Summary created by Smart Answers AI
In summary:
- Apple updated its App Review Guidelines to allow removal of low-effort apps that lack unique experiences, targeting overcrowded categories.
- Macworld reports this change could significantly improve the App Store’s quality by addressing clutter among its 2 million apps.
- The new guidelines expand Apple’s authority to proactively remove unmaintained, low-quality apps rather than just rejecting new submissions.
An update to its App Review Guidelines might give Apple the excuse it needs to start clearing out the tens of thousands of garbage apps cluttering up the App Store. As noticed by our friends at TechCrunch, there’s new language in the document that gives Apple the authority to remove low-effort apps from overcrowded categories.
Apple held its Worldwide Developers Conference this week, where it introduced dozens of new APIs, tools, and guidelines for developers, including an update to its App Store criteria. The App Store Guidelines have had a rule for many years known colloquially as “the fart rule,” which allows the company to reject app submissions for overcrowded categories unless the app provides some sort of unique, high-quality experience:
The App Store has enough fart, burp, flashlight, fortune telling, dating, drinking games, and Kama Sutra apps, etc. already. We will reject these apps unless they provide a unique, high-quality experience.
The new guideline updates allow Apple to not just reject app submissions, but to remove apps that fit the criteria:
We may remove these apps from the App Store going forward if they are not updated, improved, or do not attract customers.
There are over 2 million apps on the App Store now, and let’s be honest, probably half of them are terrible. They’re low-effort, low-quality apps that either clone existing apps or are purpose-built to trick you into downloading them or starting a subscription when you were really looking for something else. Apple certainly has not made any statement committing to getting rid of all this stuff, nor to cleaning up the other structural problems with the App Store.
But the new guidelines at least give the company the opportunity to take out the trash, instead of just trying to prevent it at the time of app review.
