Hi everyone,
I am writing this post with the hope that someone from Apple's App Review team, Developer Relations, or the wider developer community can shed some light on what I am experiencing. I have exhausted every official support channel available to me, and I am at a complete loss.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE SITUATION ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I have a v1.0 iOS app that has been stuck in 'Waiting for Review' for 57 days. It has never progressed beyond this status. No rejection. No feedback. No communication. Just silence.
I am not here to complain. I am here because I genuinely do not understand what is happening, and I need guidance.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ TIMELINE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• Day 1 — App submitted for review. Status: 'Waiting for Review.' • Day 22 — No movement. No feedback. Out of frustration, I made the mistake of doing a Developer Reject and resubmitting. I now understand this was the wrong decision, as it likely reset my position in the queue. • Day 27 — Contacted Apple Developer Support. A Senior Advisor confirmed the app was still in review and said they would reach out to the internal review team. • Day 42 — Still no change. Sent a formal follow-up and escalation request. • Day 44 — A second Senior Advisor responded, confirming they had also forwarded the case to the review team. • Day 57 (today) — The app is still in 'Waiting for Review.' Nothing has changed.
Two separate Senior Advisors have each told me they contacted the internal review team. After both of those interactions, nothing changed.
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I want to be clear about something: the app has NEVER entered 'In Review.' It has been in 'Waiting for Review' the entire time. This is not a case of a slow review — it appears the app has never been picked up for review at all.
I have checked Apple's System Status page multiple times throughout these 57 days. All services have consistently shown as fully operational.
I have not resubmitted again after Day 22. I have been patiently waiting, following the advice given to me.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ MY HONEST QUESTIONS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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Is it technically possible for a v1.0 app to be permanently stuck in 'Waiting for Review' without any notification or rejection? Could this be a system or queue issue on Apple's end?
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Is 'Waiting for Review' for 57 days — with no status change and no communication — within the range of what other developers have experienced? I want to understand if this is abnormal.
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When a Senior Advisor says they have 'forwarded the case to the review team,' what does that actually mean in practice? Is there a way to verify this happened or to escalate further?
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Is there a formal escalation path beyond Developer Support — for example, Developer Relations or the App Review Board — for situations where standard support channels have not produced any result after nearly two months?
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Could the app category (social / matching) be the reason for an extended manual review? If Apple requires additional information, documentation, or content moderation policies from developers in certain categories, why is there no notification or communication mechanism to request this?
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I am not asking for my app to bypass the review process. I am not asking to skip the queue. I am not asking for guaranteed approval. I understand Apple's review process exists to protect users, and I fully respect that.
I am simply asking for ONE of two things: — Either: review the app and give me a decision — approval or rejection, both are acceptable. — Or: tell me if there is a problem, a hold, or something you need from me, so I can act on it.
Fifty-seven days of silence, with no path forward, is the one outcome I cannot work with.
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If anyone from Apple is reading this — I am not writing out of anger. I am writing because I am a solo developer who has poured everything into this product, and I am genuinely stuck. I have done everything I was asked to do. I have been patient. I have followed the process.
All I am asking for is a resolution — in any direction.
If there is anything I can provide — demo account credentials, additional documentation, a content moderation policy, privacy details, anything at all — I will provide it within hours of being asked.
Thank you sincerely to anyone who takes the time to read this and share their experience or advice.
— Akif Solo Developer
