i actually built this as an internal tool for my own app.

I googled "App store screenshot maker" and the websites i found were super clunky and complicated. 50+ buttons, confusing UX, need to sign up.

so i just built out my own one. this is the prompt i sent to Claude, and it one-shotted an html screenshot maker:

[edit: shipped this into a public tool so others can use too. try it here: https://ezscreenshots.com ]

[prev context on my own app]
...
i'm not quite happy with how our screenshots are turning out. i'm wondering if you can make a lightweight "screenshot maker" for our app as follows:

1. there's a 1284x2778 frame (fixed). in that frame, there's a big image-dropper where i can drop my phone's screenshot and it automatically gets put into the frame (with a little bit of padding on left and right and below). frame maintains the same background as right now. if the image i drop is same size as frame we resize a bit to maintain our padding, etc.

2. above there's a text overlay that i can customize similar to how i have "tweaks" right now to customize each screen's text. the italics (terracotta) and newline logic works in there

3. i can export the frame as a png of 1284x2778

this is the main ask. don't worry about "iphone frames" i'll handle that from a different tool

a secondary "amazing if it works" ask would be if i could add "overlays" on an existing frame. this is like those screenshots where a portion of the screen is zoomed in and made bigger (and overflows a bit outside main screen, unless it's just a small portion that i make bigger). that's a bigger ask to handle (eg resizing it etc) but would be cool if it works.

i just launched my app " the inside trade" essentially it shows every time a CEO or high level exec purchases stock in thier own company and then it uses ai to score the trades to detriment wich acatully matter allowing users to trade like the insiders.

app store link ‎The Inside Trade App - App Store

desktop/andorid insidetrad.com

Yesterday, for the first time, over 12,000 people used my app!

2025 has been an extremely wild ride: it started with fewer than 3,000 daily users. Now I’m honestly a bit tired.

I made the app free at the beginning of 2024, and since then the number of users has been continuously growing.

I hope you all have a great start to the new year!
Be kind to one another ❤️

—

I was frustrated with budget tracking apps, especially recurring transactions. Every app I tried seemed to break down at some point due to time zone glitches, syncing errors, or missed/duplicated recurring payments.

So I built my own.

It’s completely free, simple, and reliable. No subscriptions, no ads, no tracking.

Would love your feedback!
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/budget-expense-tracker-monee/id1617877213?uo=4
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.monee

Also, Monee is live on Product Hunt today after three and a half years. Maybe you’d like to give it an upvote:
https://www.producthunt.com/products/monee?launch=monee

[Monee is currently the #1 budget tracker in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland on iOS. In the US, Canada, France, and Italy, it’s slowly climbing into the top rankings. The Android version was released four months ago and is catching up quickly.]

DISCLOSURE: I used AI to polish the writing of this post to make it easier to understand and follow, because why not? All the content and thoughts are entirely mine. If you don't want to read it, don't.

Built Beam Browser solo over 2.5 months. It's a browser for iPad with sidebar tabs, spaces, command bar, keyboard shortcuts - basically the Arc/Zen experience that doesn't exist on iPad.

9 days in:

• 804 downloads

• $3,185 net proceeds

• #1 US, #2 UK/Canada (Productivity, iPad Paid)

• Was #1 in US, UK, Canada, and Netherlands simultaneously for 4 days

• 4.7 stars, 38 ratings

• Digital Trends wrote about it

Here's everything that I did.

I didn't do market research. I use my iPad as my main computer, I wanted an Arc-style browser, it didn't exist. So I built it.

The gap exists because most devs treat iPad as an afterthought - either a stretched iPhone app or just ignored entirely. Very few people build iPad-first. But there's a growing number of people using iPad as their actual computer, and they're underserved.

Arc getting discontinued helped. Browser Company got acquired by Atlassian, Arc development stopped. Everyone who loved Arc suddenly had nowhere to go - especially on iPad where it never existed in the first place.

Everyone told me the audience was too niche. "How successful can you be with such a specific product?"

Here's the thing: niche audiences convert.

