How long does it take Apple / Google to publish an app?

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

I’m almost done with an App I’m making to show ads from a local store in the town where I live. My question is how long it takes Google to accept my App for the first time and how long it takes to post an update. I ask because my client changes their offers every 15 days and I am the one who prepares it to be printed on paper. Now we want to take it to an App to minimize printing costs and avoid so much paper waste that affects the environment, but we are worried that it takes too long for Google to update it. The application would update twice a month. I need my App updated with new content on a specific date.

Thank in advance

#2

Well its been a while since i made an app but i recall apple taking about 2 weeks (sometimes 3), while google usually 1-3 hours.

Initial release and updates took the same time.

#3

Apple (iTunes Connect) - Reviews and approves games/apps in anywhere from a few days to a couple weeks.

Google (Google Play) -  (Doesn’t really review apps except perhaps algorithmically and in an entirely automated fashion)

As far as approval time … I have never had an app take more than 8 hours to show up on the store.  This (and the fact that making certificates for android is dead easy) is why I much prefer the experience of publishing Android apps.

#4

Just to add…

For iTunes , new apps take much longer to approve than existing ones with a proven track history.

Amazon is normally the next day and they have a great (and free) testing tool for compliance.  

Simply drag an APK here (I don’t think a dev account is required).

#5

@dodi_games My opinion only and yes if it is only Android the update process should not take that long. But just because you put a new version of your app up does not mean people will update it or that the update will occur automatically. I think you are better served by either somehow changing the content without an update (some sort of backend database system) or by using the web view to display a served page somewhere.

To illustrate my point these are the versions of my app still on active devices. Mind you I send a onesignal notification to these people to upgrade every week. I upgrade my app once a week so version .10 with 6.3% is about 27 weeks old.

#6

I was just researching this a few days ago. Google now has humans reviewing apps, but most all of the review work is done by scanning the code with software and Google looks to have same day approvals.  Apple is doing more and more through software scanning and it seems that for the most part the human review time as dropped from well over a week to a few days.

Again, this was all from research, not from any physical measurements. I can’t find enough time to work on my game :slight_smile:

Rob

#7

@dodi_games in your case I would definitely externalise your content and do what @argamonte suggests and make simple web pages (with your time sensitive content).  This is much easier than recompiling every two weeks and you can also outsource the design work too.

#8

I want to thank everyone for their answers. Without you the learning process would be very difficult.

Any suggestion of which tool to use to make a simple web page?

#9

Did you try Google? There are hundreds (both paid and free) https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=html+authoring+tools

#10

I have never made a web page in my life. But I will find the way. I do not like the “webView” can not fully appreciate the content. I would like to use the “display.loadRemoteImage()”. Once I have hosted the images on the server I can build a scrollView using that api? Would be about 96 images divided in 7 different scenes and inserted in their respective “scrollViews”. I worry that every time the user opens the app they download all the images over and over again causing them to slowly fill their memory. Is there any way to achieve this? In my scrollview the images load from “My app / images / image1, 2, 3, etc” using “display.newImageRect()” api, I would like to have them read from the server. I think that if they have the same name I could change the image on the server and every time I make a change, the image will be replaced.

In other words replace “display.newImageRect” with “display.loadRemoteImage ()” in my scrollViews.

#11

Thats a moutful and off topic.

It’s easier to get help with more clearly defined problems.

Sounds to me like you have some research to do.

:wink:

#12

@dodi_games

As for Apple App Store Review times, it has been greatly reduced recently.

You can check out this site to get an overview of average review times:

http://appreviewtimes.com

#13

@dodi_games, what you would do is have 8 web pages.  One page would be your home page and then you would have a further 7 category pages.

This is definitely a use case for webView and it is real simple to make.  The Corona side should only take an hour from start to fully compiled.

Here is an example of an app I created in Corona that runs a full ecommerce website using webView - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.explodingphone.simplybeach&hl=en_GB

#14

You don’t have to do this with a web page… sort of. You can build web scripts that output a common data format like JSON that would read a file or database with your offers and then you can use Corona’s network.request() API to fetch the contents of that web script. If it outputs data in JSON, you can simply use our json.decode() function to turn the JSON data into a Lua table. You could get more sophisticated and tie it to a data base and provide your client a web page (this would need some web coding skills, that perhaps you could outsource) to get them a web page where they can update their products and you won’t be the middle man in their data dealings.

Rob

#15

Thank you all, again. I’m currently taking the time to learn HTML. :) 

#16

Well its been a while since i made an app but i recall apple taking about 2 weeks (sometimes 3), while google usually 1-3 hours.

Initial release and updates took the same time.

#17

Apple (iTunes Connect) - Reviews and approves games/apps in anywhere from a few days to a couple weeks.

Google (Google Play) -  (Doesn’t really review apps except perhaps algorithmically and in an entirely automated fashion)

As far as approval time … I have never had an app take more than 8 hours to show up on the store.  This (and the fact that making certificates for android is dead easy) is why I much prefer the experience of publishing Android apps.

#18

Just to add…

For iTunes , new apps take much longer to approve than existing ones with a proven track history.

Amazon is normally the next day and they have a great (and free) testing tool for compliance.  

Simply drag an APK here (I don’t think a dev account is required).

#19

@dodi_games My opinion only and yes if it is only Android the update process should not take that long. But just because you put a new version of your app up does not mean people will update it or that the update will occur automatically. I think you are better served by either somehow changing the content without an update (some sort of backend database system) or by using the web view to display a served page somewhere.

To illustrate my point these are the versions of my app still on active devices. Mind you I send a onesignal notification to these people to upgrade every week. I upgrade my app once a week so version .10 with 6.3% is about 27 weeks old.

#20

I was just researching this a few days ago. Google now has humans reviewing apps, but most all of the review work is done by scanning the code with software and Google looks to have same day approvals.  Apple is doing more and more through software scanning and it seems that for the most part the human review time as dropped from well over a week to a few days.

Again, this was all from research, not from any physical measurements. I can’t find enough time to work on my game :slight_smile:

Rob