My App has been rejected because of UIBackgroundModes

Question

We found that your app uses a background mode but does not include functionality that requires that mode to run persistently. This behavior is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.

We noticed your app declares support for audio in the UIBackgroundModes key in your Info.plist, but no audible content is played when the application is in the background. While your intention may have been to provide this functionality, at the time of review, we were not able to play background audio for your app.

As indicated in the iOS Application Programming Guide:

"This key is intended for use by applications that provide audible content to the user while in the background, such as music-player or streaming-audio applications."

Therefore, it would be appropriate to provide audible content to the user while the app is in the background or remove the "audio" setting from the UIBackgroundModes key.

For discrete code-level questions, you may wish to consult with Apple Developer Technical Support. Please be sure to:

• include the complete details of your rejection issues
• prepare any symbolicated crash logs, screenshots, and steps to reproduce the issues for when the DTS engineer follows up.

For information on how to symbolicate and read a crash log, please see Tech Note TN2151 Understanding and Analyzing iPhone OS Application Crash Reports.

If you have difficulty reproducing this issue, please try testing the workflow as described in "Testing Workflow with Xcode's Archive feature".

So here are my problems/questions:

• in the resolution center it told them that they have to start a video first or else there obviously won't be audio playback in background mode and also send them a screenshot that it actually works

• are they actually to answer me? I've wrote the above about one hour ago and still got no answer

• will i have to resubmit the App and wait another 7 days or can they still approve the App?

Answer 1

I had the exact same problem and rejection reason.

What I did was file an appeal, citing Technical Q&A 1668, "Playing media while in the background using AV Foundation" (Usually here, but not at the moment), where it explicitly says that the UIBackgroundModes audio key may be used to play video in the background, either over AirPlay, or on a local device by detaching the AVPlayerLayer from the AVPlayer.

About a week later, my appeal was approved and the app was submitted to the store. Not that I ever received an explicit answer from Apple about this. But, the approval was the important part, I guess.

// edit: I filed a radar with Apple asking for an explicit video backgrounding mode a few weeks back. Its on OpenRadar now, if you want to dupe it.

Answer 2

You will not have to resubmit the app, they will respond to you.

https://developer.apple.com/appstore/contact/appreviewboard/index.html

This link will get you to the form for the appeal process, though I assume you have already done this based on info in your post. If you feel like you need an expedited review there is a link for that as well. You just have to make your case, try to be very careful to address every point they make about why your app doesn't meet the guidelines.