App Store Submission: How to Publish Your App

Building the app is only most of the battle. Before anyone can download it, your app has to pass through the gates of the Apple App Store and Google Play, and both companies have accounts to set up, fees to pay, rules to follow, and human and automated reviewers to satisfy. None of it is hard once you know the terrain, but plenty of launch days have slipped because a team discovered the terrain too late.

Here is what app store submission actually involves, based on the apps we have shipped, including the ones on our work page.

Developer accounts and fees

You cannot publish under someone else's account and truly own your app, so the first step is setting up your own developer accounts.

Apple Developer Program: 99 US dollars per year. Businesses should enroll as an organization rather than an individual, which requires a D-U-N-S number, a free business identifier that can take some days to obtain if you do not have one. Start this early.

Google Play Console: a one-time 25 US dollar registration fee. Google also verifies identity, and for organizations that means providing business details. Note that Google has added stricter requirements for new individual accounts in recent years, including mandatory closed testing with real testers before a first production release, so a new personal account cannot rush straight to launch.

We help clients set both accounts up in their own name so they own their apps outright. It is a small thing that matters a lot if you ever change developers.

What the stores review for

Both stores review every submission. Apple's review involves human reviewers working from published App Store Review Guidelines. Google leans more on automated checks plus human review, guided by its Play policies. The themes are similar:

• It has to work. Crashes, broken screens, and dead links are instant rejections.
• It has to be honest. Screenshots, descriptions, and app behavior must match. No hidden features, no misleading claims.
• It has to respect privacy. You need a privacy policy, and you must declare what data you collect. Apple calls these privacy nutrition labels; Google calls it the Data Safety section. They must be accurate.
• It has to do enough. Apple in particular rejects apps it considers too thin, such as a website simply wrapped in an app with no app-like functionality.
• Payments follow their rules. Digital goods and subscriptions generally must use the stores' own payment systems, which take a commission. Physical goods and services can use your own payment processor. Getting this wrong is a common and frustrating rejection.

Common rejection reasons we plan around

Most rejections we see in the wild fall into a handful of buckets, and all of them are preventable:

• Crashes or obvious bugs during review, often on a device or OS version the team never tested
• Missing demo credentials, because if your app requires a login, reviewers need a working test account
• Placeholder content still visible somewhere in the app
• A privacy policy link that is missing, broken, or contradicts the declared data collection
• Sign-in rules, such as Apple requiring that apps offering third-party login also offer Sign in with Apple
• Metadata problems, like screenshots showing features that do not exist or mentioning other platforms

A rejection is not a catastrophe. You fix the issue, resubmit, and usually move on. But each round trip costs days, which is why we submit apps expecting review rather than hoping for mercy.

Store listing assets: the marketing you cannot skip

Your store listing is a product page, and you need its assets ready before submission:

• App name, subtitle or short description, and a full description written for humans and search
• Keywords, chosen deliberately, since store search is how many users will find you
• Screenshots in the required sizes for various devices, ideally designed with captions rather than raw screen grabs
• An app icon that reads clearly at small sizes
• Optional but valuable: a preview video
• A support URL and privacy policy URL that actually work

Good listings take real design and copywriting effort. It is work we build into the launch phase of every mobile project, alongside the SEO and performance work we do on the web side, because discoverability is part of the product.

Timelines and staged rollouts

How long does review take? Apple's reviews commonly complete within a day or two, and Google's often within a few days, though new accounts and first submissions can take longer on both platforms. The honest planning answer: budget a buffer of one to two weeks between your first submission and any public launch date, so a rejection round trip does not blow the date.

Once approved, you do not have to release to everyone at once:

• Apple offers phased release, which rolls an update out to an increasing percentage of users over a week, plus manual release control so you can pass review and launch on the day you choose.
• Google Play offers staged rollouts by percentage, along with testing tracks (internal, closed, open) that let you ship to testers before the public ever sees the app.

We almost always recommend a staged approach for significant releases. If something slipped past testing, you find out from a small slice of users instead of all of them.

FAQ

Do I need to publish on both stores at launch? No, and sometimes starting with one is smart. But since we build with React Native, one codebase covers both platforms, so most of our clients launch on both once the extra store setup is handled.

Who owns the developer accounts, us or you? You do, always. We set apps up under your accounts so you own your listings, your reviews, and your relationship with Apple and Google.

What happens after the app is live? Updates go through review too, though usually faster and with less drama than a first submission. Plan for a steady rhythm of updates, both for improvements and because the stores favor actively maintained apps.

If you are close to launch, or just want to know what stands between your idea and the store shelves, get in touch. We have been through submission enough times to make your first one uneventful, which is exactly what a launch should be.