Safe Area Compliance

Skill: Safe Area Compliance

Purpose

Detects unsafe safe-area overrides and hardcoded inset values that hide content behind the Dynamic Island, notch, or home indicator, violating Apple's Human Interface Guidelines for adaptive layout.

Apple Guideline

• Primary: HIG — Adaptivity and Layout (Apple Human Interface Guidelines)
• Related: 2.1
• Reference: references/hig/adaptive-layout.md

Real-World Rejection Cases

• Case: Content hidden behind Dynamic Island on iPhone 14 Pro and later

Source: Apple Developer Forums Root cause: View used .edgesIgnoringSafeArea(.all) without compensating insets, pushing interactive controls into the Dynamic Island cutout area.

• Case: Bottom navigation buttons unreachable behind home indicator

Source: App Store Connect rejection feedback Root cause: Tab bar and custom buttons were positioned at y = screenHeight - 49 — correct for notchless iPhones but obscured by the home indicator on Face ID devices.

• Case: Developer hardcoded top: 44 inset — broke on devices with different safe areas

Source: Apple Developer Forums Root cause: The status-bar height is not a fixed constant; devices with Dynamic Island, notch, or no notch all have different top safe-area values.

Trigger

Invoke on any iOS project that targets iPhone or iPad to verify safe-area insets are respected.

Inputs

| Name | Type | Default | Description | |------|------|---------|-------------| | project_root | path | cwd | iOS/macOS project root | | shared_context | object | nil | Pre-collected context from appstore-full-audit Phase 1 |

Actions

Phase 1: Context Collection

Skip this phase if shared_context is provided.

1. Glob **/*.swift — collect Swift source files.
2. Glob **/*.m — collect Objective-C source files.
3. Glob **/*.storyboard and **/*.xib — note Interface Builder files for manual safe-area review.

Phase 2: Checks

1. Full safe-area suppression (SwiftUI)

Grep pattern \.edgesIgnoringSafeArea\(\.all\) in **/*.swift Every match → 🟠 HIGH. Suppressing all safe-area insets risks content being clipped by hardware features on any device.

1. Zero-inset layout (UIKit)

Grep pattern UIEdgeInsets\.zero in **/*.swift and **/*.m Review each match for proximity to layout constraint setup. When used to zero out system-defined safe-area insets → 🟠 HIGH.

1. Hardcoded safe-area constants

Grep pattern top:\s*44|bottom:\s*34|bottom:\s*83 in **/*.swift and **/*.m Every match → 🟠 HIGH. These magic numbers match specific device safe-area heights and will be wrong on other hardware.

1. Unscoped ignoresSafeArea (SwiftUI)

Grep pattern ignoresSafeArea\(\) in **/*.swift Flag calls that do not include .keyboard as the region argument → 🟡 MEDIUM. Scoping to .keyboard is the safe pattern; bare ignoresSafeArea() suppresses all regions.

Phase 3: Output

Collect all findings from Phase 2 and build the prioritised findings list below. Include file paths and line numbers. Omit tiers with no findings.

Output Format

## Safe Area Compliance — Findings

### 🔴 CRITICAL — Guaranteed rejection
- [ ] TODO:  — `file:line` — HIG Adaptivity

### 🟠 HIGH — Very likely rejection
- [ ] TODO:  — `file:line` — HIG Adaptivity

### 🟡 MEDIUM — Possible rejection
- [ ] TODO:  — `file:line`

### 🟢 LOW — Best practice
- [ ] TODO: 

Tools Used

Glob, Grep, Read

Constraints

• Read-only. No file edits.
• No network calls.
• Skip Phase 1 if shared_context is provided by orchestrating agent.
• Works on Swift, Objective-C, React Native, Flutter projects.

Quick Commands

Run these in your project root to check manually:

# Check for unsafe safe area overrides
!grep -rn "edgesIgnoringSafeArea\|ignoresSafeArea\|UIEdgeInsets\.zero" . --include="*.swift"

# Check for hardcoded inset values (44=nav bar, 34=home indicator)
!grep -rn "top:.*44\|bottom:.*34\|bottom:.*83" . --include="*.swift"

Swift Anti-Pattern Reference

examples/swift/LayoutPatterns.swift

Detection Steps

1. Find target files

• Glob: **/*.swift, **/*.m, **/*.storyboard, **/*.xib

1. Search for rejection patterns

• Grep edgesForExtendedLayout = \[\] — disables safe area extension
• Grep UIEdgeInsets(top: 0\|UIEdgeInsets(top: 20\|UIEdgeInsets(top: 44 — hardcoded status bar height
• Grep frame\.origin\.y = 0\|frame\.origin\.y = 20\|frame\.origin\.y = 44 — hardcoded Y origin
• Grep safeAreaInsets\|safeAreaLayoutGuide — correct safe area handling (absence is the problem)

1. Determine verdict

• Hardcoded top: 20 or top: 44 insets → 🟠 HIGH (content hidden behind Dynamic Island)
• edgesForExtendedLayout = [] without safe area compensation → 🟠 HIGH
• safeAreaLayoutGuide used throughout → 🟢 pass

1. Report

• File path + line of hardcoded inset
• Fix: Replace hardcoded insets with view.safeAreaInsets.top; use safeAreaLayoutGuide anchors in Auto Layout

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: cruisediary
• Source: cruisediary/apple-app-review-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.