How (and Why) You Must Offer Account Deletion in Your App

Why You Need to Offer Account Deletion

When you submit your app to the Apple App Store, it will be reviewed to make sure it complies with the App Store review guidelines.

One of those guidelines is this:

“If your app supports account creation, you must also offer account deletion within the app.“

Section 5.1.1 (v) App Store Guidelines

How to Offer Account Deletion

Adding an Account Deletion Feature to Your Website

For apps based on websites the best solution is to create an account deletion feature on your website. That way it will work identically in your app.

The best user experience would come from having a self-serve option for users to delete their account in their account overview section. Since that might be tricky to implement, you could alternatively build a simple form that allows users to submit a request to have their account deleted. When you receive such a request, you then manually check it and delete the account. The only thing to keep in mind in that case is that the form needs to be specifically for requesting account deletion. Apple doesn't accept general support forms which offer account deletion as one of many options in the form. So it's best to have the account deletion form on a separate page that clearly states it's about requesting account deletion.

If it's not possible for you to add an option to delete user accounts to your website (or it would delay your app release) don't worry! We have an alternative solution.

Using Your App's Built-In Account Deletion Feature

You can enable the app-based account deletion feature in your app customization dashboard.

Afterwards, your users can request account deletion inside the app settings.

Are you using an app layout that doesn't have a direct way to open the app settings?

You can also open the app settings via JavaScript, using this function: showSettingsPage()

How the App's Account Deletion Feature Works

Your users will be able to enter their e-mail/username and any other information they want to send along with the account deletion request. As soon as we receive a request, we forward it to you via e-mail.

When you receive such an e-mail from us, you should contact the user that requested account deletion to confirm it. You need to do this because theoretically any user can request deletion of any account, since the app can't check which user is currently logged in.

How it Looks in the App

Here are some screenshots of the app deletion feature inside the app settings.