Apple Tightens App Store Rules to Remove Low‑Quality and Oversaturated Apps

Overview

• Apple revised its App Store Review Guidelines at WWDC with new language that lets it remove live apps in crowded categories if they are not updated, improved, or do not attract users.
• The updated spam rule 4.3(b) names “well established” categories — dating, flashlight, sound effects, wallpaper, simple timers, and fortune telling — and bars new submissions that are not meaningfully different from existing apps.
• Apple labels drinking games, Kama Sutra, fart, and burp apps as mediocre or low‑effort and warns developers that repeated submissions of those types can lead to removal from the Apple Developer Program.
• The company also strengthened guideline 1.2 to place clear responsibility on developers to remove violating user‑generated content and added rule 4.5.3 to ban use of Live Activities for spam or phishing.
• Apple presented these changes at WWDC on June 9 as part of a broader push that pairs new discovery and merchandising tools with human reviewers supported by AI, but it has not published a detailed enforcement timetable for removals.