Unlisted shopify app - Review Required Before Installation?

Authentication & Access
1

Hi everyone,

I’m currently developing a public Shopify app that uses OAuth for installation. The app is not intended for the Shopify App Store — merchants install it directly via a custom install URL (unlisted/non-public distribution).

During a test installation, I got a message saying Shopify needs to review the app before it can be installed. I was not expecting this, since I’m not submitting to the App Store.

My questions:

  1. Is this review process mandatory even for unlisted apps that are not going through the App Store?
  2. How long does this review typically take?
  3. Is there anything I can do to speed up the process or avoid the review for development/testing purposes (e.g. using a development store or test partners)?

Any experience or advice from people who have gone through this would be really appreciated.

Thanks

2

Hi @v0_elfiturifathia,

If you are intending for multiple merchants to install your app, I can confirm that this is expected and an app review is required, as the app does need to have a Public distribution status in order to install it on multiple stores, even if you are leaving the app in an “unlisted” state.

This is because the app does still technically have an app listing, and an App Store Page, and you would give the App Store URL to any merchants that you want to install the app. The “unlisted” state is considered a “limited visibility app”, and is referring to the visibility of the actual app listing page, and if you leave the app as limited visibility it just means that your app is not publicly searchable or exposed on the App Store, or crawled by web indexing bots, but it is still accessible by manually visiting the URL to install it.

This is described in the Shopify.dev documentation here:

If you don’t want to go through the Public app review, you would need to setup your app with the Custom distribution method, instead of Public, however this would limit your app in that it’s only installable on a single merchant shop, or multiple merchant shops under the same Plus Organization.

You can read more about app distribution here:

Please also be aware that you are not able to workaround these limitations by creating a new Custom distribution app for each merchant, as long as the app is not unique and created per each merchants requirements. If you create duplicate of the same app to get around this limitation, this would be against our Shopify Partner Program Agreement.

Regarding the app review process, we are unable to provide any specific estimated timeframes for how long a review may take, though I can mention that we are experiencing an increase in the review wait time as we are currently reviewing a larger influx of apps than normal.

More information about this, in the following thread:

To ensure a smooth review as quickly as possible, we recommend the following:

  • Reviewing the App Store requirements before your submission is reviewed
  • Using our Dev MCP to catch common issues before they’re flagged by our team
  • Double-checking your app listing, privacy policy, and test credentials are complete and accurate