Approved on the first submission: what it took to get a wellness app through App Review
Anovi went into App Review on 27 July and came out approved on 6 August. First submission, no rejection, nothing in Resolution Center. It is a nutrition app, which means it carries three things App Review looks at closely and carries them at the same time: auto-renewing subscriptions, health data, and an AI path that sends what you ate to a model somebody else operates. After about a decade of…
Anovi's nutrition app received approval on its very first submission to Apple's App Review on August 6, 2026. The app faced three significant challenges during the approval process: auto-renewing subscriptions, health data handling, and an AI path that shared user-provided data with third-party models.
Before the app even reached the App Review stage, a rejection-risk audit was written on May 17, 2026, covering 175 checks across Apple and EU guidelines. The audit was extended to include Apple's newly updated guidelines, which now required explicit consent for sharing personal data with third-party AI, including AI models like Google Gemini and Anthropic. Additionally, the age rating system was updated to reflect new categories, and apps now needed to be built with Xcode 26 and an iOS 26 SDK or later.
The app's approval hinged on implementing a backend gate that prevented AI routes from calling models without explicit user consent. When a user opened the consent sheet, they were informed about the three data types being shared: meal description, modifications, and allergy information. The app's consent mechanism was designed to be transparent and withdrawal-friendly, allowing users to deny consent at any time without losing the app's functionality.
This approach ensured that the app complied with Apple's guidelines and Apple's data protection laws, such as the GDPR.
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