ITMS-90809: Deprecated API Usage -- Apple will stop accepting submissions of apps that use UIWebView APIs

Question

Yesterday, I uploaded my App to TestFlight and after a while Apple sent me this warning:

ITMS-90809: Deprecated API Usage - Apple will stop accepting submissions of apps that use UIWebView APIs . See https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiwebview for more information.

The thing is that I don't use UIWebView in my app so I tried to update my pods but still the same thing.By the way this is my 3rd build on TestFlight and this is the first time apple sends me this. Any ideas?

Update

These are my pods:

pod 'Firebase/Core'
pod 'Firebase/Firestore'
pod 'Firebase/MLVision'
pod 'Firebase/MLVisionTextModel'
pod 'SVProgressHUD'
pod 'SPPermission/Camera'
pod 'SPPermission/PhotoLibrary'
pod 'Mantis'
pod 'SwiftKeychainWrapper'
pod 'SwiftyOnboard'
pod 'Fabric'
pod 'Crashlytics'

Update 2

Seems like I found the frameworks with the issue.

Binary file ./Pods/FirebaseMLCommon/Frameworks/FirebaseMLCommon.framework/FirebaseMLCommon matches
Binary file ./Pods/Crashlytics/iOS/Crashlytics.framework/Crashlytics matches
Binary file ./Pods/GoogleMobileVision/Detector/Frameworks/GoogleMobileVision.framework/GoogleMobileVision matches

So now do I have to wait for google to fix them and update my pods?

Solution 1

I will answer my own question as I have news about this email. Google told me that there are several tickets about this issue and they are going to resolve this as soon as possible. Also today my app has been approved for the AppStore so it seems to be just a warning for the time being.

Solution 2

Check if you use in your code the UIWebView class; if yes replace your implementation with WKWebView, else need check your Pods.

Go with terminal into your project folder and execute the command: grep -r "UIWebView" .

All matched pod must be updated. Now I'm stuck because I found UIWebView into Google AdMob (version 7.49.0) and I'm waiting a new version from Google.

Solution 3

You can examine each of the frameworks in the archived app to see if any of them refer to UIWebView. From the command line, cd to the archived app, e.g.:

cd ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/Archives/<date>/myapp.xcarchive/Products/Applications/myapp.app

Once there, use the nm command to dump the symbols of your app and each of the app's frameworks:

nm myapp | grep UIWeb
for framework in Frameworks/*.framework; do
  fname=$(basename $framework .framework)
  echo $fname
  nm $framework/$fname | grep UIWeb
done

This will at least tell you which framework is the culprit.

Solution 4

For project with cocoapods:

grep -r UIWebView Pods/ 

Solution 5

WKWebView is the replacement for UIWebView. If you don't have UIWebView usage in your code than by executing the below terminal command you can easily get to know that which library is still using UIWebView reference (don't miss the . (dot)).

From the command line, cd to the archived app, e.g

cd ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/Archives/<date>/myapp.xcarchive/Products/Applications/myapp.app

And then Run

grep -r UIWebView

OR call

 grep -r UIWebView /Path/To/Project/*

This will give you Output for framework match

./<ANY>.framework/Headers/ANY.h:#define ANYUseUIWebView ANY_NAME_PASTE(ANY_PREFIX_NAME, ANYUseUIWebView)

Output for library match

Binary file ./<FRAMEWORK-NAME>.framework/<LIB-FILE>.a matches

Update these Libraries

pod update

also check out this Medium Article

View more solutions

Comments

[Nick]

Thank you for your answer it helped a lot. I will update my question with further informations.

[Nick]

So now the only thing I can do is to wait for google to resolve the issues?

[Rudedog]

Yes, you will need to wait (or fix them yourself and submit a pull request). I’m not sure what the exact deadline is to remove all uses of UIWebView, but I highly doubt that it will be before iOS 13 is released this fall.

[johnny]

@Rudedog how can I fix the frame works my self? First of all thank you for your answer... after following your answer it seems like I have 4 frameworks that are using UIWebView>>>>>> Alamofire Cosmos NMSSH Stripe

[Rudedog]

@johnny you would have to clone each repository and find out where they use UIWebView, remove or replace the code that uses it, and possibly submit pull requests if you want your changes to go back into the main repository. Or, you could just wait for the maintainers to fix it themselves. As I mentioned before, right now Apple is just warning devs about this and not actually rejecting binaries, so you have some time to wait for the upstream maintainers to fix things.

[Myxtic]

This is brilliant! I know it doesn't solve the issue, but it at least helps identify the problematic framework.

[Durai Amuthan.H]

When I entered the command in terminal , I'm getting the following warning "grep: warning: recursive search of stdin" and It doesn't return any response even after 30 mins.Any ideas ?

