Google Play review delays causing publishing setbacks
Problem
Google Play review times now regularly exceed one week and are inconsistent, preventing timely releases and disrupting development cycles.
Pain points
- Review cycles exceeding one week delay releases
- Inconsistent review times (sometimes hours, sometimes days)
- Requires manual intervention to expedite review
- Frequent updates are hindered
Questions to verify
- Does the review delay affect your weekly release schedule?
- Are there specific review stages causing the delay?
- Would you be willing to provide more details about the review process?
Evidence
quote · @Anonymous
With Signal, the biggest issue we have is that review times are extremely inconsistent. Sometimes it's 4 hours, sometimes it's 5 days, and there's no visibility as to why. Our working theory is that there's automated and manual queues, and occasionally, for whatever reason, we fall into the manual queue. But when you work on an app that has weekly updates, randomly getting hit with a review time of several days really throws off your groove. And it can obviously be terrible for moments where you're fixing a critical issue.
quote · @Anonymous
By the way, the same is happening for the Apple Store.Their review process is advocated as usually within 24 hours (and heavily advertised by Apple as such, see https://developer.apple.com/distribute/app-review/) and it is taking now much longer.In the last month, I had to go through the review process twice, and twice I needed to contact them personally after waiting for 1 week of waiting. It did however helped, after every human contact I was reviewed within a few hours.I got this explanation from them...> We are currently experiencing a higher-than-normal amount of inquiries and have been unable to respond in the time frame that we would prefer. During these periods of high volume, the app review time will take longer than average, and we cannot currently provid
quote · @Anonymous
AnkiDroid (~17 years old) submitted our latest alpha on Sept 03, 2026, 4:40 am. Still pending review.
quote · @Anonymous
I just released a game [1] on both iOS and Android.The Google Play process is more thorough. There are a lot of steps and you need to clear them one by one. This means waiting several days between each step. The Play Console dashboard is quite well documented to be honest but can be overwhelming. The main obstacle is that you need to find at least 12 testers to play your game for 2 weeks straight. I ended up paying a service to test my app.On iOS, the process is a bit more obscure. It's fairly easy to submit an app, but then you don't really know what's happening. You can only see a status like "Pending review". And then one day, you are approved.Overall, the iOS process felt easier for me. As long as your build succeeds and you provide the correct information, your game can be live within
Disclaimer: this card is distilled by AI from community discussions as “pain point evidence”. It is a starting point for need analysis and validation, not a “validated market need”. AI has analytical limits; please open the original discussion above to manually verify before key decisions.