AI Apps Are Flooding the App Store: Plan at Least Three Weeks for Review

Releasing an iOS app today takes far more time than it used to, and nerves of steel.

Over the past eight years I have taken a fair number of apps through Apple’s App Store review, but what I am seeing right now is new. My new app helps non-native speakers in international teams with asynchronous communication in English, and it has been waiting almost two weeks for Apple’s green light.

I am used to getting feedback on a first submission within about two days. Apple would not be Apple if the first attempt did not always turn up something that needs rework. Usually it stays at one feedback loop, and after that I can publish.

What I am seeing now is different. A few observations:

1. iOS apps wait much longer for review than they used to. The reason is of course the flood of AI-generated apps that Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex made possible. Apple does not seem to have grown its review teams to match.
2. Review capacity seems to differ by platform: while my iOS app twiddles its thumbs in the waiting room, the macOS side has enough time to reject my app three times.
3. Why does an app get rejected three times? Some reviews seem to stop at the first finding, so further problems only surface in later rounds. Understandable enough, even though I have always seen this kind of feedback loop inside a company as a major productivity blocker.
4. The same guidelines get read differently. What leads to a rejection on iOS gets a green light on macOS. That is expected noise between individual reviewers. The thing is, when the wait has grown to several times what it was in 2022, that noise hurts a lot more.

I am glad there is a platform where only apps that made it through a human review process get published. I still believe this process keeps app quality from falling through the floor.

Even so, you have to be aware of what generative AI does to these review processes. I have to admit I underestimated it a bit.

I used to advise companies to plan for “a good week” of back and forth with Apple’s review. Today I would say the buffer should realistically be at least three weeks, at least based on my current experience and for non-trivial apps, so anything beyond to-do lists, habit trackers, and calorie counters.