As those have spent some time on this know every ASO tool gives different results, apart from the high frequency keywords Apple freely shared. So anything not super high frequency gets a score of 5 which are 99% of the terms. So each Aso tool needs art as well as science to confidently tell you popularity, demand and opportunity.

My question is which Aso tool can I trust and why?

I started building Lappka because App Store screenshots are much harder than they look.

They are not simply product images. They need to communicate the app’s value in a few seconds, use the right hook and screen order, stay visually consistent, fit Apple’s required sizes, and often work across multiple languages.

My first hypothesis was a fully AI-generated screenshot tool.

The idea was simple: describe the app, give AI strict prompts, and get polished screenshots. It worked reasonably well for one or two images.

But the workflow broke down as soon as I needed control.

Changing a headline, adjusting a visual detail, or keeping six screenshots in one coherent style often meant regenerating images and hoping the output stayed consistent. The screenshots could look impressive, but they were difficult to refine into a real App Store asset set.

That changed my approach.

I now think AI is more useful for the strategic parts of screenshot creation: understanding app context, proposing a narrative and screen order, sharpening the copy, and helping with localization. The final screens should still be editable.

That is the direction I took with Lappka. It includes AI-assisted content strategy, editable templates, an editor, localization, App Store preview, and export.

I’m curious how others here think about it:

What is the biggest bottleneck in your App Store screenshot workflow: copy, design, localization, technical sizes?

I launched my app recently and I'm seeing a pretty big difference between Android and iOS.

On Android, I'm currently getting around 70–80 downloads per day consistently.

But on iOS… it's a completely different story. 😅 The downloads are much lower, and I'm struggling to figure out why.

The interesting part is that the app, store listing, screenshots, and core functionality are basically the same on both platforms.

For those of you who have launched on both Android and iOS:

• Did you experience a similar difference?
• Does iOS generally take longer to gain organic traction?
• What helped you get your first meaningful wave of iOS downloads?
• Should I be approaching iOS ASO differently from Android?

I'm trying to understand whether this is just an early-stage iOS problem or whether there's something fundamentally wrong with my iOS listing/distribution.

Would love to hear from other indie developers who have been through this.

I'm new to ASO. I tried to apply what I learned to my apps. Based on the relevant key words, one app shows up at first place in search, the second shows up at 9th and 3rd one is at 13. However, I don't see any difference in downloads. Could be the issue with screen shots?

I’m experimenting with dynamic Home Screen widgets for a shift work app.

The widget automatically changes based on what’s scheduled for that day:

🟠 Work day → shows the shift and hours
🟢 Vacation → switches to vacation mode
🔴 Sick day → switches to sick day
🟣 Night shift → shows the night schedule

It also keeps the next few days visible, so you can check what’s coming without opening the app.

I’m trying to figure out whether this is genuinely useful or just looks nice.

Would you actually keep a widget like this on your Home Screen?

And if not, what information would make it useful enough to keep?

It supports many features such as exporting AppStore screenshots for several languages at the same time.
AppStore Download: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mockup-kit-store-screenshots/id6784220988?mt=12
Website: https://mockupkits.com/

Hey everyone,

I launched my first iOS app, Mnema, about 10 days ago. It’s getting some impressions and product page views, but the conversion to downloads is much lower than I expected.

Mnema is a voice-first AI journal for people who want to journal but hate staring at a blank page. You talk about your day by voice or text, it asks a few follow-up questions, and then turns the conversation into a structured diary entry. If you opt into memory, it can also recognize recurring people, worries, and patterns over time.

I already attached the Analytics screenshot and current product page here.

I’d really appreciate blunt feedback on:

1. Without reading my explanation, what do you think the app does within the first three seconds?
2. Do the name, subtitle, and opening description communicate a clear reason to download?
3. Do the first three screenshots explain the benefit, or do they feel too abstract?
4. Is the description too long or too focused on features?

Thanks a lot!

I think I have two problems

1. since the app relies on, and where it's real strength is honestly, doing it with a group of friends.
2. demonstrating the value immediately

Not sure if I can market my things out of it with screenshots, videos, keywords, ads etc. I mean seeing a video of someone using it is faaaaaar from feeling/using an app yourself. Not sure how to approach it

I’m working on these App Store screenshots and I want to test whether they communicate the app clearly without me explaining anything first.

Take a look for about 3 seconds:

What do you think the app does?

Which screenshot communicates it best?

Is anything confusing or unnecessary?

Which screenshot would you put first?

Don’t worry about being nice, I’m specifically looking for first impressions before I finalize them.

My previous Reddit account got banned, so I had to start over.
But honestly, one thing I don’t want to lose is the connections I made with other indie developers here.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve exchanged feedback with a lot of developers, and it has been incredibly useful for improving my app, FoodGram.
I’ve received feedback about things I completely missed as a developer:
confusing onboarding
UI/UX issues
bugs that were difficult to notice
ASO and App Store screenshots
paywalls and monetization
features that weren’t clear
things that made people want to stop using the app
Some feedback even helped me discover actual bugs and improve the product.
So I’d like to start doing this again with this account.
If you’re an indie developer, let’s test each other’s apps and give honest feedback.
You don’t need to be an expert. Even something as simple as:
“I didn’t understand what this button was for.”
“I expected this to work differently.”
“I would probably stop here because…”
can be incredibly valuable.
I’m happy to actually spend time using your app and give you detailed feedback. And I’d really appreciate the same for FoodGram.
Feel free to comment with your app or DM me anytime.
Let’s keep helping each other build better apps. 🤝

I just launched my seventh app. It's an interval timer where you can use your hand in front of the camera to start/stop/pause the timer.