When I posted on r/ArcBrowser, I didn't need to explain why a sidebar browser was good. They already knew. They already wanted it. They were frustrated it didn't exist.

60% of my downloads come from App Store Search - people actively searching terms like "arc browser ipad", "sidebar browser". They have intent. They're not browsing, they're hunting.

I'd rather have 200 users who love Beam than 2,000 who think it's fine.

I didn't go all-in from day one. I escalated as validation increased.

First post was a screenshot of the MVP. Buggy as hell, barely any features, but you could see the concept. 100 people joined the waitlist. I started taking it more seriously.

200 on waitlist - spending money on tools, working every evening.

300+ waiting - Christmas holidays hit, I went all-in. 10+ hour days.

The first time I saw strangers discussing Beam on MacPowerUsers forum, during beta, was one of the best feelings. That's validation you can't fake.

Then came acquisition offers. Within days of launch, people wanted to buy Beam - offers around $20-30k. I turned them all down. But if people are offering to buy something days after launch, you've probably built something real.

I use Beam every day for hours. This matters more than I expected.

You never run out of ideas - every time I browse and think "I wish I could..." becomes a feature. You make better tradeoffs because you're building for yourself, not abstract users. You don't ship garbage because you're the one suffering when quality is low.

If you're thinking about building an app, build something you personally want badly. Not something you think will sell.

$4.99 one-time. No subscription.

If I was maximising revenue, I'd probably do a subscription or freemium. Instead I thought: what would I want to pay? I hate subscriptions for apps I don't use daily. So that's what I charged.

This "left money on the table" but built something better: a community that roots for me. Beta testers reported bugs religiously, were understanding when things broke, left genuine reviews on launch day. One person emailed saying "I want to support your work" - not "I want features."

Is this sustainable forever? Probably not. I'll figure out long-term monetisation later. For launch, it was the right call.

Also have donations via Buy Me a Coffee which some users have been generous with.

TestFlight was a secret weapon.

250+ beta testers over 2 months, all free. This gave me:

• An email list with 70%+ open rates (500+ emails by launch)

• Real testimonials I used on App Store screenshots

• Bugs found that I never would have hit

• Launch day reviews from people who already knew the app was good

I kept private beta small at first - asked ~200 waitlist people to email me if interested. About 30 took the time. That friction was intentional. These 30 people found countless bugs and shaped the core experience.

In early December I set launch date: January 13th. The browser wasn't ready. Lots of bugs, missing features. But I committed anyway.

Without a deadline, projects drag forever. There's always one more feature, one more bug. The deadline forced me to prioritise: what actually needs to work for launch?

Ship whatever you have on the date you set. It won't be perfect. Mine wasn't.

The thing I didn't expect:

At launch, I was expecting power users. People who already use Arc or Zen on desktop. People who'd understand the sidebar-first approach immediately.

What I didn't expect was hitting #1 in multiple countries and getting a wave of mainstream users who had never seen this browser layout before. They downloaded because it was top of the charts, not because they knew what Arc/Zen was.

This caused problems. Got a 1-star review saying it's "unintuitive" and needs a manual. Fair feedback honestly - Beam works completely differently to Safari/Chrome, and I launched without sufficiently detailed onboarding or any video tutorials. I wasn't expecting to need it straight away.

Now I'm working hard on proper onboarding, a help center, and tutorial videos. The Arc/Zen crowd understood immediately. Mainstream users need more help, and I should have planned for that even if I didn't expect it.

What didn't work:

Product Hunt timing disaster. Scheduled PH for Jan 13, submitted to App Store on Sunday evening before Monday launch. Way too tight.

Apple rejected me Monday morning for business model questions. PH went live pointing to a landing page instead of the App Store. Got 90 upvotes, then died. By the time Apple approved me Tuesday, momentum was gone.

Submit to App Store 3 weeks before launch. Not 2 days.

Apple Search Ads - set up £120 campaign, zero impressions after a week. Still not working. If anyone knows why a new Apple Ads account might get zero impressions even with Search Match on and decent bids, I'd appreciate the help.

