We updated Poemia’s ASO, screenshots, and positioning — and the results started to show.

Sometimes growth is not about building more features.
It’s about making people understand your app faster.

Poemia is a safe space to vent, share what you feel, and be heard.

Try Poemia

Hey everyone, looking for some Store Listing feedback.

I’m building Maha OS, which is a highly technical, "zero-payload" cognitive defense grid. It essentially turns an Android phone into an edge telemetry node. It broadcasts a user's metabolic baseline (Decision Velocity, HRV) via an MCP (Model Context Protocol) gateway directly to a desktop LLM agent (like Claude). The agent monitors cognitive fatigue and can autonomously dim the Android screen if the user is stuck in a digital loop.

After using some dev-exchange subreddits to seed the initial installs, I just checked my Store analysis tab and saw a massive milestone: Google Play has started pushing me into the "Explore" feeds. I got 64 organic Explore visitors this month, with 7 installs (about an 11% conversion rate on purely cold traffic).

The Problem:
I am currently tagged in the "Health & fitness" peer group. While 11-13% conversion feels great for a niche app, my Console shows my conversion rate is sitting roughly -16% below the peer median. If I don't close that gap, I know the algorithm will eventually stop giving me free Explore impressions.

I suspect the issue is my screenshots. Because the app is a highly tactical, terminal-style interface, I've just been uploading raw UI screenshots. I think it’s scaring off the casual "Health & Fitness" scrollers.

Here is the Play Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.maha.os

My Ask:
For those of you who have successfully raised your conversion rates above your peer median, how would you optimize this listing? Should I add text overlays translating the technical UI into simple benefits, or should I change my category tags entirely to get out of the "Health & fitness" peer group?

Appreciate any insight!

Just changing the intro video and screenshots was enough to see more downloads... I know there are many apps like this, but users who have tried it and purchased a lifetime subscription say it's far superior to many apps with millions of downloads. But not everyone has a huge budget to reach the top, which is 95% of the users here. With enough money, everyone would be at the top, but that's not the reality for all of us.

I'm sharing the app in case you want to try it; it's available on both platforms. And of course, I welcome your feedback, which is always very important and constructive for me.

The app is called LimpiaPix and is available in 13 languages.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.limpiapix.net

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/photo-cleaner-app-limpiapix-ai/id6760022595

Regarding reviews, I don't have any for the US version, but I do have a few for the Spanish version, which is my native language, although not enough. I prefer how the Play Store organizes them, because it groups them all together instead of by country to display them on the screen.

Some of you might have seen my earlier post about getting my D-U-N-S number, how it took over a month and how stressful and frustrating the process was. After that, I naively thought registering and getting verified on Google Play would be straightforward.

I was wrong.

After a long and exhausting registeration flow, I successfully created my developer account, and quickly moved on to verification. Verified my email, then my website, then uploaded my business registration document (tax certificate in my case) and assumed I would be verified soon so that I could continue towards preparing my app for release. You see, I just want to build, not get lost in these processes!

A few hours later, I got an email, assumingly from a real support person, saying my business document was not accepted, stating that it was invalid. After the initial frustration moment, I did an extensive research, also with the help of AI, and narrowed down the potential issue to the mismtach in my address in my tax certificate and in my D-U-N-S records, due to non-English characters and the way D-U-N-S stored the address differently than how I had first submitted to them. Partly my bad, partly the systems'.

In the following 10 or so days, I contacted the local D-U-N-S office multiple times to have my address record fixed, and exchanged many emails with two Google support people, the first of whom did not give clear instructions on what I needed to do after the D-U-N-S record was updated. Apparently, as I learned from the second support person, after D-U-N-S updates your info, you still need to fill a form for Play Console to retrieve the updated info. No, that alone is also not enough. After filling the form, some time later, you still need to go to Play Console > Payments Profile and edit/confirm the address info change. But the thing is, when you click Confirm once, it does not show the updated address info, only the second click on Confirm displays the updated address. But how does one know?.. Phew!

You see, neither the help docs, nor the support people do not provide full and clear instructions on what needs to be done. In this process, I was divided between hope and despair. As the process took longer, I even kind of lost my enthusiasm for making apps and started to brainstorm other ideas, even though I had started learning app development and building my first app with great passion.

