Privacy manifest for iOS apps

If your app is intended for the Apple App Store and uses required reasons APIs, App Store Connect may issue a warning that the app doesn't have the correct privacy manifest:

It can affect any Apple ecosystem app, native or multiplatform. Your app may be using a required reason API through a third-party library or SDK, which may not be obvious. Kotlin Multiplatform could be one of the frameworks that uses APIs you're unaware of.

On this page, you'll find a detailed description of the problem and a recommendation for dealing with it.

What's the issue

Apple's requirements for App Store submissions have changed in the spring of 2024. App Store Connect no longer accepts apps that don't specify a reason for using a required reason API in their privacy manifests.

This is an automatic check, not a manual moderation: your app's code is analyzed, and you receive a list of issues in an email. The email will reference the "ITMS-91053: Missing API declaration" issue, listing all API categories used in the app that fall under the required reasons category.

Ideally, all SDKs that your app uses provide their own privacy manifest, and you don't need to worry about that. But if some of your dependencies don't do this, your App Store submission may be flagged.

How to resolve

After you have tried to submit your app and received a detailed issue list from the App Store, you can build your manifest following the Apple documentation:

The resulting file is a collection of dictionaries. For each accessed API type, select one or more reasons for using it from the provided list. Xcode helps edit .xcprivacy files by providing a visual layout and dropdown lists with valid values for each field.

You can use a special tool to find usages of required reason APIs in the dependencies of your Kotlin framework and a separate plugin to bundle .xcprivacy file with your Kotlin artifacts.

If a new privacy manifest doesn't help satisfy App Store requirements or you cannot figure out how to go through the steps, contact us and share your case in this YouTrack issue.

Find usages of required reason APIs

Kotlin code in your app or one of the dependencies may access required reason APIs from libraries such as platform.posix, for example, fstat:

import platform.posix.fstat

fun useRequiredReasonAPI() {
    fstat(...)
}

In some cases, it may be difficult to determine which dependencies use the required reason API. To help you find them, we've built a simple tool.

To use it, run the following command in the directory where the Kotlin framework is declared in your project:

/usr/bin/python3 -c "$(curl -fsSL https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin/raw/rrf_v0.0.1/libraries/tools/required-reason-finder/required_reason_finder.py)"

You may also download this script separately, inspect it, and run it using python3.

Place the .xcprivacy file in your Kotlin artifacts

If you need to bundle the PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy file with your Kotlin artifacts, use the apple-privacy-manifests plugin:

plugins {
    kotlin("multiplatform")
    kotlin("apple-privacy-manifests") version "1.0.0"
}

kotlin {
    privacyManifest {
        embed(
            privacyManifest = layout.projectDirectory.file("PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy").asFile,
        )
    }
}

The plugin will copy the privacy manifest file to the corresponding output location.

Known usages

Compose Multiplatform

Using Compose Multiplatform may result in fstat, stat and mach_absolute_time usages in your binary. Even though these functions are not used for tracking or fingerprinting and are not sent from the device, Apple can still flag them as APIs with missing required reasons.

If you must specify a reason for stat and fstat usages, use 0A2A.1. For mach_absolute_time, use 35F9.1.

For further updates on required reasons APIs used in Compose Multiplatform, follow this issue.

Kotlin/Native runtime in versions 1.9.10 or earlier

The mach_absolute_time API is used in the mimalloc allocator in the Kotlin/Native runtime. This was the default allocator in Kotlin 1.9.10 and earlier versions.

We recommend upgrading to Kotlin 1.9.20 or later versions. If the upgrade is impossible, change the memory allocator. To do that, set the -Xallocator=custom compilation option in your Gradle build script for the current Kotlin allocator or -Xallocator=std for the system allocator.

For more information, see Kotlin/Native memory management.

Last modified: 02 October 2024