The content rights question has two answers, and neither of them asks for paperwork.
Content Rights is a required field on the App Information page in App Store Connect, and it takes one of two values. Apple's own API names them: DOES_NOT_USE_THIRD_PARTY_CONTENT and USES_THIRD_PARTY_CONTENT. You say yes if your app contains, shows or accesses third-party content, and Apple asks you to upload nothing when you do. The rule it enforces is App Review Guideline 5.2, Intellectual Property, where two sub-sections end with the same line: authorization must be provided upon request. Every figure and quotation below comes from Apple's own pages, read on 21 October 2026. Most people find this field while reading about app store rejection rates.
What follows is the exact sentence Apple publishes about the field, the only page where the two answers are written down, what a yes commits you to, and the guideline the field points at without naming it. One thing to brace for: App Store Connect Help has no article about content rights at all.
Start hereThe short version
A yes costs you nothing today and everything if you cannot prove it.
The field is a declaration. Nothing is submitted with it. You pick one of two values and save the page. Apple does not ask for a licence, a contract or a screenshot at that point, and no help article tells you to send one. The thing that bites later is the sentence in the guidelines: authorization must be provided upon request. Request can mean during review, and it can mean months after the app is live.
The real work sits behind the field. You have to know what in your app came from somewhere else, and hold the permission for each of those things somewhere you can reach in a day. If you cannot do that for a piece of content, the honest move is to take the content out before you answer.
What is the content rights question in App Store Connect?
It is one line on the App Information page, and Apple documents it in one sentence. The App Store Connect Help reference for app information lists Content Rights among the properties shared across every platform an app ships on, and says this: apps that contain, show, or access third-party content must have all the necessary rights to that content or be otherwise permitted to use it under the laws of each App Store country or region in which they are available. That is the whole entry, read on 21 October 2026, plus a link to the guidelines.
Three verbs do the work there. Contain, show, and access. People repeat that trio when they describe the question, and in this case the repetition is right: those are Apple's words, not a paraphrase that drifted. The scope is wider than copyright. Contain covers a sound effect inside the bundle, show covers a logo you render on a screen, and access covers an API call to someone else's service where nothing ships inside your app at all.
Two details come from Apple's own tables rather than its prose. The Required, localizable, and editable properties reference ticks Content Rights in the Required column, and leaves both the Localized and the Editable columns blank. That page opens by saying its tables indicate the properties that can be localized and edited at any time without submitting a new version of your app, so the blank Editable column means something specific. The version level Copyright line in the table below it does carry that tick, which is how you know the columns are not just decoration.
Getting to the field is the easy part. Apple's View and edit app information page gives the route: in Apps, select the app, then click App Information under General in the sidebar to reach the properties shared across platforms, then click Save. It names the required role as Account Holder, Admin, App Manager or Marketing, and it tells you to click the question mark next to a field to learn more. That question mark is where the wording of the question lives, which is why no public page quotes it.
App Store Connect Help, App information, read 21 October 2026
Check yours
What is third-party content in your app
Tick what your app contains, shows or accesses. The tick or cross says whether Apple's own pages address that case, read on 21 October 2026.
Nothing ticked. An app built only from material you made yourself is the case Apple's no answer describes.
What are the two answers, and where does Apple list them?
There are exactly two, and they are written down in a place most people never open. The App Store Connect API reference for App.Attributes, at developer.apple.com/documentation/appstoreconnectapi/app/attributes, lists a property called contentRightsDeclaration. It is a string, and its allowed values are DOES_NOT_USE_THIRD_PARTY_CONTENT and USES_THIRD_PARTY_CONTENT. Read on 21 October 2026. No third value, no mixed option, nothing for an app that is halfway.
The silence around that property is worth noticing. On the same page, Apple writes a line of explanation for bundleId, name, primaryLocale and sku. contentRightsDeclaration gets the two values and nothing else. So the API will tell you the shape of the answer and refuses to help you choose it, which is a fair summary of Apple's position on this field everywhere else too.
The field is also not part of creating the app record. Apple's Add a new app page walks through the New App dialog, the platform choice, the developer name option, User Access and the Create button, and never mentions content rights. The app lands in Prepare for Submission, and from there you edit app information. The app information reference says some properties are set when you add the app to your account and others are edited later based on the app's status, without saying which group this one is in.
One warning about searching for this. App Store Connect Help has no article on content rights. Its contents list carried 261 articles on 21 October 2026, covering everything from Game Center leaderboards to the Core Technology Fee, and not one of them has the word rights in its address. The only coverage is the property table quoted above. If a page claims to walk you through a content rights questionnaire with several steps, it is describing a screen Apple does not document.
What does Apple ask for when you answer yes?
Nothing, at the time. This is the part people brace for and it never arrives. There is no upload control, no document request and no second form. The Submit an app page and the Overview of submitting for review page, both read on 21 October 2026, do not mention content rights anywhere in their steps. You pick the value, you save, and the submission goes through.
