I'm partly to blame. I accidentally ran an illegal unregulated money transference service over Google Play.

It let users cash out their Google Play Credits for real cash, which I automatically wired them.

Someone then hacked in to a major bookstore chain, stole piles of Google Play Gift cards, activated them using their access, and used my app to get cash for them.

Luckily, the whole thing blew up on me before I got in serious trouble, rightfully so, and the app was removed by Google, then an investigation followed. A ton of copycat apps popped up immediately after, then a few months months later Google announced their app review process.

With Signal, the biggest issue we have is that review times are extremely inconsistent. Sometimes it's 4 hours, sometimes it's 5 days, and there's no visibility as to why. Our working theory is that there's automated and manual queues, and occasionally, for whatever reason, we fall into the manual queue. But when you work on an app that has weekly updates, randomly getting hit with a review time of several days really throws off your groove. And it can obviously be terrible for moments where you're fixing a critical issue.

By the way, the same is happening for the Apple Store.

Their review process is advocated as usually within 24 hours (and heavily advertised by Apple as such, see https://developer.apple.com/distribute/app-review/) and it is taking now much longer.

In the last month, I had to go through the review process twice, and twice I needed to contact them personally after waiting for 1 week of waiting. It did however helped, after every human contact I was reviewed within a few hours.

I got this explanation from them...

> We are currently experiencing a higher-than-normal amount of inquiries and have been unable to respond in the time frame that we would prefer. During these periods of high volume, the app review time will take longer than average, and we cannot currently provide a concrete timeline for when your specific app(s) will be finished with the process

I'm guessing, AI slots invading the store.

My tool is used by 1 million people a day https://www.photopea.com

This is the reason I never made a mobile version and all mobile users use it in a browser.

The biggest problem (bug) with this approach is that iOS limits the RAM usage to 2 GB per website. I have to tell many of my users to ditch their $1000 iPads and get a used $150 Macbook for better experience.

I think Apple does it on purpose https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=268816

AnkiDroid (~17 years old) submitted our latest alpha on Sept 03, 2026, 4:40 am. Still pending review.

I just released a game [1] on both iOS and Android.

The Google Play process is more thorough. There are a lot of steps and you need to clear them one by one. This means waiting several days between each step. The Play Console dashboard is quite well documented to be honest but can be overwhelming. The main obstacle is that you need to find at least 12 testers to play your game for 2 weeks straight. I ended up paying a service to test my app.

On iOS, the process is a bit more obscure. It's fairly easy to submit an app, but then you don't really know what's happening. You can only see a status like "Pending review". And then one day, you are approved.

Overall, the iOS process felt easier for me. As long as your build succeeds and you provide the correct information, your game can be live within a week. The Android process took more than a month in total.

[1] https://jgthms.com/hopera/

Some reviews are clearly automated, some get a light human review, and some involve a human really looking hard. New apps seem to get a more rigorous human review for their first 2-4 submissions. Or at least humans looking over automated test screenshots etc. One reviewer apparently only looked at screenshots because they missed something that would be blindingly obvious on the prior screen if they did it themselves.

The explosion in LLM app development has clearly created a bottleneck at the human review steps. Not only delays but much more “dumb” rejections from likely over-stressed humans.

Yeap latest CoMaps update took ~16 days to review (the longest wait for us so far) and two support tickets (submitted first after ~9 days and got "we have expedited it", 5 days later still in review, so submitted one more ticket).

Before that we had a hotfix update (a very small change) and still it took longer than a week and a support ticket (after which it had been approved in a day)...

Our app includes Android Auto, which I think is what causes it for us. Submitted 4 Sept, still in review.

Was only 48-72 hours until this year, where it randomly jumped to 2 weeks or longer like it still is.

It's really frustrating, and makes it very difficult to develop with, let alone reliably release features across platforms.

Maybe I'm just incredibly lucky, but my reviews on Google Play take roughly an hour and appear to be entirely automated. My initial review was about a week, but everything after that has been 1hr. My Apple reviews are still around a day and my initial review was one month. The Google process is painless and is almost as easy as a web deploy, the Apple process feels much less certain that it will go smoothly and Apple actually regularly opens the app even months after release. This is presumably to check for problematic UGC, but feels rather unnerving.

MAYBE operating systems shouldn't have gatekeepers which can deny access to billions of customers for any and no reason at all. Apple and Google are WELL past due for regulation in this space. The fact that we cannot download and install software from the internet onto our phones JUST like we can do with our computers is a symbol of our inept and ineffective politicians.

And before someone says "well akshully you can technically do it on Android," Google has been working tirelessly to make it as onerous as possible for both developers and customers. For example, users need to separately authorise each app (browser, files manager, alternative store, etc) to install an APK from outside the Play Store. Google also does background scans using "Play Protect" which will periodically delete apps Google doesn't approve of. This happened to me with SmartTubeNext. I have a dozen other ways Google ensures users are discouraged from stepping outside the Play Store.

