How to expedite an app review on the App Store

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

There are certain times when a version of your app has a bug or crash in production that majorly impacts most or all of users. Whenever these issues happen, it is important that you react in a timely manner to minimise the impact that the incident has for your users and to also prevent your app’s rating from plummeting.

However, how quickly you react to such issues with a fix is not entirely up to you. Even if you have found the root cause of the issue and have a build ready to be released very quickly, your app still needs to go through the review process before you can ship it to all your users.

What most iOS developers don’t know though is that there is a way you can tell the App Review team that there is an urgent new version of your app in review and get it reviewed faster using Expedited Reviews.

In this article, I will show you how you can request an expedited review from Apple’s developer portal.

This article in video format

You can watch a video of me explaining the process of expedited app reviews instead of reading the article if you prefer:

How to request an Expedited Reviews

You can request an Expedited Review by going to developer.apple.com and singing in to your developer account. The developer account you sign in to must have access to the app that you want to request the expedited review for:

Scroll down to the bottom of the home page and click on the “Contact Us” support link:

Select the “App Review” category from the list:

Choose “Expedited App Review Request” from the list of options:

Click on “Contact App Review”:

Fill in the form to let the App Review team know about which app you want to expedite the process for:

The information you need to provide in the screenshot above is:

1. The type of request you would like to forward to the App Review team: In this case, you must choose the ‘request an expedited review’ option from the list.
2. The name of the person requesting the expedited review.
3. The email of the person requesting the expedited review.
4. The organisation that owns the app.
5. The name of the app from the list.
6. The platform of the version that requires an expedited review.

Once you have done so, click the ‘Send’ button to forward the request to the App Review team.

Considerations

While expedited reviews are an incredible tool to have in your toolbox as an app developer and they are the best way to get your app in front of your users as quickly as possible, they are to be use only in exceptional circumstances, as Apple mentions in the review form itself:

If you’re facing extenuating circumstances, such as fixing a critical bug or releasing your app to coincide with an event, you can request an expedited review by completing this form.

It is also important to note that failing to comply with this guidance and submitting excessive expedited review requests might result in Apple ignoring future requests.