App Store Review Delays in 2026: Why the Queue Broke and How Long It Takes Now

Building an app used to take months. Now it can take an afternoon of describing what you want to an AI tool and letting it write, and run, the code. That shift — "vibe coding" — has been good news for a lot of people who never could have shipped software before. It has also flooded Apple's App Store with more submissions than its review process was ever built to handle.

Review times that were reliably under two days for a decade are now stretching into weeks. Developer forums are full of complaints. And a chunk of that complaint is no longer "please review my app faster" — it's "please reject more of these."

What one developer’s data shows

Complaints tell you something is wrong but not how wrong. The developer behind Tensorust logged every review decision on one account, 64 decisions across 21 iPhone apps between 10 September and 12 October 2026, and published the timings:

• Median wait across everything: 73 hours, about three days.
• Updates to live apps: about 64 hours median, from 6 hours to 8.5 days.
• In-app purchases on their own: about 12 hours.
• Only 19% of decisions arrived within 24 hours and 27% within 48, well short of Apple’s 50% and 90%.

The slowest results come with a warning. On 5 October, 11 rejection emails for that account arrived within about 30 seconds of each other, after each app had waited around nine days. They were guideline 4.3 spam rejections: Apple appears to have treated a batch of similar single-purpose apps from a new account as an app factory, which is the author’s own reading. So the longest waits there say more about how Apple handles bulk submissions than about a typical app. The author also stresses it is one account over five weeks.

If you’re stuck in “Waiting for Review”

• Plan for days, not hours. During a backlog, three to ten days is a sensible buffer for a release date, updates included.
• Ask for an expedited review when it’s justified. If you’ve waited more than about a week, or you need to ship a fix for a serious bug, use Contact in App Store Connect and choose the expedited review request. It’s meant for urgent cases, so use it sparingly.
• Answer “Information Needed” fast. In the Tensorust data, requests for more information under guideline 2.1 were the most common first-round response. Every day you take to reply adds to the wait.
• Don’t look like an app factory. Many near-identical apps from one new account can be rejected wholesale as spam under 4.3, after a long wait.
• Ship purchases separately if you can. In-app purchase reviews were much faster than full builds in that dataset.

The numbers

Two very different stories about how bad it is

Apple's official line, given to Business Insider, is that 90% of submissions are still reviewed within 48 hours, with an average review time of about 1.5 days. That's a real number, and for narrow, low-risk updates from established developers it's probably an accurate description.

It's also not what a lot of individual developers are experiencing. One developer told Business Insider he'd been waiting around six weeks for a new app to clear review, with routine updates taking two days to a week. Developer Michael Tsai, tracking his own submissions, reported "Waiting for Review" times in 2026 averaging 2-3 days for iOS and 5-7 days for macOS — up from roughly 1-2 days the year before. Others on the Apple Developer Forums have posted threads titled things like "Long delays in App Review" repeatedly since February 2026, including one case where an app submitted in mid-December sat in "Waiting for Review" for 45 days.

Both things can be true at once: Apple's aggregate numbers may look fine because the median update from an established developer still moves fast, while the tail — new developers, new categories, apps that trip an automated flag — has gotten dramatically worse.

Why Apple's review model doesn't bend easily

Apple's review process was built around a static-build assumption: a developer submits a fixed binary, a reviewer checks it once, and what gets approved is what ships to users. Vibe-coded apps strain that model in two separate ways.

• Volume. More people than ever can produce something that looks like a finished app in a day, and each one still needs a human reviewer's time.
• The static-build assumption itself breaks. Some vibe-coding platforms generate and execute new code inside the app after it's already live — which conflicts directly with Guideline 2.5.2, the rule that apps may not "download, install, or execute code which introduces or changes features or functionality of the app."

Apple has responded to the second problem more aggressively than the first: it pulled the vibe-coding app Anything from the App Store entirely, and blocked further updates to Replit's iOS app and to Vibecode, all citing the same guideline. Notably, Apple isn't opposed to vibe coding as a concept — it's added AI coding tools directly into Xcode. The line it's drawing is between an app being built with AI versus an app that keeps rewriting itself after Apple has already reviewed it.

The mood has shifted from "review my app faster" to "review fewer apps"

What's notable in developer discussions this year isn't just frustration about wait times — it's a growing number of developers openly hoping Apple tightens the gate rather than loosens it. r/SideProject, a subreddit built around people shipping their own apps and tools, has carried this exact frustration from its own members: a post arguing that builders should stop shipping apps nobody actually needs drew hundreds of upvotes and over 400 comments in a matter of days, and a separate post making the same point picked up close to 150 comments within a single day. On Hacker News threads about Apple's crackdown, established developers have gone further still, saying outright that they're glad to see Apple "blocking slop," even where the enforcement catches legitimate tools in the crossfire.

It's an unusual position for a developer community to land in. For most of the App Store's history, the loudest complaints about Apple's review process were about it being too slow, too arbitrary, or too restrictive. In 2026, a meaningful share of that same community — including people building the apps themselves — is asking for more restriction, not less, because the alternative is a storefront where genuinely useful apps get buried under a wave of near-identical, AI-generated submissions with no one behind them to support or maintain them.

Frequently asked questions

What is vibe coding?

Vibe coding is building software by describing what you want in plain language and letting an AI tool generate and run the code, with little or no manual programming. Tools like Cursor, Lovable, Replit, and Vibecode made this mainstream through 2025 and into 2026, letting people with no coding background ship working apps.

How much did App Store submissions actually increase?

According to reporting by The Information, new app submissions rose 84% in a single quarter as vibe coding went mainstream. Sensor Tower separately tracked a 56% year-on-year rise in new iOS app launches in December 2025 and a 54.8% rise in January 2026 — the highest growth rates in four years. Apple's full-year 2025 total reached roughly 557,000 new app submissions, its largest annual wave since 2016.

How much longer is App Store review taking?

Apple says it typically reviews at least 50% of submissions in under 24 hours and 90% in under 48 hours. Since February 2026, developers have repeatedly reported much longer waits, and in October 2026 forum threads described apps stuck in Waiting for Review for around three weeks. Earlier in the year, some developers reported that even bug-fix updates to existing apps were held up. One developer's log of 64 review decisions between 10 September and 12 October 2026 found a median wait of 73 hours, with updates to live apps at about 64 hours. Plan for several days, and longer during a backlog.

Is Apple cracking down on vibe-coded apps?

Yes, selectively. Apple has pulled or blocked updates to apps including Anything, Vibecode, and Replit's iOS app, citing Guideline 2.5.2, which prohibits apps from downloading, installing, or executing code that changes their own functionality after review. Apple's stance isn't anti-vibe-coding in general — it has added AI coding tools to Xcode itself — but it is enforcing the rule against apps that keep generating new code live, after Apple has already reviewed them.

What should I do if my app is stuck in Waiting for Review?

If a submission has been waiting more than about a week, or you need to ship an urgent bug fix, request an expedited review through the Contact option in App Store Connect. Reply quickly to any Information Needed message, since those are common and nothing moves until you answer. Avoid submitting many near-identical apps from a new account, which can be treated as spam under guideline 4.3.

Sources

• The Register: Apple’s App Store review process hits a traffic jam (22 October 2026, updated 27 October)
• Tensorust: 64 App Review decisions, median 73 hours
• PiunikaWeb: developers report iOS app review delays (March 2026)

The September version of this post drew on reporting by Business Insider, The Information and Sensor Tower, as cited in the text. The October update adds the sources above. Wait times change week to week, so treat these figures as a snapshot.

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