The iOS 8 Widget Restrictions Don’t Make Any Sense

One of the things we most looked forward to in iOS 8 was widgets. A longtime Android feature, Apple introduced widgets as a part of Notification Center, which you access with a downward swipe from the top of the screen. By giving third party apps access to this coveted space, users could quickly glean information about their day and more efficiently navigate their smartphone experience.
Except that it seems Apple is still undecided about what’s allowed in a widget, and what’s not. Apple rejected an update to the app Drafts this week because the buttons in the widget redirect the user back to the app in order to process or complete tasks. This is supposedly not allowed under section 25.1 of the App Review Guidelines, which state “Apps hosting extensions must comply with the App Extension Programming Guide”—except that the text in this programming guide don’t seem to explicitly say this function isn’t allowed.

Drafts’ developer Greg Pierce was told Notification Center’s Today View is to be used for informational purposes only. (Pierce was not told to remove the buttons from Drafts’ widget or his app would be removed from the App Store, as other stories have reported.) The app’s widget has remained relatively unchanged since October 15 and has undergone three prior app updates without issue, so the sudden rejection was surprising.

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