Apple tightens App Store rules on hidden features and AI imagery

Apple tightens App Store rules on hidden features and AI imagery

16 October 2026: Apple has revised its App Review Guidelines with a new rule, 2.5.19, that lets it remove apps which add features after review and expel their developers from the Apple Developer Program, and with a change to guideline 1.2 that makes apps hosting user content responsible for preventing nonconsensual intimate imagery, including images made with AI tools.

Bait-and-switch apps

Guideline 2.5.19 moves the long-standing ban on hidden, dormant or undocumented features out of 2.3.1 into a rule of its own. Apple describes the target as apps that misrepresent what they do during review and change after approval, for example by switching on functionality that was not in the version submitted. Its example is the "nudification" app that passes review as something else and reveals its purpose later. Apps found doing this face removal from the App Store and removal from the developer programme, which closes every app the account publishes.

Apple says it stopped more than 150,000 apps with safety issues from reaching customers last year and terminated more than 193,000 developer accounts for fraud and abuse, and that coordinated fraud operations are behind some of the hidden-feature cases.

A duty to moderate, with a deadline after notice

Guideline 1.2 already required apps with user-generated content to filter objectionable material, offer reporting and let users block abusive accounts. The revision says content moderation must explicitly cover nonconsensual intimate imagery, including imagery generated using AI tools, which apps must proactively prevent and remove. Developers who fail to put adequate safeguards in place, or who do not fix violations after Apple gives notice, risk breaching the Developer Code of Conduct and being removed.

For companies running community, dating, messaging or image-generation apps, that turns moderation of AI-generated images into a review condition rather than a matter of policy. Section 5 now also states that apps found to facilitate human trafficking or the exploitation of children will be removed from the App Store and blocked from alternative distribution, which matters in the EU, where apps can be installed outside the store.

Payments links and creative assets

Two smaller changes affect monetisation and content. In 3.1.1(a), the separate bullet on Music Streaming Services Entitlements is gone and folded into the bullet on StoreKit External Purchase Link Entitlements, which now says links may point to a permitted destination. A new guideline, 2.3.14, covers creative assets. Apple added documentation links to its Before You Submit and After You Submit sections and says translations will follow within a month.

The developer agreement changed three days earlier

On 13 October Apple published a revised Apple Developer Program License Agreement, which account holders must sign in to accept. It updates security requirements in section 3.2, sets terms for a Live Assistance API and an App Replacement Entitlement, covers iOS widgets and CarPlay apps on Apple HomeView, adds Group Purchases (several seats in one subscription) and Volume Purchasing subscriptions for Apple Business and School Manager, and says Apple will report legally required tax and contact details to tax authorities. Neither post gives a separate effective date; the revised guidelines are already the ones App Review applies.

Sources

• Apple Developer News: Updated App Review Guidelines are now available, 16 October 2026
• Apple Developer News: Strengthening App Review Guidelines against nonconsensual intimate imagery and bait-and-switch apps, 16 October 2026
• Apple Developer News: Updated Apple Developer Program License Agreement now available, 13 October 2026