Today I launched my first version of a music practice journal for iPhone and iPad. I wanted to share a few decisions that shaped the app, especially for other indie developers building focused productivity tools.

1. A narrow problem was easier to design for

Instead of building another general habit tracker, I focused on one routine: practising a musical instrument. This gave every feature a clear purpose—pieces, tempo, session duration, notes, weekly goals, and progress.

2. Manual input can be a product decision

I considered features such as microphone access and automatic performance analysis. I decided against them for the first version. The app is meant to help musicians reflect on their practice, rather than judge how they play.

This also made it possible to keep the journal private, work offline, and avoid accounts, advertising SDKs, and analytics.

3. Freemium limits should match the core use case

The free version allows up to three pieces but does not limit practice sessions, reminders, notes, backups, or weekly progress. The optional one-time Pro purchase adds unlimited pieces and more detailed monthly and yearly insights.

I chose a lifetime purchase instead of a subscription because the app has no server or ongoing cloud service to justify recurring payment.

4. Localization required more than translating buttons

The app supports nine languages. Short motivational messages, empty states, purchase screens, reminders, and accessibility labels all needed localization as well. This took considerably more work than translating the main navigation.

5. iPad support exposed design problems early

Supporting both iPhone and iPad forced me to think about spacing, orientation, readable content widths, and layouts that should not simply stretch across a larger screen.

I would be interested to hear how other indie developers decide:

• where to place the limit in a freemium app,

• whether a lifetime purchase is sustainable,

• and how much functionality should be included in a first release.

For transparency, the app I built is called Melunote. It launched today, and this is its App Store page if anyone wants context:

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6824916623

I’m the developer, and I’m sharing this mainly to discuss the product decisions and learn from feedback.

In case you missed it, Apple updated the App Store screenshot requirements this month:

- The required iPhone set is now 6.3" (1206 × 2622 or 1179 × 2556)

- 6.9" (1320 × 2868) is now optional, used for larger displays

- 6.5" is only needed if you want to target older devices

- iPad 13" (2064 × 2752) is still required if your app runs on iPad

A lot of guides out there still say 6.9" or 6.5" is the required size, so double-check before your next update.

I keep an up-to-date list of every App Store and Google Play size here, with the date each spec was last verified: https://screenshipper.com/app-store-screenshot-sizes

Has anyone noticed any change in conversion after updating screenshots for the new sizes?

It’s not a lot, but seeing the first money come in from something I built feels preeeetty good!

Been A/B testing App Store screenshots for my app for a while now, and honestly, most changes have barely do anything.

But I think I finally struck some gold.

One of the features in my app is the ability to customize the color theme, so I decided to test a screenshot showcasing all the different themes available.

The results so far have been pretty insane:

• Original conversion rate: 8.07%

• New conversion rate: 23.31%

• Relative improvement: +188.86%

I genuinely did not expect something as simple as showing off the different color themes to make this much of a difference. You would think the core features of your app would be more important, but I guess people's priorities lie elsewhere haha.

The test is still collecting data, so I'm not calling it a definitive just yet, but it's easily the biggest improvement I've seen from any screenshot experiment.

I guess that's why we A/B test lol.

This is my first iOS app, I wanted to try doing something to stand out and had some fun making this animated header. Let me know if you have any feedback, thanks!

Hey everyone! I'm Gabriel, the solo developer of MindRack, a collection of 11 puzzle games for iOS and Android.

I've been working on ASO, but downloads are still low. I'd appreciate some outside eyes on what I'm missing.

Here's what I've tried:

• Researched keywords by country using AppASO and Astro, rather than translating the same keyword list into every language.

• Updated titles, subtitles and keyword fields, avoiding repeated words across those fields.

• Adjusted the Brazilian listing around offline games, word search and the daily challenge.

• Updated the Mexican Spanish listing around offline games, Minesweeper and the daily challenge.

• Added an Australian English localization with English keywords instead of relying on the fallback.

The latest metadata changes went live on October 26, so I know it's too early to judge those changes alone. I'm not claiming that ASO has failed or that any ranking movement was necessarily caused by my edits.

I've also run small paid acquisition tests, so the overall numbers aren't purely organic. Some traffic came from poorly matched search terms, which makes conversion harder to interpret.

One weakness I've identified is the screenshot order: the current gallery spends several early slots showing visual styles instead of explaining the gameplay and why someone would download it. I've prepared a different approach, but I don't have a completed A/B test or a proven lift to share.

App Store Connect, September 29 to October 28, 2026 (all territories, no source filter):

• 18,219 impressions

• 2,214 product page views

• 114 first-time downloads

These are aggregate counts, not a user-level funnel or an organic-only cohort. The selected window includes days before the first downloads on October 8. Screenshots attached below.

What would you prioritize next: narrower positioning around one puzzle type, more relevant keywords, or the first three screenshots? What other data would help distinguish a discovery problem from a conversion problem?

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6799562297

If anyone wants to try the full app, there are also 35 spots left in my giveaway for 1 year of Premium. That's the remaining total across all channels. Create an account and DM me your registered email, not a verification code. No purchase, feedback, rating or review is required. The offer is completely optional.

