Shipping
How to ship to the app stores
Getting an app built is the easy half. Getting it through review, ranked, and found is a separate skill with its own rules -- most of them unwritten in any one place.
Eight guides, ten points each, drawn from putting apps through both stores -- including the rejections. If you are building the thing rather than shipping it, How to build a consumer app covers that side.
One caveat worth reading. Store policy changes constantly, and specific numbers -- review times, tester counts, target API levels -- go out of date faster than anything else here. Treat these as the shape of the problem and check the current guidelines before you rely on a figure.
Getting through review
The rules that are actually enforced, on both stores.
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What Apple actually checks
Demo accounts, Sign in with Apple, account deletion, and the guidelines that bite.
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What Google Play actually checks
The twelve-testers rule, the data safety form, and where Play differs from Apple.
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Why apps get rejected
The list is shorter than you think, and most of it is avoidable in an afternoon.
Paperwork that fails you
Binary pass-or-fail rules, usually left until submission day.
Conventions worth fixing early
Cheap to get right now, genuinely painful to change later.
Once it is live
Ranking, listings, and the unglamorous marketing that works.