Account deletion requirements on the App Store
What Apple expects when a user wants their account and data gone, and the page most submissions forget.
What is actually required
If your app lets someone create an account, it has to let them delete it from inside the app. Not by emailing support, not by opening a web form: a route in the app itself.
What the page has to say
- Which account the request is about and how someone starts it.
- What gets deleted, and how quickly.
- What is kept anyway, and the reason: invoices for tax law, logs for security, backups until they rotate.
- How long that retention lasts, in a number rather than "as required".
- An address for someone who cannot use the route for any reason.
Keeping it true after launch
A legal page stops being true the moment the product moves past it, usually by adding a payment provider, an analytics SDK or a sign-in. No store re-checks your pages against your build, so the drift is yours to notice.
- Re-read it whenever you add a dependency that sees user data.
- Re-open the Apple console after any change to what the app collects: the listing and the policy have to agree.
- Keep the URL stable. Changing where a policy lives breaks every listing that points at it.
Common questions
Can I keep anything after a deletion request?
Yes, where another law requires it. Invoices are the usual example. What you cannot do is keep it quietly: the page has to name what survives, why, and for how long.
Does an email address count as a deletion route?
Not for Apple. Guideline 5.1.1 asks for deletion initiated inside the app; an address to write to is an addition, not a substitute.
