needs to be intentional and providing Review Notes will help with this.


As for additional features, below are some ideas that might help you.


- Leveraging images in some capacity could help you greatly. Would be a necessity for being an iPhone application. You would need to demonstrate this in your review process and how it works.

- Integrate with HealthKit. This removes support for iPad, but you could provide data for categories like Mindfullness or ****** Activity.

- Leverage the Notification Center with background tasks or local notifications with activities and deep links into your application. This is an awesome feature of iOS that is greatly underutilized.


If you dont need to have the need for a full application, you can also generate a website that looks like an application on a users device (has an icon on the home screen) but is really a safari window.


One thing I will say about applications of your nature is that shared code platforms that do use the WebView functionality often put things like allowing arbitrary loads into their Info.plist which immediately triggers Apple to do an additional review of your use of web services and is unessesary in most cases. Removing anything that Apple will flag with their automation process will help remove those prompts from the human reviewer to look for why those things are needed.


Hopefully this helps!

Thank you very much ChuckMN for your precise suggestions! Great news! We are now accepted in the Apple Store at last! Indeed the WebView functionalities were problematic. But now we cannot implement instagram login because it uses WebView. It's also problematic. Have you heard of other possibilities? Thanks again! 😃

Thanks a lot PBK! We are now accepted in the Apple Store. 💪