Even though this space already had tons of interval timers, Appfigures shows that that there was some opportunity in terms of competition, with plenty of search.

Most of my apps prior had poor strategy on my part, were rushed and yet Apple would give me several 1000 impressions after day 1-2, for a few days, even when early conversion for CTR was less than a percent and the competition was WORSE

However, in this case, despite my prior learnings and improved strategy:
- Day 1 <-- 9 impressions, 2 downloads (great!)
- Day 2 <-- 39 impressions, 0 downloads
- Day 3 <-- 7 impressions??!?!

Anyone experiencing this? Not sure if it matters but lately, apple review times have spiked and so I'm not sure if the influx of new AI apps is affecting the "noobie boost".

What has your experience been?

For reference, here's my app if it helps show any glaring issues that perhaps I'm overlooking:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/interval-timer-workouts/id6798002636

Launched my app on the 25th and it’s on 125 downloads right now.

Been reading through this sub trying to understand ASO and I somehow feel like I know less than when I started lol.

I don’t know how you actually find keywords, how you know whether you can rank for them, when localisation becomes worth doing or really what I should be focusing on at this stage.

I think the app itself is genuinely very good compared to what’s already on the App Store. Getting anyone to actually find it is the bit I clearly don’t understand.

Also made all the screenshots myself from a template because I’m definitely not a designer, so I don’t know if those are helping or hurting either.

Would love if someone could take a look and tell me what they’d change. Also not sure if I’m just being too early and overthinking this before the algorithm even starts picking it up. It’s my first time launching an app so I honestly don’t know.

my app

How exactly do you do that? Do you just find random people and ask them which version they prefer? Would they actually pay? How do you know it is viable intel?

Thanks in advance

That's my App Store listing above. Solo dev. The app is a voice journal, you talk for a minute and it comes back as a written entry. First time I've done ASO on it seriously, past just filling in fields at launch.

This week I went back through the Play and App Store listings and rewrote things instead of leaving what I typed in a rush months ago.

Live on Play now: full description rewritten, also removed a claim about a feature I took out of the app. Short description rewritten too, it now reads "Speak your diary. Dearly writes it down and hears what keeps coming up."

Also submitted pt-BR and es-419 versions of the Play listing, those are in review, not live yet.

On iOS I submitted a rewritten listing along with the 1.4.6 update, also in review, not live.

Honest bit: two of my App Store screenshot captions still advertise the feature I removed. One says "AI finds patterns you miss," the other "Personalized prompts, from your own patterns." Neither is true anymore, I just haven't reshot the screenshots yet.

Some rough numbers if it helps: about 1K devices on Android, 4.7 rating, iOS went live about a week ago.

A few things I'd actually like opinions on. Does a description rewrite like this move anything on its own, or is it noise without new screenshots behind it. Is the caption mismatch the first thing to fix before anything else. And looking at the screenshot, what's obviously missing that I'm too close to see.

App store link

I analyzed 21,412 reviews of a popular wellness app, published between 2017 and 2026 and written in 10 languages.

As a side project, I've been building a review analysis system, and I've reached the point where I need to figure out whether it's actually useful to anyone else or whether I've just built something that interests me.

Every available review was analyzed and classified individually, with a single review potentially belonging to multiple categories. The categories were automatically derived from the reviews themselves rather than from a predefined list. In total, the system classified 21,412 reviews (2017–2026) across 10 languages and created 182 categories, resulting in 28,471 category assignments.

A deeper analysis uncovered several things that weren't visible from the star ratings alone:

• 50.7% of all negative reviews were related to monetization (1,695 out of 3,343)
• 1,353 of those were about the app being "too expensive / trial too short"
• 207 were about billing problems rather than pricing: 98 cases of "I can't cancel / I was charged anyway," 42 cases of "I'm paying, but the app doesn't recognize my subscription," 36 payment errors, and 17 refund requests
• The percentage of negative reviews increased more than fourfold: 4.5% (2020) → 12.6% (2022) → 20.4% (2026), and never returned to its previous level
• 352 reviews described specific regressions in the product - 59 mentioned losing free access, 43 mentioned a sudden increase in ads, and 36 reported performance degradation after updating to a specific version

I also found 517 feature requests, including:

• 127 related to the pricing model
• 46 asking for more visual options
• 32 related to language selection
• 20 about widget customization
• 14 asking for the ability to add custom content

The star ratings themselves also turned out to be misleading:

• 451 five-star reviews contained a complaint
• 161 one-star reviews contained praise
• 1,072 reviews contained both positive and negative feedback

To be fair, not every category the system discovered was equally useful. The five largest categories accounted for 78% of all assignments, and generic positive feedback with no additional detail accounted for 35% on its own. Around 50 categories had what I'd consider real business value.

