Marcus Mendes:

Last April, Brazilian officials notified Apple and Google over an alleged lack of age controls in betting apps on their respective app stores.

9to5Mac:

Brazilian users browsing the App Store rankings in categories such as Navigation, Travel, and Weather have noticed a growing number of poorly made games appearing among the top results, many of them featuring AI-generated illustrations of animals as their app icons. Many carry an AL age rating, making them available to users of all ages, including children.

As it turns out, these are so-called jacket apps, which are just a front for hidden betting and gambling apps.

[…]

The repository also includes explicit instructions intended to prevent the apps from being flagged as suspicious during App Store review. These include giving each app uniquely named startup and remote-configuration codes, making it harder for reviewers to identify them as part of the same group.

Ironically, the App Store’s own recommendation system appears to have little trouble grouping the apps together, as the “You Might Also Like” section on several of these apps points users toward other suspicious apps more frequently than they point to genuine apps.

John Gruber (Mastodon):

Obviously the main problem is that these apps disguise themselves Trojan Horse-style, and slip through App Store review undetected. I don’t think it’s reasonable to think App Store review could catch every attempt at this sort of thing though — if the horses are disguised well-enough, some of them are going to slip through. That’s actually fine.

I agree that it’s unreasonable to expect App Review to catch all those, but then Apple should not be pretending that it can. This was all obvious from day one. The public perception of App Review is completely at odds with what it actually can and does do.

But the first example 9to5Mac cites isn’t well disguised at all. What sense does it make that “PotatoPlot Puzzle” — a game featuring a rabbit potato farmer — is a weather app? How is that not a red flag right there?

[…]

I always mention that the point of such a squad shouldn’t be to make the App Store 100 percent scammer-free — which I believe is an impossible goal that would set the team up for failure. The point should be only to make the App Store free of successful scams. Focus on the most popular apps and the most lucrative apps.

The App Store is more than 18 years old. The idea of patrolling the top charts probably occurred to Apple before it even shipped. They just don’t want to do it.

Nick Lockwood:

Apple only took 24 hours to approve my iOS app update that crashed instantly on launch. Such a blessing to have that extra level of reliability and security that only a manual review process can provide 🙏

Incidentally, the crash was due to a missing dylib - something that could easily have been detected by the automated scan process, if only that scan were designed to protect users’ and developers’ interests instead of Apple’s.

Kyle Hughes:

There is simply no other way to maintain a modern, healthy software ecosystem without making sure that apps that have been around for 7 years and 20 major versions can’t get a build looked at within 48 hours. There’s no other way. Probably needs to be longer, honestly.

I had to file an Expedited Review Request because this update is a legitimate emergency. Four hours later, App Review rejected the build because they didn’t follow the first sentence of the testing instructions (which haven’t changed in 7 years). Back to Waiting for Review! There’s no other way.

Previously:

• Chrome Browser Default at the Top of the Mac App Store
• Sparrow Wallet Lawsuit
• Sirius Pomodoro
• The App Store Scammer Strikes Back
• Brazil: App Marketplaces and External Payments
• Scam Authenticator App Steals QR Codes
• Sketchy ChatGPT App Soars Up App Store Charts
• Gambling Ads on App Store Product Pages
• Schneier on Sideloading
• The App Store Isn’t Catching the Most Egregious Scams
• Scammy KeyWatch and Trezor Apps
• Widgetsmith and The Case of the Missing App Store Bunco Squad
• Big Fish Casino
• Apps Removed in Ban of Gambling-Related Apps

Update (2026-07-30): Kyle Hughes:

We got rejected in the Expedited Review again, this time for not having an account deletion feature. Except we do, and it’s one button press away from the screen that the reviewer was on. And it has always existed. Is this how the expedited review works? Malicious incompetence?

Update (2026-07-31): Kyle Hughes:

If you were wondering how long one of the “you can ask us to approve this build and can fix this issue in the next release” App Review errors takes to resolve when you’re in the Expedited Review Queue… me too! So far, 18 hours. (Ignoring the fact that we have the feature the rejection was for.)

