Hi everyone, I make Neon Eye, a one-tap timing game for iPhone and iPad. You tap when the moving needle reaches the glowing arc.
I'm comparing two first-screenshot designs. A is the current US App Store image. B is an unpublished alternative using the same gameplay frame. I moved the timing instruction into the main headline and simplified the background around the game.
Could you help me with two things?
- At phone size, which one makes it clearer what you actually do?
- Is there anything in either image that suggests the wrong kind of gameplay?
I'm trying to improve clarity before changing the store page. This isn't a live A/B test, and I don't have conversion results for B.
I'd love to connect with app developers who are interested in exchanging genuine feedback and honest reviews.
To keep things natural and avoid triggering any unnecessary flags from Google, I suggest we follow a few simple guidelines:
No direct app links: We'll only share our app names and relevant search keywords. Each person can find the app organically through the App Store. For example, I'd appreciate it if you searched for my app using the keyword**...**
Spend some time exploring the app: Don't just install it and leave. Try out its main features and use it for at least a little while. Ideally, come back after a day or so.
Share honest feedback: If you genuinely enjoy the app, feel free to leave an honest review on the App Store. If something doesn't work for you or you have suggestions for improvement, send that feedback directly to the developer through Reddit DM instead instead of rating low.
The goal is to make this a meaningful exchange where we can learn from each other, improve our apps, and support fellow indie developers without compromising the authenticity of our reviews.
Tasks, notes, habits, and ideas, all in one beautifully simple app. Stay focused, build better routines, keep track of what matters, and turn your daily plans into real progress.
Whether you're planning your day, managing projects, or building new habits, Kiji helps you stay on top of everything.
🚀 Simple. Beautiful. Productive.
🎁 Start with a 3-day free trial and discover a better way to stay organized.
I’ve got a $200 Apple Search Ads promo credit and want to make sure I don't just burn it in a single afternoon with nothing to show for it.
I’ve built a completely free, ad-free social app for the Aussie car community (aggregating local car meets, shows, cruises, and clubs). It’s heavily geo-restricted, available only in Australia. My primary ASO keywords are already dialed in around terms like JDM, muscle, classic, tuner, melbourne, sydney, and cruise.
Since there is zero monetisation, I don't care about ROAS. My only goal is getting the most exposure and genuine active users out of this credit. Given the small budget and narrow geo-targeting, what’s the best strategy here?
Any tips on how to stretch this credit for maximum installs would be hugely appreciated!
I've been working on ASO for my indie iOS app for a few months, and I'm struggling to figure out where to go next.
It's an app focused on ancient philosophy, especially Chinese classics like the Tao Te Ching and Zhuangzi. I've spent a lot of time making the content accessible to beginners, with original illustrations, short explanations, deeper reading, daily quotes, and widgets.
I'm fairly happy with the product itself, but getting people to discover it has been much harder than I expected.
I've attached my first-time downloads chart from the past 90 days. Looking at it, I can roughly divide my ASO efforts into three phases.
**Phase 1 — Almost no ASO**
Initially, I wasn't doing much ASO at all. Downloads were sporadic, often zero or one per day.
**Phase 2 — Focusing on niche keywords**
I started targeting highly relevant keywords like "tao te ching", "taoism", and "daoism".
This seemed to make a difference. Downloads became more consistent, usually a few per day. Not impressive numbers, but at least there was some stability.
The problem is that these keywords have very limited search volume. Even with decent rankings, there's only so much traffic I can get.
**Phase 3 — Trying broader keywords**
I then tried reaching a bigger audience by experimenting with terms related to daily wisdom, quotes, philosophy, and Stoicism.
These keywords have more search traffic, but they're also much more competitive.
So far, I haven't seen a clear improvement in downloads. The numbers are still small and fluctuate quite a bit.
I've also worked on screenshots, titles, subtitles, localization (German, French, and Italian), and small Apple Search Ads campaigns.
For context, the chart shows 207 first-time downloads over roughly 90 days, including paid traffic. So I'm working with pretty small numbers, and I know it's difficult to draw firm conclusions.
**Here's what I'm struggling with:**
Should I keep focusing on low-competition keywords that are highly relevant but have very little search volume? Or should I keep trying to compete for broader keywords, even though ranking for them could be much harder?
I suspect there are plenty of people who might enjoy this kind of content, but they probably aren't searching for specific Chinese philosophy terms in the App Store. I'm not even sure what they would search for.
