u/Fresh-Wealth4531

Is Apple notarization super slow for anyone else lately?

Submitted my Electron app DMG around 5pm and it’s still stuck on “In Progress” after 4+ hours. Last time was also around 3 hours.

What confuses me is people online keep saying notarization usually takes like 5–15 mins.

App is already signed properly with Developer ID cert and everything. Around 124MB DMG.

Main thing I’m trying to figure out:

• is this normal?
• any way to debug why it gets stuck so long?
• and is there realistically any alternative to notarization if distributing directly from your own website?

I don’t really want to use the App Store because it’s a menubar-only utility app and App Review keeps becoming a pain with the no-dock-icon behavior.

Current workflow feels broken:

• Freelancer delivers first → risk of non-payment
• Client pays first → risk of bad/incomplete work

Even with contracts, milestones, staging links etc… someone still has to trust first.

So I’ve been working on an idea where:

• Client locks payment before work starts
• Freelancer delivers to a protected review/staging environment
• Client can fully test the product
• Payment + source code access release at the same time
• If either side disappears, dispute flow starts

Basically trying to remove the “blind trust” part from freelance projects.

Would you actually use something like this on a real client project?

What would stop you from using a system like this on a real client project?

Built a VS Code extension for React Native to stop switching between VS Code, terminal, Xcode and Android Studio every time I want to run the app.

Current stuff:

• create RN CLI projects
• list all iOS simulators + Android emulators
• boot offline devices from sidebar
• run app on selected device
• auto arrange VS Code + simulator windows

Auto window arrangement currently works on macOS only.

https://reddit.com/link/1td61pw/video/8f47dxuc651h1/player