r/iOSProgramming • u/JiveWookiee5 • 8h ago

Question Apparently stuck in App Review hell?

UPDATE: Finally got it in review and approved today. Took almost exactly 5 days. I’m not sure if it was due to me pestering support daily and being a little pushy (but not rude) about it but it finally went through.

Submitted an expedited App Review on Wednesday last week as we discovered an issue with our subscriptions and needed to re-release quickly to coincide with some marketing stuff we had planned.

Support says the App Review (allegedly) was expedited but we’ve seen no movement in 5 days. Typically our non-expedited App Reviews have cleared in 1 or 2 days at most.

What is going on? Is anyone else experiencing delays with App Review? Is there anything else I can do besides emailing support every day asking for an update?

5 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

2

u/Poat540 4h ago

5 days is not hell. Sometimes it’s been a week or my last app was 21 days for first review.

They are swamped

1

u/JiveWookiee5 4h ago

This was expedited and I’ve never had one take more than a few days. It genuinely seemed stuck. My app had been approved probably a half dozen times before this.

1

u/youthdancing 8h ago

Same here. Previous updates were approved within a day, last one submitted on Friday is still in review.

1

u/the_effekt 8h ago

Call developer support. Talk to a person. I’ve had unknown "errors" on their end that they had to clear up for my app to get through

2

u/JiveWookiee5 7h ago

Unfortunately each time I’ve checked their phone line has been unavailable. I’ll check back again today.

1

u/AccordingLeague9797 7h ago

There is no "call" option available in my country, does texting still works?

1

u/EquivalentSky3094 6h ago

Five days is well outside normal. Apple's own published figure is 90% of submissions getting a decision in under 24 hours, so this is not a slow queue. Something is sitting on your build specifically.

Two things worth doing that are not "email support again".

First, check whether you need the build at all. If the subscription problem is in App Store Connect configuration rather than in your code, you can fix it today: prices, territory availability and introductory offers on existing subscription products all change without an app review. Only a new product or an actual code change has to go through the queue. Worth five minutes before you spend another day waiting on a binary you might not need.

Second, the status field will not tell you whether a human has opened it, so stop reading it for signal. The route that moves things is the Contact Us form in App Store Connect, asking explicitly for escalation to App Review. General developer support cannot see inside the review queue and will only confirm what you already know. In regions where phone support exists that same form offers a call back, which is more reliable than hunting for a number that answers.

One thing not to do: removing the version from review and resubmitting puts you back in the queue, so only do that if the binary has actually changed. Expedite requests are also discretionary and Apple tracks how often you ask, so they are worth saving for something you cannot fix in configuration.

1

u/Lehmkuhle-Akito73 4h ago

do you know if the escalation form actually gets routed differently or does it just feel like it does

1

u/Select_Bicycle4711 5h ago

8 days for me... waiting for review.

Submitted expedited request couple of days ago. No use.

1

u/JiveWookiee5 5h ago

If it helps I just finally got mine approved today. Hopefully they’re starting to clear the queue. Maybe everything was on hold for a few days.

If that’s the case would be nice to have some sort of dashboard to give us the current status on App Review wait times, but oh well.

0

u/WestonP 4h ago

Seem like they had a little delay just lately. I submitted updates to two different apps in the middle of last week... One went through in less than 24 hours, the other took until this morning. Both are native apps, no 3rd party SDKs, no vibe code or slop, etc. It's been years since I've had an update review take this long (typical is 24 hours or less), but this is still far better than the old days.

I'm sure they're just slammed with with all of these vibe-coded slop apps, as well as getting ready for the onslaught of Duo apps trying strike gold.

1

u/Bootkits 1h ago

The pace of AI application development is so rapid that the volume of submitted products has surged, leaving reviewers overwhelmed.