By March 2025, the question of why builds were sitting in App Review for over a week had moved from a private complaint to a recurring thread on r/iOSProgramming and r/iosdev. Independent developers, agency teams, and AI-tool builders all reported the same pattern: submissions accepted in App Store Connect, then nothing for seven to fourteen days, with no email, no progress signal, and no movement on the system status page.
Short answer
In March 2025, App Store review times on Reddit and the Apple Developer Forums spiked from the historical 24 hour baseline to a range of 7 to 14 days, with a few cases stretching past three weeks. The pattern continued through 2025 and resurfaced in early 2026, with developer threads citing waits of 10 to 20 days. The probable driver was a surge of AI-assisted and no-code submissions, alongside stable reviewer capacity. The accepted next step, per Apple's own engineers in the developer forums, is a Feedback Assistant ticket and an expedited review request when the delay affects a release window.
What you should know
- The 24 hour baseline is historical, not contractual. Apple has published lines like "an average of 90% of submissions are reviewed in less than 24 hours" but the App Review page is not a service level agreement.
- March 2025 was not isolated. Similar Reddit and forum waves appeared in February 2026 and March 2026, with the same shape of complaints.
- AI-coded submissions are part of the story. App Store submissions rose noticeably through late 2024 and 2025, while public reviewer counts did not change.
- The system status page rarely flags the slowdown. During the worst windows, developer.apple.com/system-status showed green while hundreds of developers reported stuck builds.
- Expedited review still works for some cases. Apple's expedited request channel is documented, and developers continue to report partial success for critical fixes.
- Feedback Assistant is the only documented escalation channel. Apple engineers in the forums consistently route developers there for cases past 7 days.
What did Reddit actually say about App Store review times in March 2025?
In March 2025, threads on r/iOSProgramming and r/iosdev shared a common shape. A developer would submit a build, see Waiting for Review for 48 hours, refresh App Store Connect on day three, and still see nothing. Comments piled in confirming the same window. Indie founders reported builds stuck for 10 to 14 days; agency developers reported similar waits for routine version bumps. The patterns reported by developers, treated as directional rather than confirmed, lined up with parallel threads on the Apple Developer Forums on App Review running into multiple weeks, where multiple submitters described nearly identical timelines.
The Reddit cycle in March 2025 was significant because it preceded a louder version of the same complaint about a year later. By February and March 2026, the Apple Developer Forums thread on unusually long Waiting for Review delays gathered dozens of developers logging waits of 8 to 20 days, with one case at 45 days. The March 2025 wave is now the canonical reference point in those later threads, because it was the first time the slowdown appeared in coordinated public reporting on Reddit.
How long was a normal review supposed to take?
The plain Apple line is that most apps are reviewed quickly. Apple has stated on its App Review page and in periodic press updates that on average, 90% of submissions are reviewed in less than 24 hours, with an average review time near one to two days. The wording matters. It is an average, not a guarantee, and it covers a wide pool, from minor metadata updates to brand-new apps with complex permissions.
The independent counter-evidence comes from third-party dashboards. The Live App Store and TestFlight review times dashboard published by Runway uses a truncated mean over real submissions from teams that opt in. Its historical traces in late 2024 and early 2025 showed median waits below 24 hours for most weeks, with occasional spikes. Developers comparing their own waits to the Runway line tend to see when their case is an outlier inside a healthy queue, or part of a wider backlog.
Why did review queues stretch in March 2025?
The honest answer is that Apple does not publish the internal cause, so any explanation is inferred. Three patterns dominate the public reports.
The first is submission volume. Late 2024 and early 2025 saw a clear rise in AI-assisted and no-code app submissions, including apps built with Claude, Cursor, FlutterFlow, and Bubble. These submissions arrived faster than reviewer capacity adjusted, and many tripped Guideline 4.2 (Minimum Functionality) or Guideline 4.3 (Spam) checks, which require human review attention rather than automated processing.
The second is reviewer triage for borderline cases. Apps with AI image generation, on-device LLMs, or content moderation features tend to land in a slower lane because the App Review team has to evaluate them against multiple guidelines (4.2, 4.3, 5.1 on privacy, and the developer-content rules). A queue with more borderline cases has a longer tail.
The third is incident-class backend behavior in App Store Connect itself, which has produced multi-day Processing and Waiting for Review stalls during specific windows in both 2025 and 2026, often with no system status flag.
