Apple Notifies Developers It Will Remove Old Apps From App Store: Reports

In a report, Apple tells developers that it will start taking apps off its App Store that haven’t been updated for a while. The Cupertino-based company says that it is taking down apps that no longer work or are old on its App Store Improvements page.

In addition, a report says that Apple has given developers a 30-day window for them to send in an update for review. There are primarily games that haven’t been updated on the list of apps in a long time. A few days after, Google said it was taking old apps off the Google Play store.

Apple has sent developers an “App Improvement Notice,” which says that their apps haven’t been updated for a long time and will be removed from sale in 30 days. This is based on a few tweets from developers, which The Verge found.

The company has asked the developers to keep this app available for people to download after they submit an update for review in the next 30 days so that people can download it.

One of the developers thinks Apple is being unfair by deleting old apps. His “fully-functional” game, Motivoto, hasn’t been updated since March 2019. He says the company has threatened to take it down because it hasn’t been updated since then.

An Apple Watch keyboard app called FlickType was not updated for about two years, according to Kosta Eleftheriou, who made the app. The report says that Apple removed the app because it hadn’t been updated for that long. He points out that the Pocket God app still works even though it was last updated in 2015.

A page on the App Store Improvements says that Apple has started a “continuous process” of looking at and getting rid of apps that no longer work, don’t follow current review guidelines, or are out of date. Apple says that the removed app will still work for people who already have it.

Several weeks ago, Google said it would stop people from finding and installing apps that don’t target an API level released in the last two years of the most recent major Android release. This new news comes a few weeks after that.

A part of Google’s plan to make apps safer is taking this step. Google said in a blog post that it would protect people from installing older apps that might not have these protections in place.