Halide rejected from the App Store because it doesn’t explain why the camera takes photos

Halide may have been featured during the iPhone 16 keynote, but it seems that wasn’t enough to protect it from an over-zealous App Store reviewer. Lux co-founder Ben Sandofsky shared that the latest version of Halide was rejected from App Store …

The reason? Because it seemingly wasn’t clear why a camera app needs access to the camera in order to take photos.

When you run Halide, the app of course requests access to the camera. Developers are required to explain why they require access to features like this, and Lux’s explanation seems reasonably clear:

The camera will be used to take photographs

But it appears that Apple decided that wasn’t sufficiently clear, as Sandofsky explained on Mastodon.

The latest Halide update was rejected because, after seven years, a random reviewer decided our permission prompt wasn’t descriptive enough.

I don’t know how to explain why a camera app needs camera permissions.

Macworld’s Macolope suggested clearer, is less grammatical, text:

The camera will be used to take photographs for the app that you just downloaded to take photographs for.

Halide is one of the apps to support the new Camera Control button on the iPhone 16.

Image: Lux