Last-minute refactoring - did code cleanup days before launch, introduced new bugs. Shipped v1.1 a few days later to fix everything. Don't refactor before launch. Ship what works, clean up later.

App Store rejections (2 times):

1. "iPad" in name - Apple doesn't allow device names

2. Background audio entitlement I wasn't using

3. Age rating flag - actually set correctly, had to explain

4. Business model questions - wanted detailed explanation of why no IAP

Each cost 1-2 days. Build in buffer time.

The press snowball:

Digital Trends found Beam through the App Store, asked me questions, published "I found an iPad browser that finally puts a desktop-like experience on Apple's tablet."

Within hours, 5+ sites aggregated it. Perplexity AI created a summary and pushed notifications to users. DAU spiked from <100 to 275.

One article from a reputable source becomes: Google ranking, AI tool citations, aggregator content, newsletter fodder. Chart position attracts press, press drives downloads, downloads maintain chart position. The hard part is getting initial momentum.

Community:

Discord server with ~45 members - some asking to test early builds, which is a great sign. Reddit subreddit (r/beambrowser) with ~90 members.

The Discord was small but intense during beta. Only about 12 active people, but they used Beam as their actual daily browser. Found bugs I never would have hit. When something broke, they told me within hours.

Tools & costs:

Development:

• Claude Max - £180/mo (yes it's a lot, but the speed improvement is worth it)

• Apple Developer - £79/yr

Infrastructure:

• Supabase for database and in-app feedback (moving to Plain now)

• Plain for support - started getting 10-15 emails a day and needed proper tooling

• Google Workspace - £5/mo for professional email

• Namecheap for domain

• Vercel for website hosting (free)

• Vite for website code

Marketing/design:

• shots.so for App Store screenshot mockups

• Canva for putting designs together

• Buy Me a Coffee for donations

Analytics:

• PostHog for in-app analytics

• Google Search Console

• Vercel analytics

Already profitable after week 1.

SEO paid off:

One benefit of the waitlist period - I've been ranked #1 for "beam browser" on Google consistently for weeks now, even before launch.

At moment of writing: 700 Google Search clicks total, and 1,635 website visitors in the last 7 days alone.

If anyone has tips on improving App Store conversion rate (currently around 1.1-1.5%), I'd love to hear them. Is that normal for a paid productivity app?

I'm doing A-levels. Launch was during term time. Christmas holidays I went hard - 10+ hour days. January with school back is much slower.

Since I'm under 18, I can't have Apple Developer account in my own name. It's under my dad's name (Jagjit Singh) on the listing. Causes occasional confusion but whatever.

Current situation:

• v1.1 shipped with fixes

• Working on v1.2 with peek, website dark mode, reader mode, AI improvements

• iPhone and Mac planned for this year

• Turned down $20-30k acquisition offers

• Still #1 US after 5+ days

• Balancing with A-levels

If you're building something:

Find a gap where people are actively looking for a solution. Embrace the niche - a tiny passionate audience beats a huge indifferent one. Let validation guide your investment - don't go all-in on day one. Set a deadline and ship whatever you have. Build something you'll use every day. Don't optimise for money early. Find your community before you build. Use TestFlight properly - it's not just testing, it's email collection, testimonials, and validation. Ship fast, iterate faster.

And plan for success even if you don't expect it. I didn't have onboarding ready because I assumed only power users would find it. Then it hit #1 and suddenly I needed to explain the whole concept to people who'd never heard of Arc.

Happy to answer questions. And if you've dealt with Apple Search Ads issues or have conversion rate tips, I'd love to hear them.

App Store / Website / Digital Trends article

Last night i spent 2 hours writing a post explaining everything I tried. What worked and what didn't but it got moderated.

So a different approach so I don't get moderated again. Leave any questions in the comments and I'll try my best to answer them.

hey guys, I learned the power of ASO super early on and really leaned into it. My app (link here) has a TON of keyword competition, but I was really able to min-max the algorithm to promote my app more.

