One date in, every documented deadline out

Launch Timeline

Apple documents a handful of hard dated rules across completely separate help pages, and a launch has to satisfy all of them at once. Set a date and they land on one axis — each one traced back to the Apple sentence that produced it.

App Review time is not on this timeline, because Apple does not publish it

There is no guaranteed, recommended or typical review duration anywhere in Apple’s documentation — not in the review guidelines, not in App Store Connect Help. So this page has no constant for it and will not borrow one. The averages that circulate are other developers’ samples of their own submissions, which say nothing about your queue.

Instead you set your own buffer below. Every date derived from it is labelled Your number rather than Apple’s number, and if you leave it blank those milestones stay undated and say so. An honest “you have to decide this” is worth more than an invented seven days.

The second thing absent here is any claim about when to launch. Nobody publishes a best day, week or season for an App Store release, so nothing on this page suggests one. It plans the date you chose; it does not choose it.

Which of these are you actually running?

Pick a launch date to see the deadlines that run backwards from it.

Every number on this page

This tool introduces no constant of its own. Each figure below was fetched from Apple’s documentation for the tool that owns it, and is imported here rather than retyped — which is what stops this page and that one drifting apart.

  • 21 days and 14 days — featuring lead time, planned against the longer

    LEAD_MIN_DAYS / LEAD_ALT_MIN_DAYS — lib/featuringPitch.ts — verified 2026-08-25

  • 90 days — wider featuring consideration, a recommendation

    LEAD_WIDE_DAYS — lib/featuringPitch.ts — verified 2026-08-25

  • 28 days — promo code validity, counted from generation; 100 codes per version per platform

    VALIDITY_DAYS / CODES_PER_VERSION — lib/promoCodes.ts — verified 2026-08-25

  • 14 days — in-app event publish lead; 31 days — maximum event duration

    MAX_PUBLISH_LEAD_DAYS / MAX_DURATION_DAYS — lib/inAppEvents.ts

  • 90 days — product page test cap; 3 treatments against the original

    MAX_TEST_DAYS / MAX_TREATMENTS — lib/abTest.ts

  • 5 first-time downloads — before a custom product page reports anything

    MIN_DOWNLOADS_FOR_METRICS — lib/customProductPages.ts — verified 25 August 2026

  • Launch venues — links only, no prices and no turnaround times

    LAUNCH_VENUES — lib/launchVenues.ts — URLs last swept 2026-08-04

  • App Review duration — no constant, because Apple publishes none

    The only number on this page that is not Apple’s is the review buffer, and it is yours. It is asked for rather than assumed, labelled everywhere it is used, and left blank by default.

Nothing on this page talks to Apple. It cannot submit a nomination, see a review queue, read an approval status or know whether a promo code was redeemed. It arranges dates you already control against limits Apple already published, and the whole plan stays in this browser.

There is no score and no readiness meter. A timeline with every box ticked is not a prediction about a launch — Apple states outright that there is no checklist of requirements for getting featured, and no equivalent claim is made here about the rest of it either.

A date this page calls impossible is impossible only for this launch date. A featuring nomination that missed a release can still be submitted for a later moment — a seasonal update, an in-app event, the next version. Moving the launch date is the other lever, and it is usually the cheaper one.

The pieces this schedules: featuring pitch, promo codes, in-app events, custom product pages, the A/B test calculator, the launch directory, launch posts, the press kit and campaign links. Apple’s own getting featured page is where the lead times come from.

Which launch deadlines have already passed?

Apple documents a handful of hard dated rules across completely separate help pages. A featuring nomination wants three weeks of notice. A promo code stops working four weeks after it was generated, whether or not you sent it. An in-app event card cannot go up more than fourteen days before the event starts. A product page test is capped at ninety days. Each rule is stated correctly in its own place, and nothing puts them on one axis.

Set a launch date and they all land on that axis, earliest first, with the Apple sentence that produced each one attached. The point is not the list — it is finding out on a Tuesday that the featuring door for this release closed last week, instead of finding out after you ship.

How it works

  1. 1Pick a target launch date. Every date below it is that date minus a number Apple published.
  2. 2Tick the strands you are actually running — featuring, promo codes, a launch in-app event, custom product pages, a product page test. A deadline for something you are not doing is noise.
  3. 3Deadlines, opening windows and recommendations are drawn differently, because they are different. A deadline means later is too late; a window means earlier is not allowed, or is wasted; a recommendation means Apple suggests it and documents no consequence for missing it.
  4. 4Conflicts are split into what genuinely cannot be met and what is merely tight. Where Apple publishes two different figures for the same rule, as it does for the featuring lead time, both are shown and the arithmetic plans against the longer one.
  5. 5Every number is imported from the tool that fetched and verified it, never retyped here. Open “Why this date?” on any row to see the rule and the file that owns the constant.

What it cannot tell you

  • App Review duration is not on this timeline, because Apple publishes none — no guaranteed figure, no recommended one, no typical one. You set your own buffer and every date derived from it is labelled as yours rather than Apple’s. Leave it blank and those milestones stay undated and say so.
  • There is no best day, week or season to launch here. Nobody publishes one, so nothing on this page suggests one. It plans the date you chose; it does not choose it.
  • Press, community and directory submissions carry no date at all. No publication documents a lead time for receiving a pitch, so rather than invent one they sit in their own list with the reason there is no date.
  • Nothing here talks to Apple. It cannot submit a nomination, read a review queue, see an approval status or know whether a promo code was redeemed. It arranges dates you control against limits Apple published, and the plan never leaves your browser.
  • A date this page calls impossible is impossible only for this launch date. A nomination that missed a release can still be submitted for a later moment, and moving the launch date is the other lever.

Frequently asked questions

How far in advance do I need to submit a featuring nomination?

Apple states two different figures. Its getting-featured page asks for “a minimum of two weeks notice”; App Store Connect Help and the nominations template both state a minimum lead time of three weeks. Both were fetched the same day and both are real. This timeline plans against three weeks, because a pitch that clears three also clears two and the reverse is not true.

How long does App Store review take?

Apple does not publish a duration — not a guarantee, not a recommendation, not a typical figure. So this page has no number for it and will not borrow one. The averages that circulate are other developers’ samples of their own submissions, which say nothing about your queue. You set a buffer you are comfortable with and the page labels every date that comes from it as yours.

When should I generate promo codes for reviewers?

Apple says each code “remains valid for four weeks from its generation date”. The clock starts when App Store Connect made the code, not when you emailed it, so a batch generated more than four weeks before launch has already lapsed on launch day. The timeline marks the earliest date a batch can be generated and still work.

Can I run a product page test before launching?

Only if there is already a live listing, which makes it a version launch rather than a first one. Apple caps a test at 90 days. Starting later than that before your launch date is not automatically too short — whether a shorter test can resolve depends on your impressions and the difference you want to detect, which is the question the A/B test calculator answers.

Why does my custom product page show no data after launch?

Apple reports metrics for a custom product page only after it receives at least five first-time downloads. An empty App Analytics panel the morning after launch is documented behaviour for a page nobody has downloaded through yet, not a broken link.