Notary service: submissions stuck "In Progress" for days, never completing

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.

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

Thanks Quinn, this is really helpful. I went through the notary service Q&A and it lines up with what I'm seeing, a new app from a new Developer ID getting extra evaluation while the system builds a profile of it. That makes sense.

One practical question. Several of my submissions are now held at "In Progress" anywhere from about 73 hours up to over 106 hours (more than four days) without completing. A couple of others did go through and came back Accepted, so I know the signing and credentials are good. For the ones held this long, should I expect them to finish on their own eventually, or is it better to stop waiting on those and just keep submitting updated versions so newer uploads can go through as the system learns my app?

Mostly want to make sure I'm not sitting on submissions that are effectively stuck. Happy to share the specific submission IDs if that helps. Thanks again.

For the ones held this long, should I expect them to finish on their own eventually

Yes. Quoting that Q&A I mentioned:

rest assured that we’ve received your file and will complete the analysis, though it may take longer than usual

or is it better to stop waiting on those and just keep submitting updated versions so newer uploads can go through as the system learns my app?

Again, the Q&A has advice on this front:

if you’ve made changes to your app while a prior upload has been delayed, it’s fine to upload a new build.

So, if you’re making genuine progress on your app it’s fine to submit your new builds, but I wouldn’t bother submitting new requests for the same, or very similar, builds.

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

Hey Quinn, a status update since it's now been over a week.

Since June 2 I've submitted 17 times. 2 came back Accepted. 13 are still stuck at "In Progress" with no terminal state. The oldest has been sitting around 234 hours now (June 2), there's a group from June 3 at about 200 hours, and another from June 6 at 130-plus hours. The two newest are from today so I'm not counting those.

Same as before, the signing checks out on all of them, codesign --verify --deep --strict passes, hardened runtime with a secure timestamp, no get-task-allow, Developer ID, and the DMGs are signed before submission. One thing I noticed: it doesn't seem to be architecture or format specific. One of the two that went through was an x64 DMG, but other x64 DMGs from the same builds are among the stuck ones, with identical signing. So it really looks like the service is just not processing most of what I send.

Here are the stuck submission IDs, oldest first, in case they help:

a4a00bca-8c8a-470e-b5e8-cd12502166e0, Jun 2 c7d6a78c-eb77-42f3-bcac-bee5c45087ce, Jun 2 17231cbb-f3d7-4515-a332-3412aa9383eb, Jun 2 03a9f77a-b9e6-4c87-a248-578d0ed658a4, Jun 2 b0370f43-d853-40db-8baa-fde0802c0d15, Jun 3 86cea307-bf66-4e96-bc74-425f9c628fa9, Jun 3 06870927-c658-4eca-abce-abcbf03b9e05, Jun 3 a501ba81-1f40-439b-8317-4fb836cd6d92, Jun 6 fedfb6c6-0816-4f9d-916d-d6444207a2d8, Jun 6 865404c2-0986-48d4-8c76-f82886549d70, Jun 6 a6d39244-0d08-4ae6-84ba-8a91d8f294d9, Jun 6 beb2e92a-4141-438d-af92-4215cd221579, Jun 7 e7a4fc67-8e44-456c-887b-f3132ab16f36, Jun 7

I get from the Q&A that held submissions should complete eventually, and I'm not trying to rush the new-account evaluation, but ten days with no movement on the oldest ones is past the point where waiting feels right, and it's holding up a shipping app. Is there any way to get these specific IDs looked at on the back end, rather than waiting them out further? FB22939442 is still open and so is my Developer Support case.

Thanks again your help and happy to provide any more details!

Hmmmm, sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner here. WWDC punched a huge hole in my schedule. Are you still stuck? If so, am I right in saying that:

• a4a00bca-8c8a-470e-b5e8-cd12502166e0 is your oldest stuck request?
• And it was created on Jun 2?

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

No worries at all, thanks for circling back. Yes, still stuck unfortunately.

You're right: a4a00bca-8c8a-470e-b5e8-cd12502166e0 is the oldest, created June 2 and it's now been "In Progress" about 16 days.

Since we last spoke I've made meaningful progress on the build, and I'm now at the point of launching. Notarization is the one and only blocker left before I can distribute. I'm at 23 submissions total since June 2: 2 Accepted, 21 still stuck "In Progress," none reaching a terminal state. Same signing throughout, and the 2 that passed confirm the setup is fine.

My latest build is 1.6.2 (June 17), and it's stuck along with everything else:

9b1f37c6-8333-4689-bd17-7b485bd407dd — 1.6.2, Jun 17 9ab65288-64f5-433c-8a2f-0b6cc7908106 — 1.6.2 arm64, Jun 17 826d5318-211e-4253-9d81-fdd46efe8e8b — 1.6.1, Jun 16 8b9c2b0e-3fa0-4578-ae7e-4ef21e7eb9d9 — 1.6.1 arm64, Jun 16 So a4a00bca is the oldest, but 1.6.2 is the current release I'm trying to ship. Happy to send the full list of all 21 if helpful. Anything that gets these moving would unblock the launch.

Appreciate the help!

Hmmm, something weird is happening here. Please run this command and post the results here:

% xcrun notarytool info <CREDENTIALS> 78990d4c-dd2c-43fb-a599-00f5806c3a58
Successfully received submission info
  createdDate: 2021-12-29T10:59:11.813Z
  id: 78990d4c-dd2c-43fb-a599-00f5806c3a58
  name: QProcessDock.zip
  status: Accepted

Make sure to replace <CREDENTIALS> with your credentials and my request UUID (78990d4c-dd2c-43fb-a599-00f5806c3a58) with yours (a4a00bca-8c8a-470e-b5e8-cd12502166e0).

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

Here's what I see

% xcrun notarytool info a4a00bca-8c8a-470e-b5e8-cd12502166e0 --keychain-profile dockside
Successfully received submission info
  createdDate: 2026-06-02T01:13:38.226Z
  id: a4a00bca-8c8a-470e-b5e8-cd12502166e0
  name: Dockside.zip
  status: In Progress

And the log attempt on the same ID returns nothing:

% xcrun notarytool log a4a00bca-8c8a-470e-b5e8-cd12502166e0 --keychain-profile dockside
Submission log is not yet available or submissionId does not exist
  id: a4a00bca-8c8a-470e-b5e8-cd12502166e0

So 16 days in: info says "In Progress" with no message or issues, and log says the log isn't available yet. The submission ID clearly exists (info resolves it fine), it's just never reached a state where a log gets generated.

Thanks.

And yeah, that’s what I was expecting, but it doesn’t gel with our internal view of the state of this request. There’s definitely something wonky going on here, and we’ll use your bug (FB22939442) to investigate that.

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