MAYBE operating systems shouldn't have gatekeepers which can deny access to billions of customers for any and no reason at all. Apple and Google are WELL past due for regulation in this space. The fact that we cannot download and install software from the internet onto our phones JUST like we can do with our computers is a symbol of our inept and ineffective politicians. And before someone says "well akshully you can…
And what should we do about apps' getting hacked, sending out malicious updates that get auto-updated and thereby infecting tens of millions or billions of phones simultaneously? I'm not saying we have the perfect system but anything that slants the system towards "easier downloads" or "less gatekeeping" brings large, obvious risks. I don't see how regulation would address them.
The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
311–320 of 357 posts
Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
#312My tool is used by 1 million people a day https://www.photopea.com This is the reason I never made a mobile version and all mobile users use it in a browser. The biggest problem (bug) with this approach is that iOS limits the RAM usage to 2 GB per website. I have to tell many of my users to ditch their $1000 iPads and get a used $150 Macbook for better experience. I think Apple does it on purpose https://bugs.webkit.…
I created a much more basic version of photopea ( https://egeozcan.github.io/ketchup/ ) because I didn't even know it existed. This is very cool and fast!
Nice! :)
Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
#313I've published hundreds of apps over the past 6 years and Google's review times had a similar spike during covid. It took a very long time to recover but now it's back to being bad, I can confirm that.
I wrote about it a while ago, might be time to upsate that post. https://webtoapp.design/blog/time-to-publish-apps
Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
#314By 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,…
> I'm guessing, AI slots invading the store.
Well, same as my lack of sympathy for github and their "inability" to deal with "unprecedented AI generated traffic", I dont buy it. Seems really simple to setup an algorithm of "existing app from pre-AI is submitting another update gets put in the priority queue while everyone else gets the shared queue".
Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can't even release an app without first doing a beta test with at least a dozen people. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you are saying here but less than a month ago I released a brand new app with no beta period, direct to production (white labeled app, which is why I didn't need a beta)
I'm just working on my first app (thanks to AI...) and if you have a new dev account created sometime after 2023 they are making you do a 12 person, 14 day beta run before anything else occurs, apparently.
It gets worse! If Google decides the people in your test don't engage enough and/or you didn't respond to their feedback, they may not give you production access. I've got a game that's available on iOS, I released there first and did lots of testing to deal with the low-hanging bugs. After doing the 14 day test Google emailed me:
Possible reasons why your production access could not be granted include:
- Testers were not engaged with your app during your closed test
- You didn't follow testing best practices, which may include gathering and acting on user feedback through updates to your appRe: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
#316I've published hundreds of apps over the past 6 years and Google's review times had a similar spike during covid. It took a very long time to recover but now it's back to being bad, I can confirm that. I wrote about it a while ago, might be time to upsate that post. https://webtoapp.design/blog/time-to-publish-apps
Hang on. You've published hundreds of apps? As in the same thing slightly modified several times?
Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did you "accidentally" do something that was so obviously not allowed?
I didn't know what a "money transference service" was, and certainly didn't know this service that I didn't know about was highly regulated. I only created it because I had Google Play Credits that were gifted to me. I built an app to "convert" them to cash for myself. I had never built an app before. I was proud of it and tried to make it pretty and professional and useful for others, and used it as a learning exper…
I mean people in poor neighborhoods do the same thing with laundry detergent or anything else you can buy with SNAP benefits.
Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
#318Strange. I had an app the other day approved in hours on Google 15 days on Apple.
Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
#319With 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 reall…
As someone who also has to deal with the review process on the Playstore, I feel your pain. Reviews timelines have been all over the place for the past year.
I greatly appreciate that I can now get Signal via Obtainium directly from your VCS. It feels like I am sometimes even getting multiple weekly updates.
Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
#320I started coding around 2013, picked up a book, learned Java and started building Android apps. It was fun at the time, and pretty painless to get your app in the store.
Fast forward to last year, with all the rage about coding tools, I got into building small projects again, and built a simple app. After a decade from posting my last app on Google Play I resurrected my account, and started going through the process of publishing an app today... And how awful things got!
Back then it was essentially, title, description, upload your Apk and some screenshots and you're done! Now there are reviews, privacy policy, endless amount of forms and information you need to fill out. I get why (some) things are the way they are today, but when you just want to make an app for fun, getting it out there just feels like work. I gave up on the app, made it into a website, and in the end it actually felt better (and so much easier).