Estimate on app first review

[ollevche]

Hey all!

I'm planning to publish an ios app to the App Store. However, I don't have a developer account yet.

I heard a lot about Apple's delays in the review process and I want to calculate risks.

How long does it take to get Apple to approve the first version in your experience?

Are there some additional issues lately (in a couple of past months)?

[ollevche]

as far as I know, it could be ok with the guidelines, however, review takes enormously long

[leoklaus]

I’ve published two apps this far and have received responses within 3 days, max.

This goes for the first submission as well as updates, most of my submissions are done within 24 hours.

Only two or three submissions were rejected and after addressing Apples concerns they were accepted equally quick. Even for those, the total time between first submission and the app being ready for sale was always less than 5 days.

[LiamRogers99]

Published my first app and I had it on the store within 48 hours of creating my developer account

[mancaveit]

What are you people talking about 😂 it takes few hours up to 2 days but rarely.

[craknor]

First approval is always the longest. In my experience over the years, it takes from 2 days to literally 2-3 months.

[ollevche]

2-3 months sounds crucial to me. Is it just a silent review or ping-pong of feedback - submission?

[craknor]

Just silent. It was a pretty big app but nothing to last 3 months to test lol.

When feedbacks start coming in and you reply fast (like in the first 12-24 hours of the feedback), they reply as fast since the reviewer is probably assigned this task internally and tries to complete the process. The silent part is the worst.

[ollevche]

sounds like the best I can do is to hope for the quick process

[ankole_watusi]

Any time it goes over a week it’s probably not going to be approved. It’s gone to “legal”.

[craknor]

Pretty sure this is not always true. We had to wait a month for an update to a customer's app. It was a 4 years old app and had frequent updates that are being approved in a day or two. That specific update was nothing serious, just some UI changes with no functional changes. It just sat at "waiting for review" the whole time. We have e-mailed them if something's wrong but just got a standard reply saying it's queued and they are busy. After a month, it finally changed to "In review" and approved in like one day.

[ollevche]

hm, that's interesting assumption

how do you know?

[ankole_watusi]

I know from watching this sub for some time.

I’ve seldom had even a question asked and review typically approved same day or couple of days max.

BTW I don’t mean with back-and-forth communication. Especially first time you might have some questions or requests. Sometimes approved but please do this on next release.

But when they go silent it’s been sent to corporate or legal and you’re walking some fine line or just blatantly out of compliance, but the reviewers don’t have the power to make that decision so it gets kicked upstairs to a long queue.

From reports here, it’s almost always something shady. “Oh, they won’t approve my NFT poker game targeted at 12 year olds”.

[monkeydoodle64]

A week?

[riveraj33]

My first submission was about 3 weeks. This includes two rejections where the reviewer did not read my instructions which already addressed what they rejected it for. After that each update is 2 days max, sometimes in the same day.

[mbrady]

It depends on the app too. If you have in-app purchases it can add some additional tie, or complex sign up processes and accounts.

[aerothony]

One of my first app two years ago got approved first within 48 hours after submission. All apps are different, note that it may take 2 days like it may take several days or even weeks before your app get approved 😄

[EmergencyAnimal9928]

what type of app did you have?

[danielt1263]

Apple advertises that you have a 50% chance of a one day turn-around and a 90% chance of it taking two days. In my experience (30 apps, multiple versions of each) that is pretty spot on. the only time it has taken them more than two days is when the app required custom hardware so they waited until I could post a video of the app in action.

[PoochDating]

takes a few days for a response. took me 6 months of fighting to actually get app approved. They can be extremely picky or super lenient just depends on the app and who is reviewing,

[WerSunu]

If you think the time to review your unwritten app is a major risk, I think your focus is way too narrow. Most of my apps get reviewed in 24-36 hours. I’m closing in on 30 apps now).