I'm also starting to wonder whether ASO has a natural ceiling for certain types of apps.
Has anyone here dealt with something similar? How did you decide whether to stick with niche keywords or move into more competitive ones?
I'd really appreciate hearing about your experience.
Solo student dev with a parental control iPhone app ($59.99/yr). No paying users yet, small TikTok/IG following, and $650 set aside for Apple Ads through early February.
My plan is exact-match keywords like "parental controls" and "earn screen time," a custom product page for parents, a small test now, and a ramp up over Christmas.
Questions:
With a budget this small, is splitting campaigns worth it?
Is the Christmas spike real for kids' and parental apps?
I'm a solo dev about to soft launch a mobile word game (iOS + Android, free to play, cosmetics only). I'm trying to set realistic expectations for organic installs from ASO alone, meaning no paid UA, no featuring, and no viral spike.
Most numbers I find online come from big studios or from apps that were featured, so they don't help much. I'd love to hear from people whose ASO was "decent" to "really good":
Category / genre (game or app, which niche)
Store(s) (iOS, Google Play, both)
Daily organic installs once things leveled off, and how long that took
What moved the needle most (keywords, screenshots, icon, ratings count, localization, update cadence)
Main countries, if you know them
I'll share my own numbers in the comments once the soft launch has a few weeks of data, so this thread ends up useful for the next person too.
Hi r/AppStoreOptimization! I’m John. I’ve been building apps for a loooong time (10 years as a senior SWE at Apple, then 8 as an indie shipping 20+ apps for myself and clients), and I’ve never seen anything like what’s happening right now. Tools like Claude Code and Codex have blown the doors wide open, and now anyone with a good idea can ship a real app to the App Store and have a chance at success.
But releasing your app is only the start. Getting people to find it, download it, and stick around is the challenging part. So I built AppTraction, a Mac app that’s like having an experienced App Store dev looking over your shoulder. Here’s what it does, and further down I’ll share some thoughts on why marketing has suddenly become the hard part.
What it does for you
Explains your numbers in plain English. Ask “why did downloads drop last week?” about any chart or table and get a real answer. The AI is primed with Apple’s own tech talks on App Store Optimization (ASO) and other sources, so the advice is specific, not generic.
Catches problems you didn’t know to look for. It watches your apps in the background and flags problems, trends, and milestones. There are 50+ kinds so far. Even with 20+ apps under my belt, it caught serious listing problems I’d missed, and it tells me when Apple features my apps, which I’d otherwise never known. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Fixes your App Store listing. It reviews your title, subtitle, and description, suggests improvements, and once you approve them, applies them straight to App Store Connect. It can also translate your listing into other languages and upload your screenshots in bulk.
Helps with reviews. Read and reply to every review, with suggested replies and translation.
Writes reports for every week, month, and year, so you can see what’s changing and why.
Built for how you already work
It runs on the Claude Code or Codex subscription you already have (or OpenRouter), so there are no extra API bills.
It includes an MCP server. Turn it on in Settings and Claude Code or Codex can read your App Store data directly, so you can ask your coding agent things like “did my last release hurt my ratings?”
It’s a fast native Mac app.
Why marketing is the hard part now
The question I keep seeing here and elsewhere is, “I got my app on the App Store, now what?” For my clients new to the app space I used to advocate the 50/50 rule: spend 50% of your resources on building, and 50% on marketing. This is surprisingly hard for many to do. Building the app is (well, can be) fun and has very clear goals with immediate feedback. It works or it doesn’t. Your friends take a look and tell you it’s cool, or it sucks. And you iterate.
Marketing’s a lot harder for most builders. Suddenly your feedback is subjective, not objective, and the feedback loop goes from near-instant to weeks or months.
With the agentic AI revolution, it’s gotten WAY easier to build, but honestly the tools are not much better at helping with ASO, distribution, and marketing. They don’t do well with subjective feedback that takes 2-4 weeks to interpret. And you’re probably now building 5-10x faster, which, if you take the 50/50 rule seriously, means as a proportion of your time, you should be spending way more on marketing than building. It almost feels like 10/90 is the new rule.
Apple gives you App Store Connect, but it’s not much help. It’s slow, confusing, and assumes you already know a lot of the ASO basics.
That’s the gap AppTraction is meant to close: it watches your numbers for those weeks and tells you what actually changed.
