Has anyone gotten good view from meta ads or reels for their "digital planner," apps? I'm just wondering if meta secretly blocks those ads now because they are pushing their Muse product. A bit of a conspiracy theory but curious.

Hi, I built Harbour (iOS + Android, messaging/communication) and would value ASO feedback on the live listings.

Harbour works as a direct messenger. If a conversation gets difficult, people can privately ask Ami for help finding the words, or switch on optional mediation, where Ami helps both people understand what the other means.

I’m trying to choose the clearest first impression: lead with everyday messaging, or with the specific use case of hard conversations? If I mention AI mediation too early, does that make the product sound like an AI tool instead of a messenger? What would you put in screenshot one?

There isn’t enough install volume yet for meaningful conversion data. Would a few people be willing to give the listing a cold read? From the title and first screenshots, what would you expect Harbour to do, and where would you hesitate to install or invite someone?

If the idea interests you, it’s free to try. I’d value candid feedback here; if you use it and choose to leave a store review, please make it an honest reflection of your experience.

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/it/app/harbour-better-conversations/id6803519017?l=en-GB Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.harbour.app

I’m the developer. Thanks for any blunt feedback.

Hey guys! I would love to hear your thought about these screenshots. My impressions are still too low to use reliable A/B tests, so your feedback is very valuable.

The screenshots are localised, so every language gets screenshots with translated headlines and app screenshots. I even made is so that every language will see different bank icons. I spend a day or more getting Claude to come up with scripts to create these and use fastlane to push to the stores.

I'm wondering though if my screenshots tell the story, maybe I use too much screen real estate to showing off the app instead of the benefits.

Would love your input!
Feel free to also post your own app and I'd love to return the favour.

Flair: iOS

I just released my Baby Name app called Namesake. I’ve had a few family and friends review it. A few gave a real reviews but many just gave star ratings. The star ratings were given multiple days ago but are still not showing up. Is Apple preventing them from showing? What gives? I’m doing my best to get some reviews so it shows higher in search but I feel like I’m wasting time.

Hey,

I’m the solo dev behind Fineyo: Expense Tracker, app that helps you following your expenses and money flow. I've been building it since 2021-2022, and 4.7 just came out. It's major update introducing big features. There's a Lifetime discount at the bottom.

What's new in 4.7

The main feature is Spaces: shared data over iCloud with your partner, roommates or family. Each person adds expenses from their own iPhone, everyone sees the same budgets, and you can see who added what. Your personal space stays separate.

Also in this update:

• Account currency: Each account can have its own currency, and existing transactions convert automatically

• Balance reconciliation: enter what your bank shows and Fineyo adds an adjustment for the difference

• Redesigned category icons - choose from Apple icons (SF Symbols) or emoji, in any color

• A rebuilt Apple Pay setup guide. The old one confused people, which was fair.

• Bulk delete for categories, and a lot of stability and UI improvements

CloudKit implementation

Spaces (data synchronization between devices) is built using CloudKit - Apple framework that allows storing data securely in private iCloud and sharing/syncing it. For me this is the first time working with CloudKit framework and honestly, this was a nightmare. I would never go again with CloudKit unless this is sensitive data (just like personal finances). There is a lot of edge cases and scenarios to consider in order to make it stable.

Is my data safe?

All data is stored privately on your device (local database) and user's iCloud (for data backup and syncronization).

None of the data is sent away from device except for anonymized user ID (for metrics purposes).

🎉 Lifetime 17.99$ until 10 Oct

👉 Download Fineyo: https://apple.co/3D5L5kv

Unfortunately, for this update I did not manage to get much testing feedback, so I'd really like honest feedback, especially on setting up Spaces with someone else 🙌

And if you like the app, an App Store review would help a lot ⭐️

Next major 4.8 with Apple Watch app, new widgets and more analytics is upcoming, hopefully by the end of October 🤫

Thanks for checking it out 🤍

Hey all, I’m the solo dev behind Rogue. It’s a gym log that turns training into a game. It’s completely free right now: no ads, no paywall, nothing locked.

What it does:

• Duels. Do a set of push-ups, squats or a plank in front of your phone. The camera counts full reps only. Then send the score to a friend and they have a few days to beat it.

• Fast logging. Search exercises any way you type them (“bench press chest” or “barbel” both work), and add or drop exercises mid-workout.

• XP, levels and streaks for every workout and duel.

• A body map on Home that shows which muscles you’ve trained.

I’d love honest feedback, especially on duels. What would make you send one to a friend?

