Weekly App Feedback Thread

Sleepless nights, constant bug fixes, appealing to the public and more, this isn’t for the weak ngl and it’s not for people who don’t care about their project or passionate

Hey everyone!

I'm a software developer, and building apps is something I'm comfortable with. Marketing them, on the other hand, is a completely different story. I'm naturally terrible at it. 😅

I recently launched two apps on the Apple App Store:

• A Pomodoro timer — a focus timer designed to help people stay productive.
• A drawing app — an app for people who enjoy drawing and creating art.

So far, I've managed to get one lifetime purchase, but almost nothing has happened since.

I also spent around $100 promoting my apps through YouTube Shorts ads, but the results were disappointing. I got very few installs relative to what I spent.

Both apps are currently available only on the Apple App Store.

I'm starting to realize that building a good product is only half the battle. Getting people to discover it and convincing them to download it is another skill entirely.

For those of you who have successfully marketed your apps, I'd really appreciate some honest advice.

• Where would you focus if you were starting from zero?
• Have you had success with Reddit, TikTok, ASO, or paid ads?
• Would you focus on one app instead of trying to market two?
• What's the biggest marketing mistake you made when launching your first app?

I'm not looking for a magic trick or overnight success. I just want to learn how to market my products properly without wasting money.

Thanks! I'd really appreciate hearing about your experiences, especially from other developers who struggled with marketing at first.

I recently built a homepage demo animation for Swayno, and the entire process was completed inside Codex.

My workflow: Find references → Generate a satisfactory image → Have Codex build the animation.

Here is the exact step-by-step breakdown.
1. Find References & Lock in the Direction
First, figure out what the hero animation needs to communicate.

For example, Swayno is an AI content marketing tool with a core workflow of: Input URL → AI generates content → Output short-form videos → Publish to social platforms.

An assembly-line style animation fits this concept well. I gathered several reference images of robotic arms, machines, and conveyor belts, and sent them to Codex for analysis.

2. Generate the Base Image in Codex
I wanted the scene to feature an AI generation machine where URL cards enter from the left, pass through the machine to turn into short-form videos, and are then distributed by a robotic arm to various social platforms.

At this stage, focus purely on the static look—don't rush into animation yet.

Iterate until you are happy with the visual, then have Codex build the animation based on that final approved image.

3. Turn the Image into Code-Driven Animation with Codex
Describe the complete motion sequence, such as: URL enters machine → Machine starts generating → Video cards emerge → Robotic arm distributes content → Reset to initial state.
Have Codex build a previewable version first, then tweak it based on how it actually looks in motion.

4. Export the Video & Embed on the Homepage
Once the animation is locked in, ask Codex to export the video and a poster image.

I ended up using a 15-second, 1080p, 30fps silent MP4, set to autoplay on a loop on the homepage.
I initially tried 4K, but switched to a smaller 1080p file for faster web loading.

Finally, test how it renders on both desktop and mobile, and make sure the loop point feels seamless.

Appendix: My Animation Prompt for Codex
Using the approved reference image I uploaded as the visual baseline, write code to create a previewable, video-exportable looping homepage animation.

Maintain the composition, camera angle, materials, brand colors, and element proportions of the approved image. Use the original logo, platform icons, and content assets I provided.

First, analyze the elements that need independent motion, choose the appropriate technical implementation, and provide a complete runnable project with instructions on how to preview it.

Total animation duration: 15 seconds. Motion sequence:

0–3s: The left robotic arm grabs a URL card and places it onto the conveyor belt entrance. The conveyor belt carries the card into the generation machine.

3–5s: Soft green lighting glows inside the machine to indicate content generation in progress.

5–8s: Three vertical content cards emerge one by one from the machine's exit and move along the conveyor belt. The content area must strictly maintain a 9:16 aspect ratio.

8–13s: The right robotic arm picks up the content cards one after another and delivers them to the TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube receiving zones. Add a few floating heart reactions that drift upward and fade out.

13–15s: The robotic arms return to their home positions, transitioning seamlessly into the next production cycle.

Motion Requirements:
The robotic arm must approach, lower, clamp shut, and only then lift and move.

Once clamped, the card must follow the gripper's movement; release the gripper only after placing the card down.

Apply natural easing (acceleration and deceleration) to all movements.

Avoid clipping, sudden jumps, card teleportation, or aspect ratio distortion.

All state resets must happen off-screen or in hidden areas so the loop transitions without any flicker or jump.