The obligation is real, it just arrives by a different door. In the App Review Guidelines, 5.2.2 says that if your app uses, accesses, monetizes access to, or displays content from a third-party service, you must be specifically permitted to do so under that service's terms of use, and then: authorization must be provided upon request. 5.2.3, on audio and video downloading, ends with the same sentence. No deadline is attached to the word request, and no format is specified for the authorization.
So where do you put the detail if you want to get ahead of it? The only documented channel is the version level Notes field, which Apple's platform version information reference describes as additional information about your app that can help during the review process. It holds up to 4000 bytes and takes any language, read on 21 October 2026. Apple's description of the field is about testing your app, so licence detail there is a courtesy rather than a requirement. It is still better than a reviewer guessing.
If a rejection does cite 5.2 and you believe your licence covers you, the answer is evidence rather than a second submission. Reply in App Store Connect with the authorization, and if the decision stands you can appeal app store rejection to the App Review Board. A rights rejection is one of the few kinds where a document ends the argument.
Which guideline sits behind the content rights answer?
Section 5.2, Intellectual Property. Apple does not say that beside the field. The Learn more link on the Content Rights entry goes to the App Review Guidelines index with no section anchor, so the number is something you have to work out. 5.2 opens plainly: make sure your app only includes content that you created or that you have a license to use, and your app may be removed if you have stepped over the line and used content without permission. The guidelines page was last updated on 16 October 2026.
Under it sit the sub-sections that decide real cases. 5.2.1 is the general rule, and it carries the line that matters for anyone shipping an app for a client: apps should be submitted by the person or legal entity that owns or has licensed the intellectual property and other relevant rights. 5.2.2 covers third-party sites and services. 5.2.3 covers saving, converting or downloading media from sources such as Apple Music, YouTube, SoundCloud or Vimeo without explicit authorization. 5.2.5 covers Apple's own products, and it is the one that quietly bans Apple emoji in apps, extensions, third-party keyboards and sticker packs.
Section 5.2 is also not where most apps die. The rejections that arrive in volume come from section 4, which is why guideline 4 3 spam rejection and minimum functionality rejection are worth reading before you worry about rights. A wrong content rights answer is a problem you can usually fix with a document. A 4.3 or 4.2 rejection is a problem with the app.
One more sub-section is worth your time if other people put things into your app. Guideline 1.2 asks apps that let users create, generate, upload or share content for four things: a method for filtering objectionable material, a mechanism to report offensive content with timely responses, the ability to block abusive users, and published contact information so users can reach you. Apple never says whether user uploads make the content rights answer a yes. That is a real gap in the documentation. The pages where it would sit are the app information reference and the help contents list, and it is on neither.
Apple, App Store Review Guidelines, last updated 16 October 2026, read 21 October 2026
Every fact on this page, and the Apple page it came from
| The question | What Apple says | Where it says it |
|---|---|---|
| What the field is for | Apps that contain, show, or access third-party content must have all the necessary rights to that content or be otherwise permitted to use it under the laws of each App Store country or region | App Store Connect Help, App information |
| The possible answers | Two values, DOES_NOT_USE_THIRD_PARTY_CONTENT and USES_THIRD_PARTY_CONTENT, with no description attached to either | App Store Connect API, App.Attributes |
| Whether it is required | Ticked in the Required column | App Store Connect Help, Required, localizable, and editable properties |
| Whether you can change it at any time | Not ticked in the Editable column, which that page defines as edited at any time without submitting a new version | App Store Connect Help, Required, localizable, and editable properties |
| What to upload when you answer yes | No upload step on any page. The help contents list 261 articles and not one is about content rights | App Store Connect Help contents, read 21 October 2026 |
| What you must be able to produce | Authorization, upon request | App Review Guidelines 5.2.2 and 5.2.3 |
| The guideline named beside the field | None. The Learn more link points at the guidelines index with no section anchor | App Store Connect Help, App information |
Where this lands if a builder generated your app
The answer is yours to give, because the submission is yours to make. Guideline 4.2.6 says apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected unless they are submitted directly by the provider of the app's content, and that such services should not submit apps on behalf of their clients. 5.2.1 says the same thing from the other side: apps should be submitted by the entity that owns or has licensed the rights. Both lines put the content rights declaration in the hands of whoever owns the content.
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What that means for this field is simple. A generated app starts with your words, your screens and whatever you asked for, so there is usually nothing third party in it on day one. Then you add a font, a map, an icon set, a sports feed or a music clip, and the answer changes. Keep a note of each addition and where it came from while you are building, because that note is the thing you will be asked for, and reconstructing it a year later from a git history is miserable work.
Questions people ask about content rights
It is a required property called Content Rights, set once for the app rather than per version. Apple's App Store Connect Help describes it in a single sentence: apps that contain, show, or access third-party content must have all the necessary rights to that content or be otherwise permitted to use it under the laws of each App Store country or region in which they are available. The field sits on the App Information page under General in the sidebar. Apple's help says editing that page needs the Account Holder, Admin, App Manager or Marketing role. Read on 21 October 2026.
Build it, then write down where every piece came from
One list, kept as you go: each font, image, feed and sound, and who said you could use it. The content rights field then takes ten seconds, and a request for authorization takes an afternoon instead of a week.
Start building