Apple rejects all binaries built using this package, unless ALL permissions have purposes/reasons added in the .plist, even if the app is not using most of them...

[manuelgomes2]

Apple now rejects all apps, the error is as follows:

Missing Purpose String in Info.plist File - Your app's code references one or more APIs that access sensitive user data. The app's Info.plist file should contain a NSContactsUsageDescription key with a user-facing purpose string explaining clearly and completely why your app needs the data. Starting Spring 2019, all apps submitted to the App Store that access user data will be required to include a purpose string.If you're using external libraries or SDKs, they may reference APIs that require a purpose string. While your app might not use these APIs, a purpose string is still required. You can contact the developer of the library or SDK and request they release a version of their code that doesn't contain the APIs. Learn more (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/core_app/protecting_the_user_s_privacy).

Missing Purpose String in Info.plist File - Your app's code references one or more APIs that access sensitive user data. The app's Info.plist file should contain a NSCalendarsUsageDescription key with a user-facing purpose string explaining clearly and completely why your app needs the data. Starting Spring 2019, all apps submitted to the App Store that access user data will be required to include a purpose string.If you're using external libraries or SDKs, they may reference APIs that require a purpose string. While your app might not use these APIs, a purpose string is still required. You can contact the developer of the library or SDK and request they release a version of their code that doesn't contain the APIs. Learn more (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/core_app/protecting_the_user_s_privacy).

Missing Purpose String in Info.plist File - Your app's code references one or more APIs that access sensitive user data. The app's Info.plist file should contain a NSAppleMusicUsageDescription key with a user-facing purpose string explaining clearly and completely why your app needs the data. Starting Spring 2019, all apps submitted to the App Store that access user data will be required to include a purpose string.If you're using external libraries or SDKs, they may reference APIs that require a purpose string. While your app might not use these APIs, a purpose string is still required. You can contact the developer of the library or SDK and request they release a version of their code that doesn't contain the APIs. Learn more (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/core_app/protecting_the_user_s_privacy).

Missing Purpose String in Info.plist File - Your app's code references one or more APIs that access sensitive user data. The app's Info.plist file should contain a NSMotionUsageDescription key with a user-facing purpose string explaining clearly and completely why your app needs the data. Starting Spring 2019, all apps submitted to the App Store that access user data will be required to include a purpose string.If you're using external libraries or SDKs, they may reference APIs that require a purpose string. While your app might not use these APIs, a purpose string is still required. You can contact the developer of the library or SDK and request they release a version of their code that doesn't contain the APIs. Learn more (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/core_app/protecting_the_user_s_privacy).

Missing Purpose String in Info.plist File - Your app's code references one or more APIs that access sensitive user data. The app's Info.plist file should contain a NSSpeechRecognitionUsageDescription key with a user-facing purpose string explaining clearly and completely why your app needs the data. Starting Spring 2019, all apps submitted to the App Store that access user data will be required to include a purpose string.If you're using external libraries or SDKs, they may reference APIs that require a purpose string. While your app might not use these APIs, a purpose string is still required. You can contact the developer of the library or SDK and request they release a version of their code that doesn't contain the APIs. Learn more (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/core_app/protecting_the_user_s_privacy).

[mvanbeusekom]

@manuelgomes2 have you added the required permissions to your Info.plist file? You can check the Info.plist file of the example app (here) for examples?

[indiluk]

I think at least there should be an information for devs to add the required purpose strings on this Github project.

[rknell]

Yeah this is a bit of a disappointment, the geolocator package uses this package and I need to specify all the permissions.

I don't care about having to specify the permissions - but I do care if Apple starts asking questions about why I need to access apple music for an app that clearly has nothing to do with music.

I think this is a ticking time bomb and should be modularised.

[elricym]

This plugin handles too many permissions which is not necessary for just a geolocator. And it's not a very professional way in production. I'm very grateful for the works of the author but there should be an optimized approach of handling permissions. Or maybe simply integrate a specific permission handler inside of Geolocator. Thank you.

[firsthour]

I agree this project probably needs to be broken up, possibly one permission handler project per permission. I may tinker with ripping out everything not needed for geolocator to function.

[mortenboye]

I had the same issue, and did the quick and dirty fix that @firsthour mentioned.
Here is a fork, where everything but the location permissions are stripped out:
https://github.com/mortenboye/flutter-permission-handler

And here is a fork of geolocator that references the above fork:
https://github.com/mortenboye/flutter-geolocator

It's not pretty but it works.

[mvanbeusekom]

@manuelgomes2, @indiluk, @rknell, @elricym, @firsthour, @mortenboye, I have set out some probes with Google and Apple to see if there is a way to work around this issue. The plugin implements code for all SDKs that require user permissions and therefore the Apple analytics tools think we are actually using all the SDKs in our Apps (which is not the case).

Worst case scenario is that we will convert the Geolocator component back into handling it's own permissions and add a clear disclaimer to this components readme explaining this drawback on iOS.

Hopefully I will receive some useful feedback from Google (Flutter team) and/ or Apple to add some sort of compiler directives or conditional statements which allows us to only include that code/ SDKs that we are actually interested in.

I will follow up on this as soon as possible.

P.S. if any of you have a suggestion I would love to hear it of course.

[smiLLe]

@mvanbeusekom maybe an easy fix would be to update geolocator to use it's own permission handler? And long term would be to make permission-hanler more modular?

[rvera]

👍 on this issue, my app just got rejected because of this. At the very least, make this explicit on the project documentation.

[yvanvds]

👍 on this issue, my app just got rejected because of this. At the very least, make this explicit on the project documentation.

Same here. I wish I had known this when I implemented geolocator, instead of learning about when uploading my app to itunes (which is always the very last step because Android publishing is so much easier). Don't get me wrong: I am very grateful for you people sharing this library. But when you do explain in the docs about the location permissions, it would have helped a lot to mention this problem.

BTW: Waiting for Apple to comment on this mostly useless. They almost never answer. And the flutter team cannot do anything about this. It's been this way with iOS for as long as I know. Either you really use the permission, or you remove the offending code. I really doubt that they are willing to change that 'rule' because of flutter.

[rvera]

👍 on this issue, my app just got rejected because of this. At the very least, make this explicit on the project documentation.

Same here. I wish I had known this when I implemented geolocator, instead of learning about when uploading my app to itunes (which is always the very last step because Android publishing is so much easier). Don't get me wrong: I am very grateful for you people sharing this library. But when you do explain in the docs about the location permissions, it would have helped a lot to mention this problem.

BTW: Waiting for Apple to comment on this mostly useless. They almost never answer. And the flutter team cannot do anything about this. It's been this way with iOS for as long as I know. Either you really use the permission, or you remove the offending code. I really doubt that they are willing to change that 'rule' because of flutter.

@mortenboye made a fork which removes the extra fluff, I forked this and made this Swift 4.2 compatible if you wanna take a took and need a quick solution.

[lifenautjoe]

@baseflowit do you have plans on updating this? It's pretty unusable atm... 🙏

[marilozgz]

Hi, any update?? Apple rejected all the time, all the strings added to plist, but still rejected.

[nabeelof]

@mortenboye your solution seems good for me but how to implement this fork in flutter. I didn't deal with forks before.I have read the readme but there is no different dependencies
Thank you

[mortenboye]

@nabeelof you would have to reference the git repo directly:

dependencies:
  geolocator:
    git: 'git@github.com:mortenboye/flutter-geolocator.git'