I want to publish my iPhone App in both Japanese and Chinese languages. I have localized the content to the respective languages. However, the app metadata description and iAP descriptions are still in English. Will my app be approved?
Yes, of course! Why wouldn't Apple approve it? There's no regulation against not localizing your app.
However, you should keep in mind that customers see the app description and metadata before they see your app. So, chances are if a customer sees your app description is not localized, they aren't going to bother downloading it to see if it's localized.
Also, a good point from #SlyRaskal:
Localization is a choice of the developer, what verbiage you choose to include in your app is your choice, not theirs. Just my 2 cents. You could also check if there are apps that you know are localized to these same languages that don't have their app descriptions localized.
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My application got rejected with the following reason -
Guideline 4 - Design
Your app's permissions requests are written in Ukrainian while the app is set to the Romanian localization. To help users understand why
your app is requesting access to a specific feature, your app's
permission requests should be in the same language as your app's
current localization.
The application is required to have both Romanian(Language A) and Ukrainian(Language B) localisation support. The application strings are localised in a usual way, nothing special - a Localizable.strings file with 2 languages support - A and B. It works well, no objections. When I change the app language from the iOS settings - all is good.
But, the issue arise(as Apple says) when I do an app permission alerts localisation. My application is using both camera and location(showing the embedded map view) permissions. To achieve this kind of localisation I'm using the all known approach of putting the InfoPlist.strings file in my app where it's basically just localising those 2 permission to an A and B languages.
/* Camera permission usage description */
"NSCameraUsageDescription" = "...";
/* Location permission usage description */
"NSLocationWhenInUseUsageDescription" = "...";
So, the behaviour now is that the app is getting localised with the language that is set in iOS settings for the app while the app permission alerts are getting their language as the iOS system preferred language. Means if I have an iOS device running on language A but set my application to run on language B, the app will actually run language B but those camera and location permission dialogs will be running on language A.
And I see no problems with that, it's obvious that the iOS is showing you those system alert on your preferred language. But now my app gets constantly rejected with the demand that the app permission alerts should also be running on the language B as the rest of the app.
So, how can I achieve this? Maybe I'm doing something wrong? Both localisation files seems to work since I'm able to reproduce the cases iOS - B, app - A and iOS - A, app - A.
Or maybe I'm just too stupid and misunderstood what Apple is trying to say? I can share the message history here if needed, but basically they are just saying:
Upon further review, we continue to find that the app's location
permission request is written in Ukrainian while the app is set to the
Romanian localization. Please note that your app's permission
requests should be in the same language as your app's current
localization.
Update:
Apple review reply on 03.05:
Spending even more time on investigation, trying and failing, we've managed to find a solution.
First of all, the Apple did a bad job explaining an issue fully. This is why it was leading me in a wrong directing. The issue supposed to be the following -
When you run an application in a language that is not present in your preferred languages list. In my case the app is in Romanian and device iOS language is set to English with no extra languages configured(Empty preferred languages list). This way the app will be in Romanian language and the camera permission alert is also in Romanian while location permission alert is in Ukrainian.
The fix was pretty easy with a single property in your Info.plist file that I'm seeing for the first time - CFBundleLocalizations where you basically just provide a list of languages your app supports.
Conclusion: The behaviour of system permission alert appearing in the iOS system preferred language is OK and works as supposed by Apple. But there might be a case when none of the app supported languages is present in the iOS system preferred languages list and it leads to multiple languages appearing in the app during runtime and this might be a potential Apple review reject reason.
I'm about to submit an app to app store. The app is in my native language (Persian) and it aims only at the persian speakers. I didn't go through using the process of internatiolization and stuff because it wouldn't make sense. However, when I entered iTunes Connect, I had to choose a language for it and Persian wasn't among the languages you could choose, so I chose English. The list of languages at iTunes Connect was quite small and did not cover more than 20 languages. Anyway, is that going to be problematic for my app?
I haven't submitted my app officially, I'm just going through the final steps and I'm anxious that it might cause a problem.
When you are trying to select Primary Language while creating New App in iTunes connect, probably you can the
Have you checked '?' - Question mark it contains one FAQ.
From Resources & Help section
Why am I not seeing my localization language listed as a selection for Primary Language?
If the localization has not been approved, you must submit a version with this localization to be approved by App Review before you can select it as your primary language.
If the screenshots for that localization are being derived from another localization’s screenshots, you must first manually add screenshots for the language you wish to be your primary. If the Ready for Sale version of your app is using screenshots from another language, you will need to submit an update to your app before you can select the new language.
Is dynamic language change in iOS app allowed? Normally the language is set basing on the device's language. But if I add settings in my app that would allow changing the language without changing the language of the device, will my app be rejected by Apple?
Many apps (mostly games) does it. Your app shouldn't get rejected, but it's not so welcomed by the users. It's generally much better to have the language setting handled by the system. It's much more convenient for the end user. I was trying to find anything in Apple Guidelines but didn't notice anything interesting on the topic.
I have an app in the App Store with a number of different soundboards. I release updates every once in a while with new content. Some content however is forbidden by Apple (foul language) resulting in updates being rejected. To make updating faster and easier, I'm building an update which automatically downloads new content from a server. So my question is; what will happen when content in an update is found inappropriate by Apple? Will my app be removed from the App Store? Will they ban my developer account? Will they even find out? The app is in Dutch and therefore it's quite hard te determine what is permissible by App Store policy and what is not. I had some explicit content accepted in updates, while other seemingly less explicit content got rejected.
Your app is never reviewed by the same person and so much depends on the reviewer. There is a Dutch review team so regarding not noticing due to language, I wouldn't rely on it.
Now I have released apps that breach API terms with youtube and the apps existed on the appstore for a long time. Once it was brought to Apple's attention, they removed the app but did not suspend my developer account (I imagine that you have to break policy repeatedly for this and do something much worse than simply having foul language in your app). In my opinion, If Apple notices that your app has foul language on it, they will simply remove it from sale and ask you to submit an update which addresses the issue as they did in my case.
We currently have an English app on the AppStore and have decided to support another language. But I'm not sure where to start.
How should the app content be created to be able to support this? Should I just create two separate applications in their respective language and submit them both to the AppStore? Or do I have to create one app with some kind of mechanism that translates on the fly??
I somehow don't think that flooding the AppStore with multiple versions of my app would be the way to go (at least in the eyes of the Apple Review team).
Any ideas?
The usual way is to use the localization of iOS. You should not upload different apps!
See this link for a tutorial: How to localize an iPhone app