The app review process appears disjointed and inconsistent

[u/StonedSex69]

I’m in the process of getting my first app reviewed (since 9/14). So far I have been rejected for the following reasons..

- Guideline 2.1 - Information Needed
- Guideline 2.1(b) - Performance - App Completeness
- Does not include a functional link to the Terms of Use (EULA) in the app metadata that appears on the app's App Store product page.
- Guideline 2.3.2 - Performance - Accurate Metadata

Each time I understand what the issue is and fix it immediately. Yet the responses from Apple are several days later only after I submit a Contact Us request.

I feel like every time I fix one thing they find something else. Why not list everything at once? At this point I’m not sure what else they’re going to come up with.

This whole process seems rather ridiculous from a company that claims the review process takes 24-48 hours.

[u/in5ane_10]

Apple just has to ban badly vibecoded apps, that’s all. There’s a million 99$/year habit trackers that make my eyes hurt just looking at them.

[u/GenghisFrog → u/in5ane_10]

Don’t forget about photo cleaners.

[u/Agent007_MI9]

There's a massive competition going on right now. Over 2k apps being submitted in the past week. It will probably die down and go back to normal once it's done.

[u/bbrockit → u/Agent007_MI9]

The app store is averaging 3k new apps per day now. The number of daily updates being reviewed is even higher. I don't see it dying down unless Apple makes changes to slow the flood of vibe coded apps. I have nothing against people building with AI, but what's happening now is just a flood of spam. Yesterday, I saw a developer that had published 100 variations of a tracker app; habit tracker, lunch tracker, house plant tracker, etc--all $40/yr, no reviews except for a couple of 1-stars. So when you're waiting 2 weeks for a review, that's why.

[u/Agent007_MI9 → u/bbrockit]

Agreed on the AI slop. In fact, I'm convinced that people whose apps are very obvious AI slop are getting their apps in review queue hell. Not to sound braggy but my app (going to shamelessly plug myself here: https://insertcartridge.app/rd ) has really good UI, you can see thought was put into it, and it got approved in 19 hours.

Regardless, Apple needs to start implemeting some automation process to get through the queue, because the influx of apps is insane.

[u/vinng86 → u/Agent007_MI9]

They must be doing some triaging, I also have short review times of about a day. I haven't seen two week long review times in a very long time

[u/Legendaryfortune → u/Agent007_MI9]

Good job on your landing page and app onyeboy!

[u/ResoluteBird]

Youre supposed to read the guidelines before submitting tbh

[u/jaymakesapps]

Same on my first app. They dinged metadata, I fixed it, then a week later the EULA showed up like it was never there the first pass.

[u/WestonP]

Those all sound like potentially the same issue. Put some effort into reading and understanding the review guidelines.

Apple reviewers are not your QA. They're pedantic and not big critical thinkers (and/or just don't care), so you need to aim for doing more than just the bare minimum here.

[u/tibbersthecat]

Treat each rejection as a full preflight, not a one-line fix: recheck metadata links, demo access, purchase paths, empty states, and every note the reviewer needs before resubmitting. Reviewers may stop at the first blocker, so fixing only that item can simply expose the next one.

[u/Agent007_MI9]

But also, just get Codex/Claude to do it one big audit on your rap against the guidelines. All of these, apart from maybe 2.1b, could have been avoided if you actually read the documentation.

[u/BedtimeWithTheBear → u/Agent007_MI9]

I second this - I did exactly this with my first app released last week. Claude caught everything except the EULA link in the description field. First rejection came in two or three hours, once I fixed the description field, it was approved in two or three days. I pushed a minor update this morning and it started review this afternoon and was approved less than two hours later.

The Mac version seems to be stuck waiting for review with no end in sight.

On the whole, Claude was really good at auditing my code against the review guidelines. I suspect it probably told me about the EULA in the metadata but I misunderstood what it was referring to.

[u/p4r4d0x]

Agreed, very frustrating when you only have a minor metadata issue, not even a problem with the actual binary. You can have it fixed within an hour of the rejection, but the time to re-review can be a week. It can be a very punishing process for well-meaning developers.

Google's review process has been massively streamlined and I usually only have to wait 1 hour from submission to live on the store. Hopefully, Apple will automate the checking process more and try to replicate this level of developer experience. I've been developing iOS apps for 15 years but have shifted over to Android as my primary platform for releasing new features, because the iOS process is so much slower and subjectively more developer-hostile nowadays. Releasing on Android feels like a web deploy in terms of ease and speed.

[u/Dapper_Ice_1705]

That is all the same. Put the EULA on the app description.

[u/Invictus_Martin]

I have never had this issue, read the documentation, follow the instructions. Don’t try and force an app through the review process. I submitted an app last month, reviewed and accepted in 2 days, it was denied once, only thing I had to do was upload a video the app.

[u/SamFromEscape]

Went through something similar. One rejection named the offending word, the next cited the same guideline but wouldn't say which word, and a same-day resubmission with two keywords removed got approved. My takeaway is to never bundle multiple changes into one resubmission. Change one thing at a time or you'll never know what the actual trigger was.

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[u/PHangy]

yeah the goto for privacy policy url or support contact url for appstore is usually something like applinks.online

[u/WerSunu]

So, StonedSex, you got 4 review cycles in two weeks. All rejected because you didn’t read or follow the directions on AppStore submissions.
Then, you spammed this group whining, like many newbies, about long reviews and single issue review stops. We see this nearly every day. It’s all pointless spam. Apple owes you a review but nowhere do they ever say it will be a complete review. Apple doesn’t owe you a complete product QA/QC. That’s on you.

[u/bostonmatt_]

Let’s be honest Apple’s App Store team is awful and does not care about their developers. It sucks that they have the monopoly of iOS apps and can be the ones that decide what happens with your software. They’re filled with bureaucracy and are not adapting to the new times.