Missing NSRemindersUsageDescription but working anyway?

Expo SDK
1

SDK Managed 41

What happens if you don’t add the “NSRemindersUsageDescription” in JSON plist but attempt to get Calendar permissions anyways?

On my end it seems to prompt with a message “App would like to access your calendar.” and it ends up working anyway.

Is this normal? Where exactly might things break bc everything seems to be fine.

2

Hey @tennisbum, while the functionality still works you run the risk of getting rejected by Apple if you don’t customize the usage description. See: Deploying to App Stores - Expo Documentation

Cheers,
Adam

3

Got it.

I added the NSRemindersUsageDescription to the app.json, but I’m waiting until SDK 23 comes out to deploy another release to the app store.

In the meantime I’m just doing an OTA update which allows users to Add an Event to their calendar.

So yes, when I deploy next release to the app store, it will have the NSRemindersUsageDescription.

In the meantime though, I’ll deploy it via OTA so users get the feature.

Are there any problems with this approach @adamjnav ?

4

Maybe someone else knows?

5

My understanding is that the *UsageDescriptions are your custom messages to show when the app wants to access something that the user will be prompted to accept. If you don’t specify a usage description, a default message will just be used instead.

So the only problems are:

  1. Your users get a generic message with no reason given for why your app needs that permission
  2. If Apple somehow notices that your app is requesting that permission without having a custom usage description then they might get upset
6

Thanks @wodin :pray:

Got it…would be awesome to have something like this in documentation for those folks who are in the same position.

They need to add one more usage description, but don’t want to re-submit to the app store yet.

Just M2C

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