This morning I hit the launch button on my new iPad app called Bike Doctor. Previously, my app was only available on iPhone. This update adds an iPad edition.

As I’ve launched a few apps on the app store one of the most common questions people have is How long will it take Apple to review my app?

It’s a great question as its important to plan your marketing materials around the launch day.

Fortunately, there’s a website that tracks the average app review times. You can see on there that it takes an average of 5 days. Note: Apple reviewers also work on weekends so you can include the weekend in that calculation.

There’s another important thing you need to do when you are releasing a new app. Make sure you set the release date under the “Rights and pricing” tab in to the future. Otherwise, your app will launch without you realising and you’ll miss the best chance you have to promote it.

Let me illustrate with an example:

Lets say you want to launch your app on the 16 August 2013. However, Apple approves the app on the 10 August 2013. The app will automatically launch on that day and you’ll miss the chance to make a big impact in the app store. Instead, set your app launch day to 16 August 2014 and then when the app is approved, you bring the date back to the current year. That way you have full control.

If you are launching an app update instead of a new app, then you can set the app to “Hold for developer release” in iTunes connect. This way you’ll have to manually approve the new app.

This is probably one of the most common mistakes new app developers make as they don’t think about setting the release date. Which is understandable considering how much you have to think about around launch time.

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