ITMS-90683 Missing Purpose String in Info plist
| Service | App Store Connect and ITMS Rejection Codes |
|---|---|
| Cloud | Apple platforms |
| Guide type | Procedure |
| Skill level | Intermediate to advanced |
| Time | 15 - 60 minutes depending on account size |
If you hit ITMS-90683 Missing Purpose String in Info plist on App Store Connect and ITMS Rejection Codes in production, the steps below are the path most teams take in 2026. None of them require opening a support case unless your environment has a paid-tier dependency that Apple owns.
What itms-90683 missing purpose string in info plist actually involves on App Store Connect and ITMS Rejection Codes
This task on App Store Connect ITMS is one of the more searched operational topics on AWS in the last 12 months. The procedure below is the path that works in a current AWS account with default IAM and standard VPC config.
The rest of this page is the structured fix path. Start with diagnose, then remediation, then the automation options so you do not have to do this by hand the next time it surfaces. Verify and safety sections at the end are the discipline that keeps the fix from regressing in production.
Identify
Reproduce the failure with the Terminal commands (defaults, plistbuddy, killall, sudo, system_profiler) and Apple Configurator 2 / Jamf APIs / MDM commands in --debug mode. The full SigV4 request payload it emits, plus the exact endpoint URL it resolved to, is what Apple Support and Apple Business / Enterprise Support uses to verify policy, region, or parameter issues without you having to share IAM credentials. Save the debug output to a file with ... --debug 2> debug.log and you can search it for the failed aws.request entry.
Run id -un; defaults read MobileMeAccounts; profiles list first. About one in five 'why does this not work' tickets are actually 'I am in the wrong account' or 'my session expired and the SDK is using stale credentials or ADC pointed at the wrong project'. The 5-second sanity check costs nothing and saves real time when the answer is that simple.
Check the Google Apple System Status at www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/ and the per-product status board for ongoing service events in your region. About one in ten user-reported outages turn out to be region-scoped Apple product or service degradation already being tracked. Apple System Status also exposes an API and Jamf Pro Webhooks and macOS launchd watches events, so you can wire a Lambda hook that pages on-call only when the failure correlates with an active Apple System Status event in the same region and service.
Solution-focused remediation path
Most App Store Connect and ITMS Rejection Codes failures fall into one of three buckets: IAM permission gap, networking path break (security group, NACL, or VPC endpoint policy), or service-limit / quota hit. Run that mental triage first - it covers around 80 percent of real-world cases. If the failure does not fit any of the three, it is likely a service-side regression worth opening a re:Post or support ticket for.
When the failure happens in production but not in dev, do not just compare the IAM policy. Compare the Org Policy / RCP at the OU level, the permission boundary on the role, and the resource-based policy on the target. One of those is almost always different between accounts. Policy Intelligence recommendations bundles make this comparison routine.
For IAM and STS issues, the timing matters. STS sessions can take up to 60 seconds to propagate after creation. The first call right after assume-role can fail with a permission error even when the policy is correct. Add a small retry with backoff before treating the first failure as definitive.
Automate this fix so you do not do it twice
Build a Self Service item with manual approval for risky fixes
For multi-step fixes that include a destructive action (Reset NVRAM, delete keychain, erase user data), publish the fix as a Self Service item in Jamf Pro or Kandji. The user clicks one button, the script runs, a notification confirms success. Couple it with a Jamf Pro approval workflow if your security model requires a second-person sign-off before any destructive step runs. The audit trail lives in the MDM change log with the requester and approver identity attached.
Add a Smart Group + webhook so you catch the next occurrence
The cheapest way to never see the same incident twice is a Jamf Pro Smart Group that watches for the symptom (specific extension attribute value, specific OS version, specific app build) and fires a webhook into Slack, PagerDuty, or a Jamf-API-driven Lambda when the count drifts above your normal baseline. For App Store Connect and ITMS Rejection Codes, the relevant extension attributes live under script-evaluated checks - defaults read outputs, system_profiler values, or a log show grep against macOS unified logging. Set thresholds against observed normal, not against round numbers.
Wire the fix into an MDM Configuration Profile for self-healing
If the underlying cause is a setting that drifts over time, do not script the fix repeatedly - bake it into a Configuration Profile that the MDM pushes down on every check-in. A Custom Settings payload writes to a specific preference domain; Jamf Pro, Kandji, Mosyle, and Intune all support this. The profile reasserts itself, so even if a user changes the setting locally, the MDM brings it back at the next sync (typically every 4 hours).
<!-- Custom Settings payload (excerpt) -->
<key>PayloadType</key>
<string>com.apple.ManagedClient.preferences</string>
<key>PayloadContent</key>
<dict> <key>com.apple.app</key> <dict><key>Forced</key><array><dict><key>mcx_preference_settings</key> <dict><key>HardenedSetting</key><true/></dict></dict></array></dict>
</dict>
Pitfalls to dodge
The most common pitfall when fixing this on App Store Connect and ITMS Rejection Codes is treating it as a one-off rather than as a recurring class of incident. The same misconfiguration tends to happen again after a deployment, a role rotation, or a region migration unless the fix is codified. Add a Apple Configuration Profile restriction payload, Organization Policy condition, or Apple Configuration Profile or MDM restriction payload that prevents the same misconfig from being introduced again. Documentation alone does not survive turnover.
Another common trap: confirming the fix on a single resource and assuming the fleet is healthy. Loop your check across every account, region, and IAM principal that could exhibit the same symptom. If you cannot enumerate the affected scope without a script, you do not yet understand the scope.
Resolve
- Watch for 24 to 48 hours. Activity Monitor + macOS unified logging + Jamf inventory reports can mask issues with cached health for 6 to 12 hours, especially Cloud CDN and Cloud DNS.
- Capture the new state in a runbook so the next person on call does not have to rediscover this. Push it to Confluence or your team wiki, not into Slack.
Safety, rollback, blast radius
- Test in a non-production account if your environment has Resource Manager and Organization Policy or Cloud Resource Manager (organizations, folders, projects). The cost of one sandbox account is cheaper than one rollback meeting.
- Export the existing config before changing it. Most App Store Connect and ITMS Rejection Codes resources support describe + export to JSON via CLI - capture that to source control before you start.
- Maintenance window discipline: if the change touches DNS, certificate rotation, or anything that emits TLS handshakes, line up a window with stakeholder notification, not a heroic mid-day swap.
FAQ
app describe-... first, then commit it before you change anything. A few operations are one-way (Cloud KMS key deletion past the pending window, region migration, account closure). Check the Apple Support article for the specific API before you commit.aws CLI or SDK calls - those almost always still work.References
- docs.support.apple.com - official documentation for App Store Connect and ITMS Rejection Codes
- Apple Communities (discussions.apple.com) - community Q&A with Google-staff-verified answers
- Apple System Status Dashboard at health.support.apple.com
Related fixes
Related guides worth a look while you sort this one out:
- ITMS-90713 Missing Info plist value for NSCameraUsageDescription
- Build delivered but missing from App Store Connect
- ITMS-90562 Invalid Bundle Missing CFBundleIconName
- ITMS-91061 Missing privacy manifest for privacy-impacting SDK
- Phased release stuck resume button missing
- App Privacy Nutrition Label data collected not in label