Notarization submissions stuck "In Progress" for 24+ hours - new team first submissions

Question

Created 3d

Replies 2

Boosts 0

Participants 2

Hi,

I'm notarizing my Electron macOS app (DMG) for the first time with our new
Developer ID, and most submissions have been stuck in "In Progress" for over 24 hours.

Environment:

Team ID: BSS9KAH6Z2
Certificate: Developer ID Application (valid until 2031)
Tool: xcrun notarytool submit (Xcode CLI)
App: Electron 28, signed with hardened runtime
File: DMG (~131MB), 104 files inside .app

What happened:

Total 19 submissions over the past 24 hours
Only 4 were Accepted (2 DMGs + 2 zips)
The other 15 are still "In Progress" with no log available
The 4 Accepted ones took 1~1.5 hours each
codesign --verify --deep --strict passes with no issues
Accepted submission log shows "issues": null
Apple System Status shows "Developer ID Notary Service: Available"

What I've tried:

Submitting as DMG directly
Submitting as ditto zip of .app
Submitting via electron-builder's built-in notarize
Using both app-specific password and keychain profile auth
Verified entitlements (allow-jit, disable-library-validation)

Since some submissions did get Accepted, I don't think there's an issue with my signing or configuration. Is this expected for first-time submissions
from a new team? Is there anything on Apple's side that needs to be
configured for my team?

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Boost

Answer 1

duals OP

2d

Update: Resolved

The issue was the DMG format. electron-builder on Apple Silicon creates APFS DMGs by default, and Apple's notary service has a known issue with APFS
DMGs (Apple DTS: r. 134264492).

APFS DMG → stuck "In Progress" forever
HFS+ DMG → Accepted in 2 minutes

Fix: create the DMG manually with HFS+ instead of letting electron-builder
create it with APFS.

hdiutil create -size 500m -fs HFS+ -volname "MyApp" /tmp/temp.dmg hdiutil attach /tmp/temp.dmg -readwrite cp -R "MyApp.app" "/Volumes/MyApp/" ln -s /Applications "/Volumes/MyApp/Applications"
hdiutil detach "/Volumes/MyApp" hdiutil convert /tmp/temp.dmg -format UDZO -o MyApp.dmg
xcrun notarytool submit MyApp.dmg --keychain-profile "profile" --wait
xcrun stapler staple MyApp.dmg

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Answer 2

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

20h

I’m glad you got this sorted, but I don’t think that this is the right explanation:

Apple's notary service has a known issue with APFS DMGs (Apple DTS: r. 134264492).

The notary service should be able to handle both APFS and HFS Plus just fine. That bug, which I mentioned on this thread, doesn’t affect APFS. Rather, it was caused by the developer submitting a UDF disk image. The fix was… well… to not do that.

I suspect you were actually being routed to the “in-depth analysis” path — I’ve included my standard explanation of that below — and your resubmission as HFS Plus just happen to coincide with that state being cleared.

If you want to confirm this, you could revert back to APFS and see if you continue to have problems.

Or not, because there’s nothing wrong with shipping an HFS Plus disk image.

But if you do run this test, please let me know how you get along because I’m super curious.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

You can expect that most uploads will be notarised quickly. Occasionally, some uploads are held for in-depth analysis and may take longer to complete. As you notarise your apps, the system will learn how to recognise them, and you should see fewer delays.

For lots of additional info about notarisation, see Notarisation Resources. Specifically, it links to a Q&A with the notary service team that’s quite instructive.

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