App Store rejection for "missing keyboard" — when the false positive is on the reviewer's side
An App Store rejection impossible to reproduce, an iPadOS shortcut bar in the reviewer's screenshot, and an iPad never rebooted that finally explained it all.
Flutter and iOS devs — a war story about a rejection that made me doubt everything.
The rejection
App Store rejection for "keyboard missing on input fields", with the reviewer's iPad screenshot as evidence.
Yet the iPadOS shortcut bar is visible in their screenshot — so a physical keyboard was connected? They insist it wasn't.
The investigation
To me, it looked like a reviewer false positive. I replied in the Resolution Center with the technical explanation — no luck… Impossible to reproduce on the simulator or even on physical iPads.
The breakthrough
We finally reproduced it — on an iPad that hadn't been rebooted for several months. After a fresh start, no more issue.
The bug was neither in our code nor in the reviewer's imagination: it was a degraded iPadOS state after long uptime.
What I take away
- An unreproducible rejection isn't necessarily a false positive: look for environmental conditions (uptime, third-party keyboards, exotic configs).
- Document your Resolution Center replies technically, but don't rely on writing alone.
- A test device that never reboots is precious reproduction ground — don't keep only freshly rebooted devices.