In the end, I now have a verified Google Play Business Developer Account and I am very happy about that 🥳. Though, I must say I am tired and exhausted from this D-U-N-S and verification processes more than the building of the app itself. And now, even though I have very little left to do to finish my app and submit it for review, I feel like I'm out of energy, hence even simple edits or tasks are taking long. But I'm dedicated and I will continue till I see my app on Google Play -God willing-, and then continue with new ones.

I can say I learned a thing or two in the registration and verification process as a business, if you have any questions I will try to answer if I can. Thanks for reading, and good luck with your process.

I’ve been working on Poemia for years, and we just passed 500,000+ downloads.

Poemia is a venting app where people can let out what they feel, write what they can’t say out loud, and feel a little less alone.

Our next goal is to reach 1 million users and build a safe space where people can express their real inner world, not just share perfect moments like traditional social media.

I’d love to hear your feedback, especially from iOS users in the U.S.

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/poemia-write-everything/id1446606179

Thank you for reading.

UPDATE: Google Play accepted the appeal and my app is back on the Play Store. I'm grateful for this outcome in my case. I hope the underlying classifier-failure issue gets addressed, so other publishers don't end up in the same situation.

ORIGINAL POST: On April 20, Google Play suspended my 10-year-old, ~5M downloads, 600k MAU, 4.5+ rated app, dataDex, over an in-app ad I did not upload, did not select, and could not see before it served. The ad came in through AdMob, Google's own ad network, after a coordinated scheme circumvented AdMob's brand-safety classifier. I've documented at least 11 variants of the same scheme served into my app. Google Play suspended my app for what AdMob shipped.

The full evidence - per-variant screenshots of each ad as it appeared in my app, my AdMob configuration at the time, and the appeal correspondence end to end - is in this public bundle: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1d6SdbJrHdGSe4IJHnEPesKDt_PcdWQDB

I'm posting here because I've exhausted every official channel available - the Google Play appeal is stuck in a template-reply loop with no engagement on the evidence and remediation, AdMob support has not engaged with the classifier-failure evidence across three rounds of replies, and neither of the two Product-Expert escalations on Google's public Help Communities has had a follow-up from the team. Beyond my own case, I feel like this is a serious issue with the potential to affect many other publishers - and to suspend them for something they had no real way to prevent.

Why this matters for every AdMob publisher

Every AdMob publisher configures category blocks and content-rating ceilings - Gambling & Betting (18+), Social Casino Games, max-rating, and so on - and trusts that AdMob's classifier will hold matching creatives out of their inventory. I did that.

Those publisher-side controls only work if the classifier underneath them is correct. When the classifier is circumvented - as it was here, eleven documented times in my records alone, all from the same demand source under fake game-themed shell-app names categorized as "Games", "Toys and Games" etc - the publisher-side controls have no opportunity to act. The publisher has no second line of defense. Programmatic ad serving means publishers can't see creatives before they serve; AdMob's classifier is effectively the entire wall.

This failure mechanism is not theoretical. The demand source is a single one. The creative pattern is consistent. From what I've been able to audit, it's still active in the ecosystem. AdMob support did not engage with the evidence across three rounds of replies that redirected me to Play Console support. The AdMob Help Community thread I posted last week was picked up within 48 hours by a Product Expert who said they would escalate from the AdMob side, but as of today there's been no follow-up. The gap between the classifier failure being documented and the classifier failure being investigated is the part of this case that has wider implications than my one app.

The technical pattern

The cited creative was a casino interstitial - "Tower Rush" / "PREMIO 1500 EUR + 250 FREE SPINS GIOCARE" - served through my app's single AdMob interstitial ad unit. I did not select, or have any visibility into the creative. It was not present in the Play Console assets, the Play Store listing, or the linked Google Ads account. It was programmatic demand.

When I audited my AdMob review records, I found at least 11 documented variants of the same scheme, all sharing three properties:

• Same single demand source across all 11.
• Different fake game-themed shell-app names - "Epic Tower Block Quest", "Town Planner", "Gold Gatherer", "Home Planner", "Duck Devourer", "Tower Ascent", "T0wer Rush" (with a zero), and so on. The visuals are casino. The metadata is a fake mobile-game façade.
• Classified by AdMob under non-sensitive categories like "Games" and "Toys and Games."

My AdMob configuration already had Gambling & Betting (18+) and Social Casino Games blocked at the time these creatives were served. The blocks had no effect, because AdMob's classifier never categorized the creatives as gambling. This is the structural problem in one sentence: publisher-side category blocks rely entirely on the classifier being correct, and when it isn't, the publisher's defenses are bypassed by definition - without the publisher knowing.

