Notarization stuck "In Progress" then vanishes ("Submission does not exist") — since Jul 29

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Created 19h

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Since 2026-07-29 every notarization submission for my team (547L3Z8CNP) uploads fine, sits "In Progress" 24h+, then vanishes — notarytool info returns "Submission does not exist." None ever reach Accepted/Invalid. Last success 2026-07-27.

Reproduces with a 5.85 KB Developer-ID-signed hello-world (hardened runtime + secure timestamp). codesign --verify --deep --strict is clean; auth works under both an app-specific password and an App Store Connect API key.

Submission IDs:

17f9361a-e28d-4cc2-959f-2f3c7ba10325 — In Progress (07-30)
f00de349-d449-4539-9d7d-82cac6ef04d7 — now "does not exist" (07-29)
17f1857a-fa44-430f-ad5b-cc42dcc41038 — now "does not exist" (07-29)
4af0cf5d-37e4-4d43-9edf-e78b8594d1db — 5.85 KB probe, In Progress

Filed as FB24063069. Anyone else seeing this, or an engineer able to look?

Answered by DTS Engineer in 899543022

There are two different things with similar symptoms that can make situations like this very confusing:

If you start a notary request and then fail to complete the upload, its state shows as In Progress until the system ‘garbage collects’ the request, about 12 hours later.
If one of your requests gets flagged for “additional analysis” (see my standard blurb about that below), it and all subsequent requests will stay in the In Progress state until that analysis is done.

I suspect you’re hitting some combination of these.

It’s relatively easy to rule out the first case by running notarytool submit with the --verbose flag. That’ll generate clear logging confirming that the submission payload make it to S3. Please do that, save the verbose output, and then wait to see if the request disappears.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

You can expect that most uploads will be notarised quickly. Occasionally, some uploads are held for additional analysis and may take longer to complete. As you notarise your apps, the system will learn how to recognise them, and you should see fewer delays.

For lots of additional info about notarisation, see Notarisation Resources. Specifically, it links to a Q&A with the notary service team that’s quite instructive.

Answer 1

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

14h

Accepted Answer

There are two different things with similar symptoms that can make situations like this very confusing:

If you start a notary request and then fail to complete the upload, its state shows as In Progress until the system ‘garbage collects’ the request, about 12 hours later.
If one of your requests gets flagged for “additional analysis” (see my standard blurb about that below), it and all subsequent requests will stay in the In Progress state until that analysis is done.

I suspect you’re hitting some combination of these.

It’s relatively easy to rule out the first case by running notarytool submit with the --verbose flag. That’ll generate clear logging confirming that the submission payload make it to S3. Please do that, save the verbose output, and then wait to see if the request disappears.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

You can expect that most uploads will be notarised quickly. Occasionally, some uploads are held for additional analysis and may take longer to complete. As you notarise your apps, the system will learn how to recognise them, and you should see fewer delays.

For lots of additional info about notarisation, see Notarisation Resources. Specifically, it links to a Q&A with the notary service team that’s quite instructive.

Answer 2

as90001 OP

7h

Thanks, Quinn Resolved. Your --verbose suggestion was exactly what cracked it: the log showed the S3 multipart upload failing partway through, so the 406 MB payload never fully landed and the submissions sat In Progress until they GC'd (your first case).

Root cause may have been related my local network; rebooting the router fixed it and the upload completed 82/82, Accepted in minutes. Really appreciate the quick, precise help.

One note: on the bad connection notarytool crashed with a "zsh: bus error" mid-upload rather than returning a clean network error — that's what masked it as a service/account problem for two days.

Thanks again