Kyle Hughes:

Certainly it means “within a week,” right? “Within a month,” please? “In your lifetime,” I can only hope.

Matt Burgess (MacRumors, ArsTechnica):

On Thursday, San Francisco city attorney David Chiu sent legal notices to Apple and Google demanding that they remove from their app stores 13 face-swapping apps, which allow users to create AI-generated nonconsensual nude images. The letters say the Silicon Valley giants should stop “aiding and abetting” the sale of explicit deepfake images and “sever” business relationships with the app developers.

[…]

Researchers have repeatedly found and reported apps in Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store that allow people to generate sexual images using AI—including some apps being rated as suitable for use by children. While new laws and bans aim to tackle the scourge of explicit deepfakes online, technology and social media companies consistently direct millions of people toward the harmful tech.

Both Apple and Google have developer policies that prohibit pornography, abuse, and harassment on their platforms.

Burgess gives the impression, which is my base assumption, that these 13 apps were clear about what they do, so App Review has no excuse for missing them. But I’m sure it’s keeping us all safe in other regards.

Meanwhile, in a preprint research paper published in May, researchers from Cornell University and Georgetown University identified 420 apps offering general face-swapping capabilities on Google’s and Apple’s app stores. They tested 155 to see if they could be used to create face swaps with nude images; in 70 percent of cases, it was possible, with the apps not including safety measures to prevent this.

Previously:

• Sirius Pomodoro
• Apps for YouTube℠™®•!
• Sanctioned Entities Slip Through App Store Controls

Update (2026-07-21): Danny Bradbury:

Chiu isn’t arguing that hosting an app automatically makes a platform liable for what it does. Platform operators already won that battle with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That 30-year-old law says websites generally aren’t responsible for content posted by users, allowing platforms to host user-generated content without getting sued every time someone defames someone in a comment thread.

Courts have often extended those protections to cover app stores too. Apple and Google are treated as distributors of whatever a third-party developer uploads, rather than publishers.

Chiu is attempting to sidestep that argument by focusing on the companies’ payment systems, noting that Apple and Google collect a cut of every in-app purchase. According to the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), that means they profit from apps that generate revenue by creating non-consensual intimate imagery.

Ed Hardy:

Finding useful software in the App Store is about to get easier. Apple is apparently preparing to remove what it describes as “opportunistic” apps that provide little value to iPhone and iPad users.

It already had a policy of not approving applications that are “indistinguishable from what’s already widely available.” This week, it quietly warned developers that it will start removing low-value software that doesn’t attract attention from users.

App Review Guidelines (News):

4.3 (b) Don’t submit apps that are indistinguishable from what’s already widely available. Opportunistically creating variants of existing app categories or popular apps degrades App Store discovery, reduces overall app quality, and harms both users and developers. Certain kinds of apps, such as dating, flashlight, sound effects, wallpaper, simple timers, and fortune telling, are well established on the App Store and we will not accept new submissions unless they offer a meaningfully different or improved experience. We may remove these apps from the App Store going forward if they are not updated, improved, or do not attract customers. Other kinds of apps, such as drinking games, Kama Sutra, fart, and burp apps, are mediocre, low-quality, or low-effort and do not add value to the App Store. Repeated submissions of this kind may lead to removal from the Apple Developer Program.

Previously:

• Updates to Vibe Coding Apps Rejected From the App Store
• Apple’s Explanation for Removing Old Apps
• App Store Removing Old Apps That Still Work
• Wordle Clones
• App Store Competition
• How to Game the App Store
• Removing Abandoned Apps and Shorter App Names
• Removing Unmaintained Apps from the App Store

Update (2026-07-14): Aleksandar Vacić:

Waiting for Review enters day 3. I don’t recall when was the last time this happened for any of the apps I am working for.

[…]

I sent messages to App Review Board and received nothing in response (so far).

It seems that if Apple ever removed your app from App Store for reason of “not sending regular updates” that app is…gone. It’s not deleted but it seems to dwell in some sort of limbo.

Previously:

• Mac App Store Review Times Increasing