Getting Through App Store Review

Review is a real gate

Both stores review submissions. Apple's is stricter and slower; Google's is largely automated with human review for flagged cases. Expect a first review within one to three days on either, and expect at least one round of feedback on a first submission.

It is not adversarial. Reviewers work from published guidelines, and almost every rejection we have received cited a specific rule with a fixable cause.

The rejections we see most

1. The reviewer could not use the app. No demo account, a login requiring a real customer number, a feature behind hardware they do not have.
2. Privacy disclosures do not match behaviour. The listing says no data collected while an analytics SDK collects identifiers.
3. Insufficient functionality. A wrapper around a website, or an app that is a single form.
4. Broken or crashing on their device. Frequently an older device or a locale you did not test.
5. Sign-in requirements. If you offer third-party sign-in on iOS, an equivalent private option is expected.
6. Payment rules. Digital goods sold outside the store's payment system.

The single cheapest thing you can do to pass review is provide a working demo account and a two-line note telling the reviewer where to look.

Preparing the submission properly

• A demo account that works, with data in it, and does not expire
• Reviewer notes explaining anything unusual, in plain language
• Screenshots for every required device size, showing real screens
• A privacy policy at a public URL that matches what the app does
• Data collection declarations completed honestly, SDK by SDK
• Age rating answered accurately

The privacy declarations deserve care

Both stores require you to declare what data you collect and why, and both check it against observed behaviour. The common failure is honest ignorance: an analytics or crash-reporting SDK collects an identifier the client did not know about.

So we inventory every SDK before submission and list exactly what each one sends. It takes an hour and removes the most annoying category of rejection — the one where you have to argue about what your own app does.

Timelines to plan around

Plan two weeks between “the app is finished” and “it is available”. Launching to a fixed date with no buffer is how a marketing campaign ends up pointing at an app that is still in review.

After it is live

Updates go through review too, though they are usually faster. Both stores allow staged rollouts on Android and phased releases on iOS — use them. Releasing to 10% first means a bad build affects a tenth of your users rather than all of them.

Watch crash-free rate for 48 hours after every release. It is the metric that tells you whether to continue the rollout or halt it, and it is available before the reviews start arriving.

Frequently asked questions