Apple rejected your app. The number tells you how big the job is.
App Store Connect has gone red and the message names a guideline number. Nothing in it tells you how big the job is, or whether you need to build and upload again.
Five numbers do most of the rejecting. One of them, 2.3, is normally answered by changing text in App Store Connect. The rest need a new build, so read the number before you change a line of anything.
The short answer
Metadata Rejected means your build passed and something on the store listing did not: screenshots, description, keywords, the support or privacy URL, or an answer in the App Privacy section. You change it, reply in Resolution Center, and no new build is needed. Rejected on its own means the binary has to change, so you fix the code, upload a new build to App Store Connect and submit that one.
The reasons, and what each one wants.
- 01
2.1 — Performance: App Completeness
The one we meet most on a first submission, and the one with the widest range of causes. It covers a build that crashes on the reviewer’s device, a demo account that will not log in, placeholder text or images left in a screen nobody expected a stranger to reach, and a feature the reviewer never found because it sits behind something you did not tell them about.
Two things clear most of it. Put working demo credentials in the App Review notes, including whatever a second factor needs, and write one line saying how to reach the part of the app that is hard to find. Then run the build on real hardware on the oldest iOS version your listing claims to support, because the simulator forgives things a four-year-old iPhone does not.
- 02
2.3 — Accurate Metadata
Everything the store page says about the app has to match the app. 2.3.1 covers features that only appear after review, including a switch you flip from your own server. 2.3.3 covers screenshots showing screens the app does not have, or the wrong device frame around them. 2.3.7 covers a name or subtitle padded with keywords. 2.3.10 covers naming another platform in the description, which is why a line like “also on Android” comes straight back.
This is the family that produces Metadata Rejected, and it is the cheapest kind to answer. Change the text or the images in App Store Connect and reply, with no compile and no upload.
- 03
3.1.1 — In-App Purchase
If somebody pays to switch on a feature inside your app, the payment has to go through Apple’s in-app purchase and Apple keeps its share. A Stripe checkout that switches on a subscription in the app breaks this every time, and it is the most expensive rejection on this list, because the fix changes how you take money rather than what a screen says.
The exceptions are narrower than people hope. Physical goods and real-world services go through your own payments, and a reader app can show content bought elsewhere so long as it does not send people out to buy it. If your app sells access to its own features, none of that is open to you.
- 04
4.2 — Minimum Functionality
An app that is a website in a wrapper gets rejected, and so does one whose whole function would sit happily in a browser tab. App Review is looking for something the phone does that Safari does not: notifications people would miss, use with no signal, the camera, a widget, a share sheet.
Agent-built apps meet 4.2 more often than their owners expect, because the fastest route to something running on a phone is to point a web view at a site that already works.
- 05
5.1.1 — Data Collection and Storage
Four separate things live under this number and any of them stops you. The privacy policy URL has to load, on a page that is about this app. The App Privacy answers have to match what the app really collects, including whatever an analytics package collects on your behalf. Signing up cannot be forced for features that work without an account. And under 5.1.1(v), where people can create an account inside your app, they have to be able to delete it inside your app, along with the data behind it.
Account deletion catches nearly every agent-built app, because deleting a customer was never part of getting one signed in.
- 06
Permission strings that never say why (5.1.1, 2.5.1)
A usage description reading “This app needs camera access” explains nothing and comes back. Say what you do with it: used to scan the barcode on a bike frame so it lands in your garage. The same goes for photos, location, contacts and the microphone.
Private API use under 2.5.1 is rarer, but it turns up in agent-built projects through a package that was pulled in to solve one problem and reaches for something Apple does not publish.
- 07
Answering the rejection
Reply in Resolution Center in writing even when the fix is obvious. Say what you changed and where to look for it, because the person who reads the reply may not be the person who wrote the rejection, and a silent resubmission starts the same conversation from the beginning.
You can ask for an expedited review when a rejection blocks a launch with a date attached, and Apple grants those sparingly. If you believe the rejection is wrong on the facts, the App Review Board hears that as a separate process from resubmitting, and it moves slower than changing the thing they objected to.
Before you resubmit.
Six things to put in front of yourself, in this order. Each one costs minutes now and a day of calendar time if it comes back.
- 01
The demo account signs in
Sign out everywhere, then sign in with exactly the credentials written in the App Review notes, on a device that has never held the app.
Bad answerA code sent to your phone, or an account that only works because a session was already open.
- 02
The privacy policy URL loads
Open the URL from App Store Connect in a private window, on mobile data rather than your own network.
Bad answerA bot check, a 404, or a policy written for a different product.
- 03
An account can be deleted from inside the app
From an ordinary signed-in account, find the way to delete it without leaving the app.
Bad answerAn email address to write to, or a link out to a web page.
- 04
The screenshots match the build you uploaded
Put each screenshot beside the running app at the same device size.
Bad answerA screen that was redesigned two builds ago, or a feature that got cut.
- 05
Nothing digital is sold outside in-app purchase
Walk every path that ends in a payment and note which of them hands off to Apple.
Bad answerA card form or a hosted checkout that switches on a feature inside the app.
- 06
It runs on the oldest iOS you claim
Install on real hardware running your minimum deployment target, then open it cold with the network off.
Bad answerA crash on launch, a white screen, or a spinner that never finishes.
When this sheet is the wrong one
None of this helps with 4.3. That guideline covers an app Apple has decided is one of many near-identical submissions, and there is no build change that answers it. If 4.3 is what came back, the problem is the app rather than the release, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you a resubmission.
Asked most often.
- What does Metadata Rejected mean?
- Your build passed review and something on the store listing did not. Screenshots, the description, keywords, the support or privacy URL, or an App Privacy answer. You correct it in App Store Connect and reply in Resolution Center.
- Does a metadata rejection need a new build?
- No. Nothing gets compiled and nothing gets uploaded. A new build is only needed when the status is Rejected without the word metadata, or when the change lives in the code.
- How long does App Review take?
- Apple publishes that most submissions are reviewed within 24 hours. A first submission on a new account runs longer, and so does anything sent in around the shutdown at Christmas.
- Does a rejection count against future submissions?
- No. There is no limit on resubmitting and no mark against the account. What it costs you is calendar time, at roughly a day for each round trip.
- What is Developer Rejected?
- You set that status, not Apple. You pulled the submission back yourself, usually to replace it with a better build, and the review stopped.