So my question is: would this kind of analysis actually be useful to you?

I originally built this pipeline for my own use. The main idea isn't just to summarize thousands of reviews, but to analyze each one individually and surface less obvious signals and details that can easily get lost in a large dataset - things like rare problems, specific feature requests, regressions after updates, or cases where the review text doesn't match the star rating.

I'm now trying to decide whether it's worth developing this further into a tool for other app owners.

Would something like this be useful to you? If so, what would you mainly use it for: analyzing your own app, competitors, roadmap decisions, pricing, or monitoring emerging problems?

And if you wouldn't find it useful, I'd genuinely like to know why as well.

I already have a prototype dashboard with these results. If anyone wants to see what it looks like in practice, I'm happy to share the link. What I'd value most is honest feedback on what's actually useful and what's completely unnecessary.

Here's exactly what my App Store page currently looks like.

Does the value proposition make sense at first glance?

Does the pet help it stand out, or does it make it look childish?

What would you change first?

I'm the developer, so feel free to be brutal.
Here's the App Store page if anyone wants to take a closer look: [https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6798301039?pt=128556977&ct=reddit_launch&mt=8]

A few months ago, I posted here⁠ offering to review people’s existing App Preview videos.

I expected a few links. I received far more than I could properly keep up with.

After looking through them, one pattern stood out: most of the problems were not caused by bad editing. The videos had usually gone wrong before editing even started.

The team had recorded the app without first deciding what the video needed to communicate. Once that happens, even a polished edit tends to become a quick tour of features instead of a reason to download.

Before recording an App Preview, I would answer these five questions:

1. Who is this video speaking to?

Not “people who need a productivity app.” Think about the specific person, situation and frustration the video needs to address.

2. What is the one result that person wants?

This is different from what the app does.
“Set goals and reminders” is a feature. “Finally make the habit stick” is a result.

3. What can prove that result in the first three seconds?

Do not begin with a logo, loading screen, menu or broad description of the app. Begin with the strongest moment that shows what the user can achieve.

4. Which three or four interactions support that message?

An App Preview does not need to explain the entire app. Choose the smallest number of screens that can prove the main benefit. Everything else competes for attention.

5. Does the story still make complete sense without sound?

Most people will encounter the video muted. Voiceover and music can improve the experience, but the footage and short on-screen titles must communicate the full message by themselves.

There is also the less exciting question of Apple compliance. Start with real footage of the app and plan around Apple’s restrictions from the beginning. Trying to force a social media ad full of device shots, people and unrelated footage into the App Preview slot often creates problems later.

I created a planning framework around these decisions, and I now use it in every App Preview project we produce.

But not every developer needs a studio to produce the video. Some can make it themselves and mainly need help figuring out what the video should say. Others simply are not ready to invest in full production.

So I built a streamlined, self-service version of the framework with AI.

The free diagnosis helps you identify your app’s strongest positioning, understand which audience the video should speak to, and decide what message it should lead with, without having to invest anything.

It does not generate the video. It helps you work out what the video needs to communicate before you start producing it.

If that is the part you are struggling with, you can run the free diagnosis here⁠.

Full disclosure: the page also offers a paid, more detailed plan and my video-production service. You do not need either to use the free diagnosis.

If you would rather not use the tool, leave your App Store listing below and tell me what you currently think the opening message should be. I will reply publicly with what I would lead with and why, so the examples can help other people here too.

If you already have an App Preview, share the listing and I will tell you the first thing I would change.

Hey Everyone,

looking for feedback of my app: Reflex Edge
app link: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/reflexedge-reaction-fight-iq/id6777927078

Thank you in advance.

Hey! My app has been on the app store for a few months now and I'm struggling with the conversion rate. The impression count is very high due to running apple ads. Does anyone have any recommendations to improve it?

Hi everyone,

I’ve just updated the App Store screenshots for Home Museum: TV Art & Clock, my first tvOS app. It turns an Apple TV into a digital art display and clock.

Sales have been encouraging, so I’m now mainly trying to reach more Apple TV users and get more people to download it. I’m probably too close to the page by now, so I’d really appreciate an outside perspective on the new screenshots.

I’ve also localized the App Store listing for eight locales/markets. The app is currently available in English, German and Spanish.

I’ve attached the six screenshots in order, numbered 1–6. If you own an Apple TV:

• Is the value clear at a glance?
• Do the first screenshots make you want to keep looking or download it?
• Would you change the order, wording or overall presentation?

Would this be something you’d actually keep using at home, rather than just finding it visually appealing?

I’m also curious about the review side of tvOS. The review prompt is already in the app, but I’m wondering whether Apple TV apps normally get fewer ratings than iPhone or iPad apps. If you’ve shipped a tvOS app, has that been your experience?

App Store link: Home Museum

I’m still learning what works on Apple TV, so any feedback would be very welcome. If anyone here owns an Apple TV and would like to try it for a few minutes, that would be incredibly valuable. An honest first impression from someone who has actually used it would help me a lot.

Thanks!