[Jules Lee]

So this is what I did and apparently it says Installing FirebaseInstanceID 4.2.5 (was 4.2.2) and didnt solve my problem

[Stoph]

I have a mixed native / React Native app and although this grep script doesn't reveal any UIWebView instances I'm still getting the warning from Apple. Is there any other way for me to determine where this issue might be coming from?

[Rudedog]

It might be in a dsym and not a framework. Try the grep -rl UIWebView . command as suggested below.

[apollosoftware.org]

Worked perfectly. I used this to find out UnityAds.framework is using UIWebView. They need to update to WKWebView.

[ShaoJen Chen]

Maybe you will get result like below.. Binary file /Users/xxx/xxxx/xxxx.xcworkspace/xcuserdata/xxx.xcuserdatad/‌​UserInterfaceState.x‌​cuserstate matches. I solved it by delete my xcworkspace and pod install again.

[10623169]

Do you still get this @WilliamNardo? Even though I've updated past the supposed release to fix it: "7.55.0 Removed all references to UIWebView. UIWebView is no longer supported.", Installing Google-Mobile-Ads-SDK 7.56.0 (was 7.53.1) , I still get Binary file Pods/Google-Mobile-Ads-SDK/Frameworks/GoogleMobileAdsFramewo‌​rk-Current/GoogleMob‌​ileAds.framework/Goo‌​gleMobileAds matches

[Wheelie]

@DuraiAmuthan.H check you added the period/full-stop (.) at the end of the grep command. I initially made the same mistake

[mohsinulhaq]

I get the following output when I run nm myapp | grep UIWeb: U _OBJC_CLASS_$_UIWebView But what does it mean? I can't find the reference when normally searching through code

[Akash Sharma]

I have updated all UIWebViews to WKWebView. I also updated all pods in the projects. When I globally search for UIWebView, then it shows no result. Also, I used the command "nm myapp | grep UIWeb ...... done " and it shows no pods with UIWebView. But still, the iOS app does not appear on iTunes account activity. It was removed by Apple. Does anyone have any idea why the app is removed?

[Rudedog]

It is unlikely that the app was removed due to use of UIWebView. While Apple has said that they won't accept submissions that use it, they've never said that they would be proactively removing apps from the store for using it.

[Akash Sharma]

Sorry for the misunderstanding. Apple removed the build, not the live app. On running command it show: "Binary file ./dSYMs/Eureka.framework.dSYM/Contents/Resources/DWARF/Eurek‌​a matches". Is it fine or we have to change?

[Jacksonkr]

That covers ios apps but doesn't help android or other mobile apps.

[Manish]

use "grep -r -F "UIWebView" ." istead of "grep -r UIWebView"

[Carolus]

How to execute that for loop in this answer? Do I need to make a bash script file? I tried to add backslash on each line before newline in bash prompt, but this didn't work for me.

[Rudedog]

@Carolus bash (and ksh, sh, csh, etc.) lets you input that directly in the terminal exactly as you see it. No need to add backslashes or anything like that.

[Carolus]

@Rudedog Ah so it is intended that the nm myapp | grep UIWeb runs separately from the for loop? Also I made a mistake by attributing the error I got (lack of Frameworks dir, possibly due to being a Cordova project archive) to a syntax error.

[slothstronaut]

This is an iOS specific issue, Android does not have the same issue

[Vins]

In Mac use "grep -r UIWebView ." in project path (with space and point at the end)

[Dinesh Rawat]

Hi can you direct to some solution, I am also facing the same issue. App is not approving even after so may hit and trials..

[Carl Hung]

i saw "U _OBJC_CLASS_$_UIWebView" and a list of pod dependencies. but i cant find "UIWebView" in the source Code in those dependencies. what does it mean?

[Sunil Targe]

Already upgraded all pods those were using UIWebView (e.g AFNetworking, ZDCChat) and also checked updated pods as they're already upgraded for WKWebView but still grep -r UIWebView . gives me same pod list for UIWebView matches and apple also gives warning while submitting app on the iTunesconnect

[Sunil Targe]

./Pods/Target Support Files/AFNetworking/AFNetworking-umbrella.h:#import "UIWebView+AFNetworking.h" Binary file ./Pods/ZDCChat/ZDCChatAPI.framework/ZDCChatAPI matches Binary file ./Pods/ZDCChat/ZDCChat.framework/ZDCChat matches Binary file ./Pods/.git/index matches

[Jawad Ali]

ZDCChatAPI this pod uses uiwebview

[Sunil Targe]

@jawadAli any solution on that?

[David Velarde]

I want to buy you a beer

[Ash]

This seems to be giving me a LOT of false positives, despite me not being able to find a reference to UIWebView in any of them.

[Renascent]

@DuraiAmuthan.H go to project folder in ternminal try: grep -r -F "UIWebView" . with full stop at end which indicates current directory and it will return all the UIWebView location in terminal.

[user9088454]

I tried this but not working.

[user9088454]

I tried this too, but not working.

[Hiti3]

and what is the solution here? just printed out inside comments, should comments be removed for to solve the issue?