Guideline 5.1.1(v): “you must also offer account deletion within the app”
If people can create an account in your app, they must be able to delete it there too. Signing out doesn't count.
Apple's words
“Guideline 5.1.1(v) - Data Collection and Storage”
“Only offering to temporarily deactivate or disable an account is insufficient”
“If your app supports account creation, you must also offer account deletion within the app.”
What it means
Every way of making an account counts: email, Google, Sign in with Apple, and the guest accounts some apps create on their own.
Apple wants the option “easy to find”, usually in account settings. A link to your website is allowed only when it goes “directly to the page on your website where they can complete the process”.
Outside regulated fields, deleting must not depend on a phone call, an email or a support chat. What people created should go too.
The same guideline has a second half: an app without “significant account-based features” must let people use it without a login.
What caused it for us
Sign-out with no deletion: 2 rejections across 2 of our apps. For one, Apple asked for a recording on a physical device of signing in, deleting and confirming.
1 rejection, 1 app, for making people sign up before a purchase that needed no account.
From about 20 of our own rejections across 8 apps. A guide to what to check first, not a rate for everyone.
What to check first
- Signed in, look for a delete option in settings. Would a new user find it?
- Delete a spare account, then try to sign in with it. It should fail, because the account and its data are gone from your server.
- Check for a confirmation step and, for subscribers, a note that billing continues through Apple.
- Test each way of signing in, including Sign in with Apple and guest accounts.
- Ask whether the app needs an account at all. If not, people must be able to use it, and buy, without one.
Kept for the paid guide
These three parts are in the paid guide only:
- The exact App Store Connect clicks. How to resubmit with the deletion path in Notes and a recording in the Attachment section.
- The prompt to paste into your AI builder. A prompt that lists every way the app creates accounts and adds full deletion, including what Sign in with Apple needs.
- The reply to Apple. A reply that tells the reviewer where deletion is and what happens after it.