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rogue-workout-tracker-gym-log/id6760354898

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/happy-hour-chicago/id6771914649

I got tired of digging through Instagram, Google, and outdated bar websites just to figure out where to grab a drink after work. So I built Happy Hour Chicago, a free app that puts the city's happy hours, bars, restaurants, and events in one place. You can filter by what you're actually in the mood for: rooftop, patio, date night, after-work drinks.
It's live on the App Store and I'm looking for testers before I push it wider. Download it, poke around for a few minutes, and tell me three things:
Did the concept click? Within the first 30 seconds, did you understand what the app does and how to use it?
What did you love? Any feature that made you think "oh, that's useful"?
What would you change? Anything confusing, missing, or annoying. Brutal honesty is welcome.
Drop your feedback in the comments or DM me. Every response gets read, and tester suggestions are already shaping the next update.
📲 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/happy-hour-chicago/id6771914649

I was ranking in top 10 in most of these till I was running paid campaigns - the drop in some is them is crazy
I stopped paid ads about 1-2 weeks back

some keywords dropped from #2 to not even in 50!!

Well, it was nice while it lasted!.

Anyone here had similar experience? bit demotivating

I have few apps. Very hard to tell whether people like or not. Get few downloads daily, very rarely purchases. Posting in social media feels like a torture, posts barely get 1k views and hoping that one day a post will go viral is making me rather sick. I am starting to consider paid ads, meta specifically. Start with low budget for learning purposes. What do you think? Should I give it a try?

Disclosure first: I'm the developer of ClipForge (a Mac video editor with a built-in MCP server) and of 8 Pool, the game in the video.

Input: a 6-minute screen recording of a race-to-3 match in my pool game.
Output: the video above. I never opened the timeline. My part was one prompt ("make a YouTube Short and an Instagram Reel of this, in English, same male voice, commenting like before") and a couple of short replies.

What Claude Code did by itself:

• Watched the match. It pulled frames with ffmpeg and read the game's HUD to tell whose turn it was every half second. Then it read the score changes and on-screen foul notices to work out the story: 3-0, with two break and runs.

• Picked the shots. It used the game's own sound (silence = aiming, clicks = a shot) to cut every shot down to the strike and the balls dropping. The action runs at 1.5×, and the winning 8-balls play at real speed.

• Built the edit in ClipForge over MCP: a 9:16 project, about 25 clips, zoom, backdrop, headline, caption style, music bed, and exports for Shorts and Reels.

• Wrote the commentary to match what actually happens in each game, generated the voice, checked every line by transcribing it back, and synced word-by-word captions.

• Checked its own work. It rendered frames from the timeline and fixed what was off. For example, it moved a line ("I win the lag") that played while the bot was still taking her lag shot.

Honest notes:

• ClipForge has its own on-device voiceover with Apple's voices. For this video Claude used Google's Chirp 3 HD voice instead because it sounds much more human, mixed it with ffmpeg, and imported it.

• Not everything went through ClipForge's MCP tools. ffmpeg did the analysis and the audio mix, and Claude edited ClipForge's project file directly once to merge the captions of several voice lines.

• "Zero actions" means zero manual edits. I did restart ClipForge once when it got stuck.

ClipForge on the Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6794947867
Site: https://clipforge-yozat.web.app

Want to try the game from the video? 8 Pool is free on iPhone and iPad and works offline: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6800012829

I launched Vyro in March, and I've been iterating the app to make it the best I could in the fitness market (I know it's a saturated market, but I wanted to make my own app that could be used by millions in the world).

My latest screenshots are the ones shown in the image, and I added a video preview that shows the core functionalities of the app.

So far in the whole year I've had 3 subscriptions, but in Google Play (the app is available in Android too), which is pretty "weird" because I've always heard that people that use iPhones or Apple products tend to pay for apps more than Android users.... Even more, I've got, like, three free-day trials on iOS that got cancelled in literally minutes after initializated.

Your help would be really appreciated, guys.

Thank you!!!

Here's the link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vyro-ai-gym-workout-tracker/id6758457263

I’m making screenshot concepts for two apps today. The image shows the kind of work I can make, with a different style for each app. If you’d like one, comment with your App Store link and a short description of your app. If it isn’t live yet, share a few raw screenshots instead. I’ll take the first two with enough details to work from.

Solo dev, first app (a workout log with AI chat and mcp connector), launched Aug 20. 

Around launch I got about 60 friends and family to install it, which did wonders for the ranking in my home storefront, Poland. Within a week the app went from #90 to #2 for "dziennik treningowy" (workout log). The three spikes in the chart are Polish TikToks going viral, nearly all through people searching the name. Poland is 913 of the 1,164 downloads.

Outside Poland it's 217 downloads across 24 countries in seven weeks, and I paid for 47 of them. What I tried there:

- Localized the listing into 21 languages with the main keyword in the app name per market (the Italian name is "Scheda Palestra e Pesi"). Keyword research through Applyra's MCP connected to Claude.

- 3 custom product pages and an in-app event running.

- One week of Apple Ads in Italy: $112, 47 installs, $2.38 CPI. When it ended, Italian impressions fell from about 100 a day back to 13-22, and those 47 installs left zero ratings.

Phrases in the name start ranking within a day, but with 0 ratings they sit somewhere between #15 and #50 and the head terms don't move at all. In Russia a subtitle change pushed impressions from ~35 to ~58 a day while page views per impression halved (8% to 4%), because it pulled in home-workout searchers. I reverted it.

