Jamie is a development engineer at Tencent. He has been working on specialized testing in the areas of iOS pre-review and ASO optimization, providing specialized services for nearly 100 Tencent games products.
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WeTest takeaway
As is known to all, apple’s app store is the company to provide developers and users to download applications, apple for developers and users to create a virtuous, fair, healthy, safe app store environment, formulated a series of the app store review provisions, all applications must follow these terms and conditions, to get published. There is no denying that app approval to some extent ensures the quality of the app store, but for many developers, the app store is often an uncomfortable and even tragic journey, and they are often rejected by Apple for various reasons, making developers feel miserable. This article will introduce a series of pre-trial strategies and methods of Tencent pre-trial team, so that we can understand how Tencent ensures the passing rate of the trial.
IOS pre-audit development ideas
Recently, apple’s website is given as of June 2016, the ten terms of application was refused, including more than 63% of the application was rejected because of this clause 10), seemingly simple terms, there is still a lot of rejection, remand the case fact, enough developers to review the terms of understanding and the control system, is the main reason lead to remand the rejected.
So, seemingly dazzling audit terms, we have any accurate and systematic way to grasp it? In this regard, Tencent pre-audit team has tried a series of exploration and accumulation since 2014:
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Analyze the terms of “Apple App Store Review Guide”, combined with the previous rejected cases, conduct test design of the system, and output into practical test cases;
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On the basis of the above steps, the automation analysis is carried out, and the modules that can be automated are extracted (the corresponding automatic scanning tools are developed);
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The rest of the use cases, the formation of special testers to carry out acceptance;
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Each version of the App will not be formally submitted to Apple for review until it passes the above test and acceptance;
The probe of Tencent pretrial
According to the above working ideas, Tencent’s pre-audit team divided the audit objects into modules, which mainly included IPA package, questioning resources, and application content and functions (a total of 150+ test points and test cases were integrated, including 70+ automatic scanning items) :
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Check ipA packets
It is mainly to ensure that info.plist, package/file size, ICON specifications, private API, third-party SDK, 64-bit and other contents in IPA meet Apple’s requirements. Tencent’s pre-review team has developed automatic tools to complete the acceptance of this part through automatic scanning.
Review of resources
It is mainly to ensure that the submitted application screenshots, videos, AppIcon, application description and other resources meet Apple’s requirements. The pre-review team has developed automatic tools to complete the acceptance of resource specifications and attributes through automatic scanning. But the content of resources, copywriting and other parts of the acceptance of the content, but also need manual review;
Review of application content and functionality
Ensure that the content of the application meets the provisions of the Security, performance, design, legal and other sections of the Apple Review Guide. Generally, the content and functions of the application scenarios such as installation, login, IAP payment, announcements, events, mail, icloud file storage, VPN network connectivity in the US, IPv6 network connectivity are covered. All need manual review;
In addition, the pre-review team continuously updated and improved the acceptance plan by following up the review trend of Apple in real time, and ensured the review and approval rate of products continuously, which has been recognized by more and more products. By July this year, more than 100 App products have been served, and 120+ times of retesting have been completed every month. According to the arraignment data statistics in the first half of 2016, despite the impact of IPv6, arraignment pictures/videos and other policy changes, the arraignment pass rate still remains above 85%, which reflects the work effectiveness of the pre-arraignment plan:
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The proportion of rejected modules is as follows:
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In the above statistics, it can be found that more of the rejected data are about game functions, content and review materials, while the number of rejected ipA packages and review resource specifications accounts for a small proportion, which also reflects the quality and guarantee brought by automated tools.
Pretrial test content interpretation
1. Introduction to Ipa packet check
Ipa package check items mainly include the following aspects, such as info.plist, private API, third-party SDK, 64-bit, icon file and so on. We will introduce several important scanning rules one by one:
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1.1 the Info. Plist check
Info.plist is a structured text file, often referred to as a “property list”. IOS apps use the info.plist file to store meta information, which is used to determine the ICONS displayed by the bundle, the types of documents currently supported by the app, and service declarations. The scanning rules for this part are from Information Property List Key Reference and contain the following contents:
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1.2 check Icon
Apple officially has clear requirements for the icon of iPhone, iPad, iPod and other applications: Ipa packages are required to contain PNG ICONS in sizes 180×180, 120×120, 76×76, 152×152, and 167×167 (see the following table for details), and the contents of ICONS in different sizes should be consistent. As for the scanning rules of this part, From iOS Human Interface Guidelines:
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As for the check of App icon, an automatic method is adopted to automatically decompress IPA packages and verify whether icon ICONS exist and meet requirements one by one. For ipA packages that do not meet requirements, an alarm is given:
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1.3 Private API Check
Private apis and non-public apis are expressly prohibited by Apple, and each pre-audit will focus on the scanning results of these parts. The idea of automation has been mentioned in some articles shared before. It mainly uses some decompiler tools to decompiler and parse ipA executable files to obtain the collection of libraries, methods and classes in header files, and then compares private libraries and non-public libraries one by one. If there is a match, an alarm will be given:
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1.4 Checking the file size
This part mainly includes the size of IPA package, the size of the body segment of the executable file and the size of each file in the package:
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If the scan does not meet the requirements, an alarm is generated:
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2. Introduction of resource examination
Review resources include three parts: review pictures, review videos and application introduction. Apple’s requirements for review resources are mainly in two aspects: specification attributes and content. For the former, pre-review is accepted by automation, while the latter is reviewed by manual.