The Google Play review process has been slower and more painful than the App Store review process for 5+ years at this point. At least you get to communicate with real people at Apple; it’s all bot-driven with Google.

Strong argument in favor of web vs native apps. If you need bluetooth on iOS checkout the web bluetooth iOS safari extension i've been working on recently: https://beacio.com

If you know how many get rich quick guru online are teaching people vibes code and submit apps and faceshift to other apps later, you won’t be surprised the App Store model is no longer sustainable.

F-Droid's great but their build queue has had multi week waits too, difference is you can see exactly where your build is stuck instead of guessing.

Yea I noticed that as well. Even longer than Apple's.

FYI Samsung's is even worse.. 6-8 weeks. Hope you get it right the first time you submit your app.

I submitted Signage Sync (https://signagesync.app) last year, still on my third review. Fingers crossed:)

I just pulled a PWA app off the app store and I am going to keep it a pure PWA. It's installable, offline-first. I know I feel like I'm swimming against the current but I would love people to try to push for awareness of PWA installs more.

FWIW, this has not been my experience. Google Play usually approves within 24 hours for me still. Apple has been taking over a week though.

When Shopify announced their shift from React Native, this is actually what was on top of mind for me. Week+ delays for critical bugfixes is insane. Being able to patch things with OTA updates is tablestakes at this point.

I think inconsistency is really annoying. Hard to rely on it. Most of our reviews clear with a couple hours, but sometimes it gets stuck for days.

Not sure how it works behind the scene, but our app (present on the store since 2018) is taking a couple hours at best with Google, and usually less than 24h with Apple.

Very much likely an automated triage based on code change or complexity.

Making Android apps was my introduction to publishing software. I remember in ~2011-2012 you could upload an APK and it would be published immediately and the Android Market had a "New" page which was just a chronological feed of recently published or updated apps. Just uploading your app update was an easy way to get ~500 free downloads which I found very exciting.

At the time I couldn't imagine paying $99 for an Apple Developer account and waiting a week to publish my app...

Could this be partly caused by the explosion of AI-assisted app development?

It feels like almost anyone can now build an app and get something publishable within a few days. If the number of submissions has grown significantly, it would make sense that the Play Store review queue is getting longer.

AI may have made building the app much faster, while unintentionally making the final step slower for everyone.

Personally, I think the review process should prioritize updates to apps that have already been published for a long time over completely new apps or apps that were only submitted recently. At least that would make it less painful for established apps waiting for a routine update to get through the review process.

Why do people still want to make Google more powerful? I don't get it. Legislation must allow for break up of monopolies such as google play.

I started coding around 2013, picked up a book, learned Java and started building Android apps. It was fun at the time, and pretty painless to get your app in the store.

Fast forward to last year, with all the rage about coding tools, I got into building small projects again, and built a simple app. After a decade from posting my last app on Google Play I resurrected my account, and started going through the process of publishing an app today... And how awful things got!

Back then it was essentially, title, description, upload your Apk and some screenshots and you're done! Now there are reviews, privacy policy, endless amount of forms and information you need to fill out. I get why (some) things are the way they are today, but when you just want to make an app for fun, getting it out there just feels like work. I gave up on the app, made it into a website, and in the end it actually felt better (and so much easier).

This is one part where it should really just be done by AI for 99% of the cases. Just have a security focused AI model that is biased towards flagging things a bit more conservatively.

Only apps that get flagged by the AI reviewer then have to go through a separate, slower human review process.

Longer than an average App Store review (which is heavily criticized for being too long)? Hilarious

I've noticed this

Google Play is regularly slower now than App Store Connect, which never used to be the case

The google review process is the best advertising for f-droid there could ever be.

I've published hundreds of apps over the past 6 years and Google's review times had a similar spike during covid. It took a very long time to recover but now it's back to being bad, I can confirm that.

I wrote about it a while ago, might be time to upsate that post. https://webtoapp.design/blog/time-to-publish-apps

We push updates for our app pretty frequently and they've been passing review in an average time of 1 hour (around 7 updates in the last 60 days). Hope it stays that way.

Still trying to get a Play Store page with stats onto my AI Impact page, but if their numbers are anything like Apple's (and they're likely much higher), then it's a tough life for them right now:

https://vester.si/ai-impact/appstore/

Meanwhile, the Web is ever more powerful. But now Android and iOS users expect to find things in the App store only.

I just submitted an open source android passive income app [0]. It's been two weeks and I'm still waiting. It's my first app though.

[0]: https://github.com/proxybasehq/proxybase-gui

This is a big part of why React Native (and especially EAS) is still my preferred native development platform. The ability to ship OTA updates directly without depending on platform reviews & rollout schedules is a killer feature I'm not sure I could live without.

Can confirm. Took about 8 days for my last app update, and about 5 or 6 for the Play Store listing update.

As someone new to the app publishing world I am surprised at how strict the requirements are, given the absolute dross you can find published.

