Launch in the stores

Your app works, your testers use it, your website and payments are ready. This part puts it in the stores. Most of it is honest paperwork: pictures and words that match the app, privacy answers that match what the app really sends, legal pages that match how it works today, and a test account that lets a stranger at Apple or Google try everything in ten minutes. Then one click, a wait, and either a yes or a numbered reason you can fix.

Three lessons from a real launch run through every step. The store asked for pictures of devices nobody had thought about. The privacy answers were written before a feature that sent new data, so they were wrong on the day of submission. And the reviewer's account was almost the owner's own, which would have shown a stranger real customers' names. Each one is a ten-minute check here, done before the click instead of after the no.

iPhone readers see the App Store steps, Android readers the Google Play steps, and everyone the shared ones: screenshots and description, the legal re-check, the test account, and release day. Plan a day or two of work, then usually a day or two for Apple and up to a week for Google, and expect at least one round of "fix this and resubmit". That round is normal; it is not a verdict on your app.

A card app has three extra questions to answer honestly on the way in: whose card pictures and data it shows (the stores ask), which games it really supports (list only those), and what it says about prices (price words, never investment words). The card-app legal check in Part 10 (your card app essentials) prepared the answers; this part is where you type them in.