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The scan rules for resource specification attributes are derived from iTunes Connect Developer Guide. The pre-review mainly covers the following aspects:
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For resources that do not meet requirements, an alarm is generated:
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The acceptance rules for questioning resources are derived from iTunes Connect Developer Guide and App Store Review Guidelines, and the pre-examination mainly covers the following aspects:
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The video of each resolution must be recorded on a real machine of the corresponding resolution, and cannot be stretched, clipped, or filled in (for example, the video recorded on iPhone5 device can be stretched to generate the video of iPad resolution).
A classic case
【 Case 1】
In x.17.5 version of Project A, the questioning picture could not truly reflect the content of the App, resulting in its rejection.
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[Countermeasures]
In the picture, try to avoid providing irrelevant content of the application. It should show the real content of the application, especially the screenshot of the game application, which should reflect the game scene, painting style and characteristic gameplay. In response to this problem, the picture of the product modified and approved by Apple is as follows:
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【 Case 2】
For project B x.1.10, the video featured mobile devices and contained content not in the game, which was too much publicity and was rejected.
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[Countermeasures]
Record the actual content of the app on a real iPhone. Avoid advertising, special effects and other promotional content.
3. Introduction of application content and function check
Apple’s review of app content and features tends to be very strict. If one of them does not meet the terms of the review, the version will be rejected. Therefore, you need to memorize every review point and try to go through the features of the app. During traversal, pay attention to the adaptation of important models and firmware. Try to use the latest iPhone and Pad (if the application does not support Pad, you can ignore it), and try to use the latest firmware version. For special periods of time, such as before the release of the new system in the fall, check the compatibility of the beta version in advance to avoid unpredictable compatibility issues during the release of the new system, blocking the pace of the release review.
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Recently, Apple requires apps to be compatible with IPv6 networks (apps launched or updated after June 1 must be compatible with IPv6). Therefore, you need to ensure that apps can be logged in properly under IPv6 networks before submitting applications for approval (IPv6 networks can be deployed according to the guidance provided by Apple’s official website). In addition, the US VPN network can not be ignored. Because apple’s audit team in the United States, when they review, using the network in the United States, cross intercontinental network connection, hard to avoid can appear large time delay, jitter, packet loss, such as network problems, in order to validate in advance the App based on the backend server response under this scenario, the VPN to simulate the apple audit team access to the App, can exposure some questions in advance.
The acceptance of this part mainly includes the following two modules:
Check text content
Mainly check the announcements, events, tips, game emails, novice guides, dialogue, etc., and also cover the website, forum and other web pages linked in the app to ensure that the text content meets the relevant terms of Apple review;
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Check the application content
Mainly cover the picture, animation, video, game character modeling /PVE/PVP scene interface in the application, to ensure that the above content meets the relevant provisions of Apple review;
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Is intended to summarize
The above is the main working idea of iOS pre-review, the core idea is to carry out the acceptance work around the “Apple App Store Review Guide”, but also in real time to follow the dynamics of Apple review policy, to ensure the direction and quality of pre-review.
Introduction to automatic scanning tool -WeTest
In order to improve the approval rate of IEG’s apple review, Tencent specially established the Apple review test team and created the product of iOS pre-review tool. After one and a half years of internal operation, the iOS approval rate of Tencent’s internal apps has increased from an average of 35% to over 90%.
Now Tencent internal product review experience, in the form of online tools to share to you. It can be used online on WeTest Tencent Quality open platform. Click on the bottom left corner of the article to read the original article and experience it immediately!
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The iOS pre-audit tool provides pre-audit services in four steps
[One-click scan]
You only need to provide ipA package, audit picture, audit video and application description, and you can get a complete test report within 4 hours. You can locate problems and provide solutions to help you pass the audit successfully.
[Case Sharing]
Collect common causes of iOS audit failure, rich cases for your reference.
[Expert Services]
Tencent expert team for you to analyze all kinds of difficult and complicated diseases, put forward the best solution.
[ASO optimization]
Professional optimization of keyword search results in AppStore, make products closer to users.
Hope App/ mobile games in the pre-review acceptance guarantee, can be happy trial, happy to make money.
About Tencent WeTest
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