Unlike Google, Apple does not pull your app from the store for being old. The constraint arrives the moment you want to publish something. Since 28 April 2026, every app uploaded to App Store Connect must be built with Xcode 26 and an SDK for iOS 26, iPadOS 26, tvOS 26, visionOS 26 or watchOS 26.
Put another way: an app untouched since spring 2026 cannot ship even a small fix without an upgrade first.
The real work is not Xcode, it is the design
Recompiling with the iOS 26 SDK does more than change the toolbox. Standard components adopt the new iOS 26 look automatically, and it shows: bars, tabs, fields and sheets, everything the system used to draw, take on the new appearance. An app whose interface was designed around the old components can end up with screens that are correct on paper and awkward in the hand.
Apple left a release valve: a key you can add to the app's configuration to ask for the previous look. It is explicitly temporary, and Apple states it will be ignored by the next generation of SDKs. That is a year of grace, not a solution.
For planning, the useful split is this: the technical upgrade takes a few days, and the screen-by-screen review usually takes longer, especially in apps full of forms and lists.
The other rule, the one people forget
Apple also reviews apps that sit still. Apps that have not been updated in more than three years and that fall below a minimal download threshold over a rolling twelve months receive a notice of possible removal. When an issue is raised, the developer has 90 days to submit an update or the app comes down. An app that crashes on launch is removed immediately, with no grace period.
So an app with steady installs is not at risk because of its age. A quiet, frozen app is.
Where to start
In the order I work through an app I am seeing for the first time:
- check it still builds, on a clean machine, with current certificates and profiles;
- move up Xcode and the SDK, and fix what breaks in the dependencies;
- run it on a recent iPhone and walk the main screens with the new look;
- decide, screen by screen, what gets fixed now and what waits for the next redesign;
- ship, then watch crashes for the following few days.
Step 3 is the one people skip and regret.
If you want help
I take this kind of upgrade end to end, on iOS and Android, including publishing and a plain report of what changed. The dates and rules are summarised on the store compliance page. If the question is broader than compliance, the five-day health check tells you the real state of the app.
Official sources: Apple's upcoming requirements, the UIDesignRequiresCompatibility key and App Store Improvements.