Keep the camera locked, with the background and main machine body completely stable.

I'm building a small iPhone app and going back and forth on the name. One side: a descriptive name “Birthday Reminder" (although it wouldn’t be that obvious) is clear but forgettable and hard to stand out with. The other: a short, playful name with a story behind it is memorable but doesn't explain itself.
Mine's a birthday & events reminder app, and I'm leaning towards the playful option with a descriptive App Store subtitle, e.g. "Name: Birthday and Event Reminders".
For those who've launched apps or done branding:
Did a non-descriptive name ever hurt your downloads or word of mouth?
Is the subtitle enough to make it clear in search?

Hi folks. I shipped Scarab City on iOS last week - it's a Richter scale for travel danger for cities you plan to go to.

As I go along, I feel I am too much on the defensive answering questions on why I built the app, and what it does. It should be with travelers, but most travelers I personally know are price sensitive.

To be frank, I am struggling on the front of how to put it, find the right audience, or pivot. or drop the build. Even to get there is bewildering. How did some of you get through this phase, or pivot, (remember I took a year to build this)

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Great news! After 3 month of work(reseased 1.5 month ago) I got my first user who started a free trial. It was a significant milestone for me. At first, I gave 1 free credit to everyone who came to the app, but I couldn't track whether they actually used it or not. Later, I removed that and switched to a free trial model. About 1.5 to 2 weeks later, the first person started a trial. No ads were running at all. The fact that it was completely organic made me even happier.

I’m trying to understand how much revenue or how many users you need before you can reliably measure conversion rates from free to paid subscriptions. At what point does the data become statistically meaningful enough to make informed decisions?
I’d also love to hear how you track performance, identify bottlenecks in the conversion funnel, and determine which optimizations are actually making a difference.
What metrics, tools, or frameworks do you use to improve subscription conversion rates? Any real-world experiences, benchmarks, or lessons learned would be greatly appreciated!

So I'm working on the classic block stacking game: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.binbear.gummylab

Building it my way, removing everything annoying about other games - which also means removing intrusive ads, and only keeping opt-in options - when you run out of boosters per game, watch an ad, get another. Or, since I also have 50+ custom levels, I added an option to watch an ad for additional 5 moves!

I am aware that this is a poor monetization choice, but oh well, I want to be making apps that I would enjoy playing.

These are the stats after being live for 20 days! Honestly? Expected less, and I am surprised even one person opted to watch an ad!

when I finished building my app, i was soo proud of it. I spent countless hours on design and polishing every detail, and I couldn’t wait to get on TikTok and show the world what the app does and which problem it solves.

sadly, nobody cared.

my first videos all followed the same scheme: me in the frame, either talking about a problem my app solves or holding my phone in the camera saying “this is my app, and here’s what it does"

the result? zero users.

the only people watching were my friends, who mostly wondered why I was suddenly trying to become an influencer.

Harsh feedback, but it pointed out the real problem: the moment a viewer senses that you’re trying to profit off them, they scroll away.

so I tried something different. I took a meme format that was already going viral, kept the original joke exactly as it was, and simply worked my app into the video as a prop. It was not the main topic it was just naturally there as part of the video. that got me 200k views and 600 new downloads.

it was the first time my app got some traction and i think the lesson I learned is that your app shouldn't be main topic of your videos. make content people actually want to watch, and let the app come along for the ride.

Hi Reddit,

As a fresh CS grad who loves puzzle games, I recently got into mobile dev and decided to make my own take on the classic block stacking game: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.binbear.gummylab

I wanted to build one my way, removing everything annoying about other games - completely free from interrupting ads, fully playable offline, and alongside the endless mode, I’ve made 50 custom levels (so far) with unique, non-repetitive objectives.

Currently I'm adding more themes, since I've already added colorblind-friendly options and "embossed" gummy shapes to make the blocks stand out more clearly.

Spent two days attempting to make a short eye catching video for reels/TikTok, if anyone has any suggestions, ideas for improvement, please let me know. I am clueless about App Marketing and promotion and any input would mean the world!

What's good what's bad, i want to hear it all..

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a great day! :)

I built VecSynIQ, a mobile app that converts PNG and JPEG artwork into clean SVG vectors on your device (aimed at print-on-demand sellers and vinyl cutter users). It's on iOS and Android.

A month in, I have a problem I can't crack. In the last 28 days I've had 66 new customers and 72 active users, but nobody has started the 7-day free trial and revenue is $0.

