My App Rejected 4.3 Design: Spam

hi

i submitted app yesterday to review, This morning I was surprised that the application was rejected, Reason 4.3 Design: Spam.

And I've introduced an application programmed by myself, and a unique design.


This message I received


Guideline 4.3 - Design

We noticed that your app provides the same feature set as other apps submitted to the App Store; it simply varies in content or language, which is considered a form of spam.

The next submission of this app may require a longer review time, and this app will not be eligible for an expedited review until this issue is resolved.



what should I do ?

Post not yet marked as solved Up vote post of ismailkho Down vote post of ismailkho
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Did you file an appeal?

  • How do you actually do that?

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KMT that is not helpful and troll like. This is a problem many developers are facing including myself and Apple do not provide any clarification when these apps have been made with hours upon hours of hard work and coding.

Nothing in my game is spam, I made an original football app and this was the rejection reason I was given as well.
Apple rejected many times.What to do ? Please help me.

4. 3 Design: Spam
Guideline 4.3 - Design - Spam

Your app primarily features astrology, horoscopes, palm reading, fortune telling or zodiac reports. As such, it duplicates the content and functionality of many other similar apps currently available on the App Store.

While these app features may be useful, informative or entertaining, we simply have enough of these types of apps on the App Store, and they are considered a form of spam.

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.

  • I have the same issue, my app has been reject, have you resolved or not?

  • Mcjambi did you find a way ?

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There are a number of app genres that the App Store reviewers decided to be too saturated. Among those are astrology, horoscope, palm-reading, and similar tell-your-future-from-your-biometric apps. If your app is one of those, you can't publish it on the App Stores. You could try publishing it as a Developer ID macOS application – use Catalyst if it's an iOS app.

However there are other causes of "Guideline 4.3 Spam" rejection:
  • Publishing similar apps that differs only in content.

  • Publishing white-label apps under your own Developer Account.

  • A competitor's app looks similar to yours.

Search the web for "How to Pass App Store Review: Guideline 4.3 Spam" to find out how to diagnose the problem further as well as some potential solutions.


That stinks. I got a 4.3 just a short while ago and feel super stuck on figuring out how to solve it. My content is unique but apple is claiming the same things they did for you. Did you have any luck figuring this out seeing how it's been years? Thx

  • Hello YouboyE, did you find a way to pass it ? i'm super interested by your history ! i'm living curently the same ...

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This happened to me yesterday. I got the same Rejections Reason: "We noticed that your app provides the same feature set as other apps submitted to the App Store; it simply varies in content or language, which is considered a form of spam."

The SPAM REJECTION is supposed to be given to app when a developer makes a copy of one of their already existing apps and then makes trivial changes to it to try to get additional copies into the App Store in order to get more downloads.

This IS NOT what I did. My app was completely written from scratch by me and unlike anything I had written before.

What I think happened is the name I gave it was similar to the name of another app written by someone else and their app was known as being spam in the past. The reviewer must have assumed mine was just a copy that they made.

The reviewer obviously did not even bother to try my app before labeling it spam which is frustrating.

I posted a reply to their rejection and I've been waiting for a day to hear back.

I believe there is a way to appeal but I hope I don't have to jump through all those hoops just because Apple has lazy reviewers. Here is a link to the appeal page.

https://developer.apple.com/contact/request/app-review/appeal/

It's frustrating that Apple hires lazy reviewers and a hundred hours of my time could be wasted because they can't spend 15 minutes trying out the app before falsely labeling it spam.

  • how about you now?

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Did you guys solve your issue? if yes, how?

There seems to be an uptick in recent comments regarding this issue, I wonder if Apple has renewed this behavior lately. Two of my games have been stuck in spam hell, despite the fact that I worked hard on making it work in the Apple system, the store pages, and worked directly with the team to make sure all my in app purchases worked, including giving them detailed instructions on how to trigger every single in app purchase, as if they were my QA team.

I'm actually wondering if we can't get a group together to at least threaten some kind of class action. It seems odd that Apple can charge $99 dollars a year to develop on their ecosystem, and then pick and choose which apps get on their app store (not pertaining to adult or mature content, but rather, simply finding preference to whomever or whatever companies it chooses). If Apple got rid of the membership fee, they'd probably have a better case. I'll do some research. Email me at kugala_bugala_at_hotmail.com if you'd like to give me your story. It would help a lot if we want to get this fixed.

Apple is a terrible company with terrible products. They sell inferior products at higher prices. They are the definition of a company looking to suck from people. Insane to think people still buy their crap when they intentionally push updates to kill battery life and slow phones so people will upgrade.

Apple said my app was spam too. Completely from scratch and not a single other app out there with its functionality. Yet apple over here selling proprietary cables that are inferior to suck from people.

I have the same issue with an update about a application, which I created in 2015.

Hi, 2 years in the store and I submitted the app with a small fix. No feature or content change. I got a rejection with same message. When I asked for some clarification their reply:

"We understand it can be frustrating to receive information that was not expected. However, apps that simply duplicate content or functionality create clutter, diminish the overall experience for the end user, and reduce the ability of developers to market their apps."

I guess they didn't get my question or using some kind template reply. If I updated some feature or content I would understand, the new feature or content is duplicate or spam. Since it's a small fix unrelated to content/feature, I can't just redo my app. My application is a photo editor application and there's thousands of photo editor in the app store. As for the content they are unique.

Did anyone have the similar experience for app fixes? How did you detect which part of the app or content was duplicate?

Thanks in advance.

Hey! We recently had the same issue Rejections Reason: "We noticed that your app provides the same feature set as other apps submitted to the App Store; it simply varies in content or language, which is considered a form of spam."

Any ideas how to solve this?

Thank you!

  • Same here; were you able to resolve it? how?

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At WWDC 2023 I updated my app and will get:

Guideline 4.3 - Design «We noticed that your app provides the same feature set as other apps submitted to the App Store; it simply varies in content or language, which is considered a form of spam».


I asked to write what exactly I copied and how do I understand it in general? This is my application, developed from scratch. There are figma files with the design, roadmap, issue's, etc.

I paid $100, spent a three months and got rejected 👍 Сomplete demotivation. With this logic, if there is a «ToDo» application, then no other developers can create a similar one with their own functionality?

P.S. My application works with Stable Diffusion, text-to-image/image-to-image for macOS.

I have the same issue. I gave hours to develop, but getting this result lost my motivation.