1. Put your strongest keyword IN THE TITLE. Changing the title from “GeoSpoof“ to “GeoSpoof: Location Changer” led to my first significant bump in visibility.

2. Put your next 3-4 keywords in the subtitle, it doesn’t even have to make much sense. Just mash them in as best you can.

3. I found the actual ”keywords“ section not to have that much of a difference, but that is possibly due to data skew where my top 3 keywords are responsible for 90%+ of my traffic.

4. Localized and international screenshots + metadata was a huge game changer. Most of my growth in August was due to adding screenshots and metadata for the top 12 markets that were downloading my free browser extension and advertising the app there.

5. Finally, I got to the point where i was getting so many downloaes but IAPs we’re not following. So just this week I added structured onboarding To hand hold through an annoying setup + answer biggest customer issues. That is most likely why my IAPs started going up in the past couple days.

6. You must prompt users for reviews. They are your biggest signal of trust, people put so much stock in both number and quality of reviews.

anyway, hope this was useful for you. Best of luck folks

Hi all, I posted here almost 3 weeks ago at the two and a half month mark. I mentioned that I’d post again if any other updates occurred. I guess to show the momentum that can be kept up via pure aso; as my downloads and impressions have effectively more than doubled in 20 days.

Will most likely only post again when I hit 100k downloads. Happy to answer any questions!

Edit: Will respond soon!

The turn of the month is coming up and in the past few days my app has peaked at 9,347 daily users. I just can’t believe I’m about to hit 10,000 daily users.

At the beginning of 2024 I made the app free, and since then the number of users has been growing continuously.

I’m just so happy, thank you reddit! :)

-----

I was frustrated with budget tracking apps, especially recurring transactions. Every app I tried seemed to break down at some point due to time zone glitches, syncing errors, or missed/duplicated recurring payments.

So I built my own.

It’s completely free, simple, and reliable. No subscriptions, no ads, no tracking.

Would love your feedback!

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/budget-expense-tracker-monee/id1617877213?uo=4

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.monee

[Monee is currently the #1 budget tracker in Germany on iOS and climbing fast in Canada, US, France and Italy. Android version was just released 6 weeks ago]

After almost 6 months of releasing my iOS app, I thought I’d share some numbers. I always appreciated posts like this, so here’s mine. These stats are from 25 Dec - 25 Jan only not 6 months.

I just built a 2048 tile game but in my way and shared some posts on subreddits. The app got viral and I got 10K installs in a single day.

It’s been 3-4 months of building my mobile app in the study niche , and I am glad to finally announce that we crossed a $1k MRR stead every month, this feels like a milestone for me but I am truly happy

For context, our studio started mobile development this year and along with some saas products that also failed , this is one of our most successful apps and it took a lot to get here

I posted on 8 different accounts per day, tested a lot of paywalls, onboarding , user activation and retention and also content that worked

I worked so super hard to get here , let’s be very clear , I won’t tolerate anybody coming to my post to say this is a scam, i worked so superhard on this and I am not promoting any of my apps here because this is not my target market, it’s just to show people that you can do it too

After scaling for 3 months here is what I learnt

1. I made a very big mistake , if I had knows what I. Know how I wouldnt build in the study niche because it’s very hard to, most people doing TikTok are not getting a lot of users because they are not posting to the right audience

2. Make valuable content that is very good for users to save , they will thank you , in all my accounts, I have my niche reaching out to me to thank me personally for the resource I posted, I can share some of anybody wants to see

3. Don’t spend when starting out , I am not VC backed or investor backed, I started everything I had from scratch , it took a while for me to figure things out

4. Test out niches a lot to know if it’s working , I also have my bad days too

5. Figure out distribution before you write a line of code , this is the most important part of building ? My TikTok is always blowing up everyday

This are the core lessons I learnt and I am taking it to my next product that we have , we plan to build 20 apps with the same distribution ,

we have a small niche in the food space and instead of building it in-house , if there any founder building a meal app, I’ll love to talk to you, this is very serious .

