Some reviews are clearly automated, some get a light human review, and some involve a human really looking hard. In my experience, new apps also tend to get more rigorous human review for their first 2-4 submissions.
The explosion in LLM app development has clearly created a bottleneck at the human review steps.
For new accounts yes, for older accounts it's much faster in my experience.
Apple has it's own issues, they often just answer with a random question so they can kick the review down the line. "Are you sure this is your pricing?" "Can you confifrm you have not selected that country" and then you have to wait another 2 days.
On the flip side, googles release infra provides much more functionality for apps that already has scale. I wish apple were more production oriented too.
The Google Play review process has been slower and more painful than the App Store review process for 5+ years at this point. At least you get to communicate with real people at Apple; it’s all bot-driven with Google.
I believe the App Store has switched to automated reviews, at least for updates. I've had my app updates approved in <1h on a regular basis starting this summer.
Some reviews are clearly automated, some get a light human review, and some involve a human really looking hard. In my experience, new apps also tend to get more rigorous human review for their first 2-4 submissions.
The explosion in LLM app development has clearly created a bottleneck at the human review steps.
AnkiDroid (~17 years old) submitted our latest alpha on Sept 03, 2026, 4:40 am. Still pending review.
For new accounts yes, for older accounts it's much faster in my experience.
Apple has it's own issues, they often just answer with a random question so they can kick the review down the line. "Are you sure this is your pricing?" "Can you confifrm you have not selected that country" and then you have to wait another 2 days.
F-Droid's great but their build queue has had multi week waits too, difference is you can see exactly where your build is stuck instead of guessing.
You can also choose to host your own repositories like futo and new pipe do.
This isn't my experience. My updates usually get accepted within hours. Apple takes days usually.
Huh.
On the flip side, googles release infra provides much more functionality for apps that already has scale. I wish apple were more production oriented too.
The Google Play review process has been slower and more painful than the App Store review process for 5+ years at this point. At least you get to communicate with real people at Apple; it’s all bot-driven with Google.
Longer than an average App Store review (which is heavily criticized for being too long)? Hilarious
I believe the App Store has switched to automated reviews, at least for updates. I've had my app updates approved in <1h on a regular basis starting this summer.
The google review process is the best advertising for f-droid there could ever be.
Now, let's compare with "google friendly" apps: https://www.apkmirror.com/uploads/?appcategory=youtube :)
It took the whole year before v21 was finally approved, so seems only fair they publish minor v21 revisions multiple times a day!
I just updated 2 dormant apps for the first time in 10 years; It took 2 days, and the apps were approved on a sunday.
Same happened for CoMaps (which unfortunately does not have 12+ years of presence going for it)