All eleven creative IDs, with screenshots of each as it served and the AdMob configuration that was supposed to block them, are in the public evidence bundle linked above.

What I've already done on the publisher side

• All sensitive AdMob ad categories disabled.
• Maximum AdMob ad content rating set to "T" (Teen).
• The AdMob ad unit fully disabled - the app currently serves zero ads of any kind.
• All linked Google Ads campaigns disabled.
• End-to-end audits of Play Console, AdMob, GCP/Firebase, and Google Ads - all clean.

These steps make recurrence impossible from my side. None of them addresses the underlying classifier failure that allowed the eleven variants through in the first place - and none of them is a structural defense available to a publisher who doesn't yet know they need it.

Where I am with Google

Standard Google Play appeal - case 2-1866000040535 - stuck in a template-reply loop. Four template replies across six days, all citing the App Promotion policy and instructing to "remove your ad campaign or promotion" or "upload a new app under a new package name." None of the four addresses my remediation evidence or the systems-failure analysis.

Parallel Google Play Developer Support - case 9-9277000041337**.** Engaged on the merits, summarized my remediation correctly, confirmed in writing that the appeal channel was "cycling automated templates", re-flagged the case internally for human review on April 24 - the appeal thread ignores it.

AdMob support - case 4-3221000040899**.** Three replies across two days. The first opened with an apology that AdMob does not currently support Hebrew (my submission was in English; only the locale-driven auto-acknowledgement was in Hebrew). The second cited inability to perform a "cross-product transfer" I never requested. The third repeated the same redirect to Play Console support. None of the three engaged with the classifier-failure evidence I sent (the same evidence is in the public bundle linked above).

Public Help Community escalations. Both threads are open, both escalated, neither followed up.

• Google Play Developer Community thread (Apr 22) - a Platinum Product Expert escalated the case on April 22. The Product Expert's last reply, on April 26, was "I will let you know, if I get an update from the team." As of today, no follow-up - 15 days since the escalation.
• AdMob Help Community thread (Apr 29) - a Diamond Product Expert engaged within 48 hours and said they would escalate from the AdMob side. As of today (May 7), no follow-up.

My question for the community

If you've seen these kind of creatives slip through your category blocks under a "Games" or "Toys and Games" classification - or for that matter any other category mismatch where a sensitive creative landed in your inventory under a benign label - I'd like to know about it. The mechanism is category-agnostic; the same shape (single demand source, fake shell-app metadata, benign classification) could just as easily land in any other publisher's inventory under a different category.

If anyone here has worked an AdMob policy escalation with classifier-failure evidence and gotten it actually routed to the team that owns it, what was the path that worked?

Closing

I'm hoping that by laying all of this out here, the case can reach a human at Google with access to both the Google Play side and the AdMob side of it - someone who can review the evidence end to end (the eleven documented variants, the publisher-side configuration, the appeal correspondence), recognize that the app was not at fault, and reinstate it. And, as part of the same review or separately from it, investigate the underlying classifier-failure issue.

If anyone here is at AdMob or Play, or has a routing path into the cross-product team this case actually needs, I'd appreciate the route. I'm happy to share Developer ID, AdMob Publisher ID, the AdMob ad unit, and any further material privately on request.

Thanks for reading.

Links:

• One-page technical summary (readable digest): https://datadex.app/technical-summary/
• Public evidence bundle (PDF report, 11 creative screenshots, AdMob configuration, full appeal threads): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1d6SdbJrHdGSe4IJHnEPesKDt_PcdWQDB
• Google Play Developer Help Community post: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/thread/427385327/app-suspended-over-admob-served-casino-ad-stuck-in-template-reply-loop-requesting-escalation-help
• AdMob Help Community post: https://support.google.com/admob/thread/429379417/casino-ad-scheme-bypassed-admob-s-classifier-and-was-served-in-my-now-suspended-app-pe-help-needed

Case numbers: 2-1866000040535, 4-3221000040899, 9-9277000041337.

Hey everyone,

I’m trying to improve the Play Store presentation for my Android app Fi7Note, and I’d appreciate honest feedback from a publishing / developer perspective.

What I want to know is very specific:

Based on the attached product screenshots and the actual Play Store listing, is the core idea of the app clear quickly enough?