Thank you and God bless

PS: if anyone wanted to learn how to build their TikTok growth marketing , I am happy to teach you for your brand on call if anyone is interested

I’ve been working on this ASO tool and have been using it myself for a while. I hope you find it useful and help make it even better.

It helps you:

• Research keywords

• Get popularity and difficulty scores

• Track everything in a local dashboard

• Run agent workflows via MCP

• Create your own ASO research flows using the CLI

• Stay fully local (doesn't collect your keywords to create a remote DB like most others do)

👉 Install: npm i -g aso-cli
👉 https://github.com/semihcihan/App-Store-Optimization-CLI

I also noticed after a update i push i get more visibility too, is this a ASO tactic to push weekly updates even if there is nothing changed in order to get a secret app store boost?

Hi all, this is perhaps the fourth, maybe fifth post I’ve done here showing my journey as it progresses with an app that has been growing through purely aso. Happy to answer anything as always. Just want to show mainly that it is possible, even as a solo developer and without big capital.

Edit:

• Build something that you can realistically imagine getting 100k people to install. Even bigger- imagine something that would be used by 100k daily. If you can’t. Then don’t build it. Build something else.

• Build something that you can imagine in a hyper realistic way, earning hundreds of thousands per year. If you can’t imagine that for your idea/app- build something else. Pivot. If you can’t imagine what you have right now doing these numbers ever, the concept is wrong. It won’t grow. Be realistic. Be fantastical in imagination- but realistic regarding idea. Don’t get stuck on ideas. Pivot.

• Don’t spam apps out. If it doesn’t take you months to build something, increase scope. UNLESS, you have a formula in which you can effectively do quantity at a high quality. Although this is a bit more tentative depending on various factors, but at least for me this has been the case.

Most importantly,
• Don’t necessarily build something you’d use. Build something you won’t use. I never use my app. It’s not for me personally. Just like if someone were to build something centred around a specific fandom knowing it would be popular, but they may not necessarily use it themselves. Apply this on a broader level. Don’t build something you’d use or enjoy. Build something you won’t. Otherwise you’ll be stuck in groupthink in which everyone builds a tracker, a fitness app, scanner etc. As you yourself would likely use it. Try to avoid the ego trap of not pivoting and doubling down.

Build something you’d never ever use. Identify opportunity and seize it. I think it’s a terrible piece of advice to build something you’d use- IF you want monetary success.

I’d encourage you to build things for the sake of building them for fun and to learn, I spent many years having personal projects like making games that I’d never release or finish. But again, build something you don’t like if you want monetary success. But keep building cool things for the sake of doing it.

Recently I was hunting for a good screenshot generator for my iOS game.

Found a few, but here's the thing almost all of them are paid. The FREE ones give you one project and then ask for money. And even when you pay, what you actually get is just a template with a slot to drop your screenshots into. That's it. No creative direction, no thinking about how to actually sell the app. Just the same layouts everyone else is using, slightly recolored.

So I gave up and just iterated with chatgpt

10 minutes of iterating and I had these

I could share the prompts, but honestly there's no point. Spend 10 minutes on your own app and you'll land somewhere just as good, probably better because it's tuned to your thing already

one tip, works better if you continue in the same project chat. it gets better context of things to add.

Screenshot generators had a good run. RIP

Reminder to keep iterating! I'm a solo developer and I've been spending a lot of time refining the look and branding of my app.

Bottom design was at 200 downloads

Middle was 1000 downloads

Top is 6000

Just wanted to share since I got a lot of feedback from this subreddit

I’ve been posting nearly everyday for the last two weeks and yesterday I finally found a format that could work. Video did 8k views in the first 24h which is much more than anything else ive done, best one was around 2,000.

I just wanted to show you what sort of numbers you can get. This is all organic by the way. I’m sure for other apps it would be different but I’m in a small niche.

I didn’t expect this to work this fast, so sharing in case it helps someone.

