Xamarin forms (iOS) rejected app - iOS Data Storage Guidelines

Question

Our app got rejected for the following reason:

On launch and content download, your app stores 19.55 MB on the user's iCloud, which does not comply with the iOS Data Storage Guidelines.

We have a PCL Xamarin Forms project, the only data we have are the images of the app. We are not storing users on a file or databases here.

Where can i use NSFileManager.SetSkipBackupAttribute() on my iOS project?,if anyone can show an example of where I can implement the code , would be great.

I'm not sure the folders we need to block tho, our ios project had these folders(Xamarin view):

References | Components | Packages | Resources

Should i get feedback from Apple to know the folders that are being backed up first?. I found it strange that even with iCloud disabled in Entitlements.plist is still backing up things, plus images are local files from the app.

Answer 1

We recently had the exact same issue. We do store PDF files and also have a DB file which we were not setting to skip back on.

After adding the code to skip backup on all files, including the DB file, we continued to get rejected. Finally we contacted Apple and spoke with a developer who outlined steps we could take to debug the problem.

We had to gather multiple sets of logs and detailed steps on how all the files are downloaded in our app and send them to the developer. After they looked through it all, it turned out that the reviewer's were testing the old version of the app that did not have the fixed code so the developer was able to get the update passed.

This happened again the next time we tried submitting an update and the developer had to manually pass our app again.

This last time we updated our app, it did not happen... No idea what the problem was on their side but I would contact Apple and let them know the issue and they will be able to eventually get it sorted it.