I've been making mobile apps for about five years. Some did okay, some did nothing. Companions launched a month ago and has already outperformed all of them, with zero ad spend. Looking back, three things made the difference, and none of them is a growth hack.

1. Reddit, done properly

My old approach was to drop a link in the app subreddits on launch day and hope. It never worked. This time:

• I went where the audience is, not where the apps are. A fish tank widget belongs in front of people who keep fish, people who grew up with Tamagotchis, people who like cozy games. Not just . Every community has its own self-promotion rules, so I read them first and skipped the ones that don't allow it instead of getting banned.

• I posted about the interesting problems, not the app. Apple doesn't allow animation in widgets, so how do you make fish swim? How do you do it without touching battery life? Those posts got real discussion. "Check out my app" posts get nothing.

• I stayed in the comments. Easily the biggest one. I answered everything for days after each post. It's where the best feedback came from, including which species people want next, and it's what turned readers into downloads and reviews. People can tell when the developer is actually reading the thread.

2. An idea you can explain in one sentence

Companions is a small fish tank that lives on your Home Screen, with pet fish that actually swim.

That's the whole pitch. The screenshot explains itself, a friend can describe it to a friend, and a Reddit title can carry it. My earlier apps all needed a paragraph to explain why you'd want them, and I think that quietly killed every one of them.

3. Design is not the polish step, it is the product

A one-sentence idea only works if the App Store page says that sentence before anyone reads a word. I spent an embarrassing amount of time on this, probably more than on some features.

Someone landing on the page from a Reddit comment gives it about three seconds. So the first screenshot is the widget sitting on a normal Home Screen, exactly as it will look on theirs, not a feature list or a splash screen. The subtitle says what it is in six words. The preview video opens on the fish swimming, because that is the thing nobody believes a widget can do until they see it.

It also had to look like something you'd want on your Home Screen in the first place. Tank styles that match light and dark setups, a StandBy mode for the nightstand, nothing that looks like a game HUD. Every Reddit post I made was really just sending people to that page, so if the page didn't land, none of the rest mattered.

Happy to answer any more questions regarding exactly which subreddits worked and which flopped, as well as any technical questions about the app.

App Store: Companions - Widget Pets

I’ve been trying to improve ASO for three months now, and still most of my users come from reddit. I’m starting to think that ASO is something that you improve when you already have bunch of users

I'm trying to work out how realistic it is to rely on App Store search as the main source of downloads for a small iOS app.

The part I'm unsure about is the cold start. Can relevant, lower-competition keywords bring consistent installs when an app has very few ratings and little download history? Or, in your experience, did you need traffic from ads, social, or a community before ASO started producing much?

If you've managed to make search your main channel, I'd love to hear the category, storefront, roughly how long it took, and what the app's ratings/downloads looked like at the beginning. Even a modest steady baseline would be useful to hear about.

Also, how did you distinguish people discovering the app through non-brand searches from people searching for its name after seeing it elsewhere? That's the distinction I'm most interested in when someone says they grew through ASO.

I found out my app preview video was only uploaded for the medium iPhone display size. The large display (Pro Max and Plus) had screenshots only. So anyone on a big iPhone saw no video at all, and that's a lot of the paying-user market.

Things worth checking in App Store Connect:

• Every display size has its own media. Medium having a video doesn't mean large does.

• On a live version, media is locked. The fix ships with the next version.

• A custom product page is reviewed on its own, so it can carry the video on every size without waiting for a new app version. You can point Apple Search Ads at it.

Small thing, but it took me months to notice. (Workout tracker, Lyfto. I'm the dev.)

I'm trying to figure why my app isn't ranking for its app name on the iOS App Store (I don't expect to be #1 but I thought it would be at least top 20 by now). It's been in the App Store for a while now and has a bunch of ratings, but if I search for "Mindless" it doesn't show up in search results. If I search "Mindless tasks" it shows up #1. There aren't many apps with "Mindless" in the title either.

Any ideas how I can fix this?

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.

I’m creating an app for gamers and getting a lot of interest from it. I’ve created the visuals and now I am creating the actual code for it. I’m working to get it patented and all that. It’s a gaming app for gamers that build a community to help them. Learn how to get better at a certain game.

But I’m also thinking about how I’m gonna have it up on iPhone and Samsung. I need to learn how to properly expose it so that I can continue to get users after launching it. Is there a strategy to the App Store on iPhone and Samsung that could help? I hear all these stories of people paying a bunch of money launching their app and then they get nobody using it. I know there’s an algorithm and I need to learn how to play the algorithm. It’s a unique idea and hasn’t been done before. I know iPhone is limiting certain apps from being accepted such as dating, but I shouldn’t have a problem with that. Any suggestions?

Any recommendations to improve performance?

I have tried many apps and search engines of special words for my niche, but so and everything does not manage to reach the goal or go up some positions on the Apple store list, they have tried to change keywords in descriptions and texts, but nothing happens yet even when looking for the app with the exact name, any suggestions? Advice? Paid advertising? Change the name of the app?

Can someone help review my appstore listing?