We should write more web apps, more PWAs and have some sort of a way to distribute those without proprietary app stores. It's true not every mobile app can be a web app, but for a lot of cases web apps work great.

In fact, I'd support Google with this policies if they'd also take full accountability if my phone gets hacked. Do they? No, so it's unfair and a bad authoritarian way to create another walled garden.

I think that the app targeting Android Auto should be pointed out. Google Play reviews are mostly automated and it shouldn't take more than a few hours. Android Auto is heavily curated for good reasons.

Everyone that ingests code is seeing an order of magnitude more of it thanks to LLMs, even existing apps are producing more updates. It's the same sort of thing github keeps failing to keep up with.

For all the complaining about Apple's store, the Play Store has always been worse imo. You can't even release an app without first doing a beta test with at least a dozen people.

Anecdata: I've pushed out dozens of small code fixes to My PlayHome Plus over the past month and none of them took more than a few hours to be reviewed.

This will only change once a new player rises. We live in a world full of blind consumers that won't look out of the Google and Apple walled gardens.

Huh.

On the flip side, googles release infra provides much more functionality for apps that already has scale. I wish apple were more production oriented too.

I know this is quite the controversial idea. But I'd personally love a fee per app, just to counter spam, say 100usd/app.

The joy of a world with a duopoly reigning over a strategic core market We're really into the South Park cliché: Anal douche or Shit Sandwich.

I wish regulators across the world did something about this, but even Europe shy attempts aren't moving the market in a better direction.

It's depressing to see a company that thrived from the open internet becoming such an evil piece of cyberpunk lore. I mean... Nobody really expected Apple to care about anything else than its bottom line. But I'm not alone to have had hopes about Google.

When I die, I think not fighting Google when it was still time will be one of the regrets I'll drag into my grave.

Our app rarely takes longer than a day, but it doesn't have Android Auto support so maybe that's the difference?

If developers want to get the same processing speed, are we ready to pay as much as we pay for Apple App Store?

Interestingly, I published a completely new app yesterday, and it was reviewed and published in less than 2 hours.

I just updated 2 dormant apps for the first time in 10 years; It took 2 days, and the apps were approved on a sunday.

Depends on how trusted account/apps are. I have some old apps that are reviewed in 2-3 hours every time

In the opposite, Google Chrome extensions are now reviewed in a few hours, sometimes less than one hour.

You would think that with the AGI that these companies are hyping the review happens in minutes. Weird.

A public FTP server is next app store.

This isn't my experience. My updates usually get accepted within hours. Apple takes days usually.

IMO/IME (as former mobile developer) mobile app development is obliterated.

This is fight for big dogs now.

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Strange. I had an app the other day approved in hours on Google 15 days on Apple.

I haven't pushed an update since June, but this has not been my recent experience...

A week-plus review queue basically kills any chance of a quick hotfix for a free app.

yo, it was usually taking two hours max..now i released two ios verosions while android one still under review.. w.t.f google

Stop deploying software onto closed platforms. There's no excuse.

That's quick. The Slack App review takes 10+ weeks.

yeah my 'promptly AI' alarm clock almost always spends 7 days, as soon as the binary changes, even descriptions changes take several days

Sometimes several weeks in my recent submissions.

Now, let's compare with "google friendly" apps: https://www.apkmirror.com/uploads/?appcategory=youtube :)

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Apple's App Review has also been slipping over the past few months. I have multiple apps that have taken days, up to a week to be approved.

What's most galling is that if you use CapacitorJS or similar you can ship app updates instantly to your users but if you write native first-class OS citizen apps you are penalized.

There is nothing quite so annoying as having a fix for a bug people are running into and have zero control over when it will get out to them.

Google's review is complete horseshit. It has been darkly funny to watch them try to compete with Apple by adding strict review (way stricter than Apple's) and still terrible applications make it in while legitimate ones have trouble.

Just go back to the way it was before, and scan the apps with static analysis tools. This security theater is stupid and always was (for Apple and Google).

Same happened for CoMaps (which unfortunately does not have 12+ years of presence going for it)

not my experience... I have most updates go through in <24h.

> AI is becoming part of how people experience the web every day. We want to make sure that doesn’t mean people are chained to one company’s self-serving pipeline.

Ah yes, the extremely diverse offering of OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, and Mistral (a fake "euro" chatbot). Mozilla is truly a "people's" company.

Sounds like a clear "find another store" message to me.

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I'm not familiar with this space (new to Android), could someone explain why there hasn't been additional "app stores" appear that people can use?

I hope someone will sue the ever-loving shit out of Apple when their foot dragging prevents a critical update from going out in time to prevent a 0-day from being widely exploited.

Why can't you wait for a week? That doesn't sound like a long time.

For new accounts yes, for older accounts it's much faster in my experience.

Apple has it's own issues, they often just answer with a random question so they can kick the review down the line. "Are you sure this is your pricing?" "Can you confifrm you have not selected that country" and then you have to wait another 2 days.