How do Reddit reported waits compare to Apple's stated baseline?
| Window | Apple's stated baseline | Reddit and forum reports |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-2025 typical week | Most apps under 24 hours | Most apps under 24 hours |
| March 2025 spike | Same (unchanged) | 7 to 14 days, some past 20 |
| Mid 2025 | Same | Mixed: many under 48 hours, occasional weeks |
| February to March 2026 | Same | 7 to 21 days, with cases past 30 |
| New apps with AI features (any period) | Same | Frequently in the 10 to 30 day band |
How do developers shorten the wait now?
The first move is to confirm that the build is genuinely in Waiting for Review and not in a separate stuck state. Missing Compliance, Invalid Binary, and Developer Action Required look superficially similar in the TestFlight tab. The fix paths differ. Only an actual Waiting for Review state benefits from an expedited request or a Feedback Assistant ticket.
The second move is to remove avoidable friction from the build before it ever reaches the queue. Hardcoded API keys, exposed Supabase service-role tokens, missing Privacy Manifest entries for SDKs on Apple's required-reason list, and incomplete Data Safety equivalents on the Android side are all surfaces that a slow human reviewer will pause on. Builders who scan their compiled IPA against OWASP MASVS controls before upload tend to enter the queue with fewer items that prolong the review. PTKD.com (https://ptkd.com) is one of the platforms focused on running this kind of OWASP MASVS pre-submission scan on AI-coded and no-code app builds, which moves a class of would-be reviewer pauses to the local pre-flight stage.
The third move is to make the build itself less ambiguous. Apps that fail Guideline 4.2 because they wrap a website, or fail 4.3 because they look like a template, sit in slower lanes. Adding native features and submitting a specific, accurate App Privacy declaration helps the reviewer finish in a single pass.
What about expedited review and Feedback Assistant?
Expedited review is a documented channel and is granted for critical bug fixes, time-sensitive issues (regulatory changes, partner launches, security patches), and certain compliance windows. The request form sits inside App Store Connect under Contact Us. Apple does not commit to a turnaround, and approval is at its discretion, but developers in the March 2025 and March 2026 threads reported partial success when the justification was specific.
Feedback Assistant is the other channel. Apple's App Review engineers, in multiple developer forum replies through 2025 and 2026, ask developers stuck past 7 days to file a ticket with the bundle identifier, the build number, the upload timestamp in UTC, and screenshots of the App Store Connect status. The ticket rarely produces an instant fix; it gives Apple's engineering side a correlated case to investigate. Filing a Feedback Assistant ticket and posting the ticket number into an existing forum thread is the closest thing to a documented escalation path.
What to watch out for
- Do not assume Reddit waits represent your case. A specific build can clear in 12 hours while neighbors in the same category sit for a week. Treat the public threads as range, not prediction.
- Do not submit a second build on top of a stuck one without reason. Unlike Processing, where a fresh build number often helps, submitting a new build mid Waiting for Review can reset your position in the queue.
- Do not chase status updates in App Store Connect every hour. No new signal arrives faster than email or the dashboard refresh.
- Do not write reviewer-facing notes that sound defensive. Calm, specific Review Notes (test account, deep link to test screen, expected behavior) shorten human-review time when the reviewer finally picks up the build.
- The myth that submitting at midnight Cupertino time speeds up review. App Review staffing rotates globally; there is no documented quiet window.
- The myth that bumping the marketing version helps. Only the build number identifier is meaningful for queue position. Pushing 1.0.1 into the queue when there is no real change can trigger more guidelines (release notes review, what is new copy).
Key takeaways
- March 2025 Reddit threads captured the first widely shared App Review slowdown of the AI-app era, with reported waits of 7 to 14 days against an Apple-stated 24 hour average.
- The same shape returned in early 2026, suggesting the pattern is structural to submission volume and reviewer capacity rather than a single incident.
- Expedited review and Feedback Assistant are the two documented levers; neither is a guarantee, but both are worth using when a delay touches a release window.
- The fastest practical move is to reduce reviewer friction before upload: clean Privacy Manifest, accurate App Privacy answers, no hardcoded secrets, no template-looking surfaces.
- For teams shipping AI-coded or no-code builds where reviewer pauses often start with API keys, missing required-reason entries, or weak storage controls, scanning the compiled IPA against OWASP MASVS using a platform such as PTKD.com (https://ptkd.com) catches a class of issues that otherwise add days to the queue.