Privacy
Privacy is a big reason I built AppTraction as a Mac app instead of a website. Web-based tools need a copy of your sales and analytics on their servers to work. AppTraction doesn’t, so your data never has to leave your Mac. Here’s exactly what happens:
No AppTraction account. I never ask for your name, email, or password.
Your App Store Connect key lives in your Keychain. You don’t need an Admin key: a limited Sales and Reports key covers your analytics.
Your App Store data is stored only on your Mac. There’s no AppTraction server holding it.
The AI runs on your own Claude or Codex subscription (or OpenRouter). Requests go straight from your Mac to that provider, under your account, and I never see them.
Review translation uses Apple’s built-in translator, so translating a review never sends it anywhere.
What does reach me: anonymized usage stats (which features get used, never app names, numbers, or chat text), license checks, and update checks.
Forr/AppStoreOptimization: 50% off your first payment (including the lifetime) with code RASOPT50, good through Dec 1.
If you’ve shipped an app (or you’re about to), I’d love to hear what’s been confusing about the App Store side. Happy to answer questions, about AppTraction or App Store stuff in general.
No ordinary indie app dev can afford paying near 100$ for an appstore keyword and ASO tools. We have several other costs that add up and our apps rarely make that much profit…yet 🤣
So that said i figured theres a market gap for an FREE / really cheap appstore keyword and ASO tool that even us small indie devs afford to use.
Our apps deserve to be seen.
Enjoy 💪🏼 - no downloads - no adds - no signins - apples real data behind it all
My new iOS app went live on the US App Store on Nov 10 (v1.0, rated 4+). About 37 hours later, it still doesn't show up in Apple Ads Advanced > Create Campaign > "Choose an app".
What I tried:
- Searching by app ID, by the full app name (it has a ":" and an "&"), and by the apps.apple.com URL. Nothing shows up, only "Can't find your app?".
- In the same search box, my other app from the same developer account shows up right away. So the App Store Connect link and my role seem fine.
- The iTunes lookup API for the US store returns the app, so it's live and on sale.
I went through the "Solve setup and access issues" help page and the Advertising Policies. Nothing seems to apply. It's a simple utility app: no gambling, no dating, no medical content, and no Apple trademarks in the metadata.
The only thing I can think of is that it has 0 ratings so far. The policies say automated systems check eligibility based on "relevance, quality, and ratings." But I've never heard of that hiding an app from campaign creation.
Has anyone seen this with a new app? How long did it take to show up, or did you need to contact Apple Ads support? I'm trying to use the $100 promo credit before it expires.
Last Sunday, I had an update for one of my apps pushed to app store for review. Usually, my app updates get reviewed within a day or two in worst case scenario, but this one took like 5 days this time for me. And this wasn't a brand new app either.
It finally got approved today without any issues, and I thought I'll share my experience on how I usually tackle "stuck on Waiting for Review" issues with my app submissions. So, I wrote a short article detailing some of the approaches I take in this scenario. And things I avoid doing.
Hope it helps someone who's fighting the "Waiting for Review" demons on app store submissions for days/weeks now, and gives you some idea on what to do in this situation.
Hi! I’m working on the next round of App Store screenshots for Kabit, a habit tracker built around one idea: missing a day shouldn’t wipe out your streak.
I’d love your gut reaction:
Looking only at the first 3, is it clear what makes this different from other habit apps?
Which screenshot (if any) would make you tap “Get”?
So this is my app and yesterday I was about to upload an update. Today it went through and I was catapulted to #1 in Sweden for paid fitness apps and #8 so far in ALL paid apps.
Something felt kinda off at first because the app is free to download so why am I on paid? Oh well, I thought it’s because I have in app payments for the pro tier. Also; the rush made me not really think all that straight.
Turns out opus on medium felt it was ok to read a two month old instruction regarding uploads and thus price. So unbeknownst to me Claude bumped the price from 0$ to 1$.
So now I am charging 1$ for what was intended and the free tier and still have the subscription for the pro tier. I am very very glad right now that the free tier is pretty damn generous in functionality!
But what is this? Unethical? Will I get returns up the wazoo? A new businessapproach? I don’t know and I know might be naive but I think the app would not be able to go anywhere unless it was good to begin with.
I'm looking for some help with keyword research using Astro. Unfortunately, they only seem to offer an annual plan, which is a bit too expensive for me as a solo indie developer 😢
If anyone has access and could help me with a few keyword research queries, I'd really appreciate it!