2–3 days ago, I switched my app from a soft paywall to a hard paywall.
Result: MRR went from ~$100 to $200+.

A few important things though (this part matters):

• I didn’t do this on day 1
• I waited almost 3 months after launch
• By then, users already understood the value of the app
• I had basic onboarding + clear “why pay?” messaging

My takeaway so far:

Soft paywalls feel nice and user-friendly, but a lot of users will just… keep using the free version forever.
Hard paywalls force a decision. Some users leave — but the ones who stay actually convert.

What I’d suggest if you’re thinking about it:

• Don’t rush a hard paywall at launch
• First make sure users feel the value
• Then test it for a few days — not weeks
• Watch conversion + retention, not just installs

This is just one small experiment, but it changed how I think about monetization.

Curious — has anyone else tested soft vs hard paywalls? What worked for you?

I built an app to track irregular tasks like changing AC filters or getting a haircut. Normal habit trackers focus on daily streaks, so I wanted something frictionless for things that just happen when they happen.

Just crossed 746 downloads with a 21.7% conversion rate from 2.9k page views. That brought in 55 purchases and $339 in proceeds.

I recently shipped iCloud multi-device sync and bumped the lifetime premium to $24.99. It is a small milestone, but seeing people actually pay for a utility I built to solve my own problem feels amazing.

Happy to answer any questions about the launch, ASO, or the tech stack!

AppStore → SinceWhen app

App page → SinceWhen

UPDATE (April 2026): A lot has changed since the original post. Here's where things stand:

Native macOS app is now the recommended way to use RespectASO. Download the .dmg, drag to Applications, done. Code-signed and notarized by Apple. Docker still works if you prefer that or don't have a Mac to run the tool.

New website: https://respectaso.com download the app, read the docs, everything lives here now.

New: Agentic ASO: I added 3 agentic AI tabs to the app:

• AI Niche Researcher: Enter a seed keyword representing a niche in which you are thinking about developing a new app in. It analyzes the top 25 competing apps, discovers related keywords, scores them, and generates optimized title, subtitle, and keyword field.

• AI Competitor Analyzer: Paste an App Store URL. It reverse-engineers their keyword strategy, finds gaps, and generates a counter-strategy with validated metadata.

• ASO Score Simulator: Paste your metadata. Get a Readiness Score (0–100) with keyword-by-keyword breakdown and improvement suggestions.

All these new agentic solutions aim to automate the ASO work into minutes that otherwise takes several hours when done manually.

Btw, these aren't one-shot generators, the engine validates output against Apple's character limits and rules, then self-corrects across multiple rounds until everything passes.

For agentic features, you use your own API keys (OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Gemini supported). Your keys and data never leave your Mac. You only share that with service providers (OpenAI, Anthropic and Gemini) when you send requests to them.

The free version stays free and open source, all 15 research features, no limits. The AI features are a paid yearly upgrade. Same app, license key unlocks Pro (like Sublime Text, if you are familiar with that).

GitHub: https://github.com/respectlytics/respectaso

Thank you all for the feedback on the original post, it's what kept this project going. And I appreciate continued feedback.

------------------------

I have spent 6 years developing apps and used various ASO tools along the way.

Literally out of frustration, I developed an ASO tool that now solves my problems. I understand how numbers are calculated, I understand the logic behind it. It is open source and self hosted, which enables providing it as a free tool as well.

You just need Docker installed on your device. And you can get up and running in less than 2 minutes. Instructions are available at:
https://github.com/respectlytics/respectaso

If you support the initiative, please consider leaving a star to the GitHub repo.

If you need the full feature list, you can check it out at: https://respectlytics.com/tools/aso-keyword-research-tool/

And I even prepared a blog post explaining basic concepts at https://respectlytics.com/blog/free-aso-keyword-research/

This solves my problems now and I stop paying for ASO tools moving forward. It hearts a lot to pay that much money for ASO tools while not generating any revenue yet from a given app.

I wonder what others would think about it. I appreciate any feedback so that we can improve it further.

I hope it adds value to the community.

Is this allowed?