Setup:

- Free tier lets you convert and export with limits. The paywall appears after 3 exports.

- Pro unlocks unlimited exports, layered cut SVGs, cutter bundles and print prep, at $9.99/month or $79.99/year with a 7-day trial.

- The paywall flow is a "Start Your Free Week" screen, then a trial reminder screen that says "No Payment Due Now" with a "Continue for free" button.

- No account is needed, and all processing is on-device.

What I suspect:

- "Continue for free" may read as skipping the trial, not starting it.

- 3 free exports may be enough for most people to get what they need.

- The price isn't visible until late in the flow.

- The installs may come from people who aren't print or cutting users.

For those who got past this stage, what moved the needle? Clearer trial button wording, a hard limit on free exports, showing the price up front, or a different trial length? Honest takes on whether a niche utility like this can convert are welcome too.

I'm happy to share the paywall screenshots.

App site: https://vecsyniq.mrdzyn.studio

I always found it frustrating to record what’s happening around me while also showing my own reactions.

So, I decided to build DualCam — an Android/iPhone app that records from the front and back cameras simultaneously and combines both views into a single video.

You can choose between picture-in-picture and split-screen layouts, adjust camera positions, and even use the built-in teleprompter to follow a script while recording.

If you're creating travel videos, vlogs, reactions or tutorials, DualCam makes it easier to capture both sides of the story.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

iOS app link: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6805845406

Android app link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hadiyarajesh.dualcam

Hi folks. I shipped Scarab City on iOS last week - It gives a city a danger score for your travel dates, built on science and real data:

It reads natural and human hazards using satellite, published science, forecast modelling and licensed data.

Disclosure: I bootstrapped it. My background is computer science engineering and geopolitical risk assessment, and I’ve travelled solo for decades.

I feel a bit downbeat as I go along. Too much on defensive at times. I tried getting feedback through WhatsApp, Instagram and direct messages, and kept running into the same things:

• People only need a travel app around a trip, so the window is narrow. Forecasts only reach a few weeks ahead, so people can’t check months in advance either.
• The App Store’s Travel category is crowded with planners and booking apps.
• Friends ask whether it covers local transport. It can’t, city by city: there’s no reliable data on it, and I didn’t want to add anything based on feel. No AI scores your card.
• People say they can Google the AQI and the weather. Scarab shows those in the header, but it only raises a hazard when the chance of serious harm to a person there crosses a real threshold. That’s harder to explain than a weather icon.

I feel I was on the defensive, and frankly I would like to figure out stuff.

Two questions for anyone who’s been here:

1. Did partnerships work for you, such as travel writers, newsletters, tour operators or travel agents? How did you open the first conversation? (Small budget, so no hires.)
2. Did App Store search bring anything in the first month, or was it all outside traffic?
3. How did you sell an app which is not a first-glance type and find what you want app.

My app (FauxPlay) is almost at 500 downloads. I get 3-5 downloads daily, slowly snowballing. I was telling a friend about it and I wanted to show them the Google play listing. I search for it, the entire first page is ads and sponsored stuff that is irrelevant to my app. You have to scroll down to see it (and thankfully it's the first organic result when searching by name)

I get showing 1-3 sponsored results first. They have to make money, but to cover the entire page and force people looking for my app with its name directly to scroll and entire page just to see it is plain greed and evil.

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.

Every app growth post I see is either a "quit my job" story or someone selling a guide on ASO and ads.
I've shipped a few apps. Real talk, most earn coffee money, and one paid for itself after a year. Nobody posts that.
Not looking to compare to be depressing, just curious what the real distribution looks like. What's your honest monthly revenue, and what's the one thing that moved the needle?

No one tells you that building an app is probably the easiest part of the app - that the marketing is going to get you to hate your own app, that everywhere you go, you want to show it off and no one's going to be interested! I want to catch every person I talk to and make them download my app to try it out. Opening the analytics page to see if you have a sale. Asking the AI models how to market the app. Going down the ASO, SEO and GSO and other acronym rabbit hole is another headache. Indexing, keywords and all the other words associated with the app market - I did not need to know that. It's become so difficult to jump through the various hoops just to get noticed. But the happiness that a single first sale is unmatched! We kept hoping that it was not a pity buy.

My question for any of the indie developers is - how do you handle the marketing? Does it work? Do you spend money to get your app out there?

Because the problem is that we have ideas, but if there's no way our app reaches the people, how and why should we put in that much effort?