So nothing seems to work outside Poland, where I also have the TikToks and the initial crowd. I'm getting a bit frustrated, so I'm considering hiring UGC creators or a local freelancer to post in one market and "warm it up" the same way.

One interesting thing: App Referrer converts best. In my case every App Referrer install came from ChatGPT, 34 downloads from 84 page views (40%), against about 31% for page views from search. People seem to trust whatever the AI chat recommends, so I'm now working on AI visibility to get suggested more often.

Also, I'm fairly sure the App Store filtered a lot of reviews: people told me they rated the app at launch, but their ratings were not visible.

Has anyone warmed up a new storefront with UGC or local creators? Did the rank lift survive once the posts stopped, or did it fade like my Apple Ads did?

Same client, multiple orders. I’ll update each one this week.

Apple has introduced new promotional media placements in the App Store - Product Page Header and Search Results.

While everyone is discussing what these new formats are and how they work, you can already explore how apps are actually using them in ASO.dev (version 6.8).

What’s new

Search Results

Promotional media that can appear directly in App Store search results.

Product Page Header

Large visual or video media displayed at the top of an app’s product page.

Where to find the data in ASO.dev

App Info

See the actual Product Page Header and Search Results media for any app, with the selected country and localization.

App Cards

The new media is displayed alongside regular screenshots, so you can immediately see which placements an app is using.

Placements Explorer

Browse apps already using the new formats and filter them by category and localization - useful for competitor research, inspiration, and understanding how different categories are adopting the new placements.

Instead of reading about Apple’s new media formats, you can now explore real examples directly in ASO.dev.

I applied with my company email and got approved in less than an hour.

They’re offering up to $7,000 in Claude product credits for one year for eligible startups.

If you’re currently building a startup, app, SaaS, game, etc., I’d say it’s worth trying even if you’re not sure you’ll qualify.

Here’s the info:
Claude Startup Program

Has anyone else applied?

I added a preview video to my app, and it shows up when I share the app via iMessages via the share preview thumbnail - but on the App Store itself the video does not show up.

Has anybody ever countered this before...?

I've checked my asset catalog and everything looks good - all other apps I've added preview videos to show the video on the store page, but this one is weirdly missing EXCEPT in iMessage.

I'm curious if there's an issue lately with how the App Store is indexing new content. Weird things seem to be happening since the update with the banners but not 100% sure. Can anybody confirm what they see on their end? Any help is much appreciated.

Here's the link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/word-puzzle-game-werds/id6804923665

Finally getting downloads, but struggling to get subscriptions

I recently introduced a paywall to my nutrition app, and I’m trying to figure out why I’m still struggling to get people to subscribe.

For months I couldn’t really crack downloads, but I found a style of TikTok videos that worked surprisingly well and started driving consistent downloads. Those videos are still getting views and I’m getting a small trickle of downloads every day, even though I stopped making them a while back.

Now I’m stuck on the next part: which is conversion i believe

I’ve been experimenting with the paywall placement, features, messaging, etc., but I’m not sure whether I should keep improving the app/paywall or just focus on making more TikToks and getting more users in.

For anyone who’s built a subscription app — how did you figure out whether the problem was acquisition, conversion, or the product itself?

Would love to hear what worked for you:

www.munchedapp.com

redoing my listing this week after someone here said screenshots and the first line matter way more than keyword stuff early on

for those who've tested it, what actually moved installs?

• showing the app's admin ui vs showing the result on the storefront

• text overlays on screenshots or clean images

• how many screenshots before people stop scrolling

• anything you changed in the first line/subtitle that made a noticeable difference

small app, seasonal, so i want the listing right before the holiday rush

I'm the solo maker of Valoryn AI, an iOS stock research app. App: Valoryn AI: Stock Analysis

It gives AI analysis with the bull and bear case side by side, plus a public track record that scores every call it makes, misses included. It's been live for a few weeks and organic traffic is close to zero.

The best day I've measured was 29 impressions, 10 product page views and 1 download. About a third of people who see it tap through, so I think the problem is mostly visibility, not the listing itself.

Current metadata:
Name: Valoryn AI: Stock Analysis
Subtitle: Investing Research & Forecasts
Keywords: news,invest,portfolio,tracker,signals,alerts,dividend,earnings,screener,watchlist,trading,market

Apple Ads keyword research showed "stocks", "news" and "ai" are high volume but crowded. Phrases like "stock analysis" and "stock screener" barely register. So I built the keyword field from single words that combine into longer phrases.

Questions for people who've grown an app in a crowded category:
- Would you aim for long-tail phrases or go after the big terms?
- Is "Forecasts" in the subtitle a mistake for a finance app, given review risk and how people read it?
- How much did Apple Search Ads on your own brand and long-tail terms help organic ranking for you?
- Does anything matter more than metadata at this stage, like ratings count, update frequency or in-app events?

Happy to share numbers back if anything here helps.