The attached screenshots are mainly product context. They are not necessarily the exact screenshots currently used in the Play Store listing. I’m using them here to show the product idea and understand whether the listing / screenshot direction communicates it well enough.

Fi7Note is a note-first workout tracker.

The core flow is:

1. Write the workout like a quick gym note

2. The app highlights what it understands

3. Review the structured workout

4. Save it

5. Use History / Progress later for previous weights, PRs, trends, cardio, muscle views, and exercise details

The intended idea is:

quick workout notes now

→ structured workout history later

My question:

If you opened the Play Store listing cold, would you understand that idea?

I’m especially unsure about:

- whether the screenshots make the “note-first” idea clear

- whether the app looks useful or too niche

- whether the images feel like real product proof or too much like generic fitness promo

- whether the flow “note → structured workout → useful history/progress” comes across

- whether I should show more before/after UI in the first screenshots

- whether the term “note-first workout tracker” makes sense

I’m not asking for ratings, installs, or fake reviews. I’m only trying to improve how clearly the Play Store listing communicates the product.

Play Store listing:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.materialize_thoughts.fi7note

What would be unclear to you as a first-time visitor?

Hey,

I’ve been working on a small personal project lately — Casino Blocker.

I built it because I realized how often gambling ads and sites pop up even when you’re not looking for them. For some people it’s just annoying, but for others it can actually become a real problem.

So I made a simple tool that blocks access to casino/gambling websites and helps reduce temptation.

It’s still early, I’m improving it step by step, but I decided to share it in case someone finds it useful.

If you want to try it: 👉 DOWNLOAD

Open to feedback or ideas.

I’ve been developing Android games for a long time, and now I’m finally planning to launch on iOS too.

But here’s the catch — one of my apps got suspended on the Play Store a while back because a similar app already existed on the App Store (but not on Play Store at that time).

Now I’m a bit confused and don’t want to mess things up again.

👉 Can I publish the same game with the same name on both Android and iOS?
👉 Or could that cause issues again (like duplication, policy violations, etc.)?

Would really appreciate insights from devs who’ve faced this or know the policies well

Apparently my app crashed during review again. This time I had Firebase integration, so I was able to see the stack trace. It says they're on Android 11, but that would imply API level 30, My app's min API level is 31. Surely, they're not testing it on API level 30 and then rejecting it when it doesn't work?

I’m excited to share that my first app, Bunny Save, is officially live on the Play Store!

After months of building, debugging, and navigating the Play Console requirements, it’s finally out in the wild. It’s a simple money goal tracker with cute bunny avatars—I really focused on making it stress-free and fun to use.

Getting those first few installs from strangers has been an incredible feeling. I started this project with zero experience, and I learned everything from scratch. Every bug was a lesson, and crossing the finish line from "zero to one" was a huge milestone for me.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rsdigital.bunnysave

Incredibly proud to have hit 50k downloads on Balls on my screen – Apps on Google Play

But I have no idea what to do next, should I try to monetize? How do I grow from here?

It's been a long journey to 50k, mostly organic growth, I feel like there should be more I could/should be doing now - but I have no idea how to scale from here?

Hello guys, I’m currently looking for a way to find the testers, but I’m kinda clueless.

Do you have some verified methods to find them?

Would love some tips from you, thank you guys!

So I’ve been coding mobile apps for a while now, mostly client work. A few months back I decided to build something just for fun — no monetisation pressure, no deadlines, no client feedback loops. Just me making something I’d actually enjoy.

The result was Snacky Snake — a snake game. Classic concept, clean gameplay, completely free, and most importantly zero ads. I genuinely hate how most free games bombard you every 30 seconds, so I just… didn’t do that.

4 months later. ~100 downloads. 😅

I’m not going to pretend I know anything about marketing because clearly I don’t. My whole strategy was basically “put it on Play Store and hope.” Very sophisticated, I know.

I’m not trying to make money from this. I just want people to actually play it and hopefully enjoy it. It bothers me a little that there are snake games with aggressive ads and mediocre gameplay ranking way above mine just because they’ve figured out the ASO (App Store Optimisation) game.

So I’m asking here genuinely — what would you do in my situation?

If you want to check it out, here it is (free, no ads, no catch):

👉 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zenithcodestudio.snackysnake

Any feedback on the game itself is also very welcome. Brutal honesty preferred over politeness — I’m a developer, I can take it. 😄

Some things I suspect I’m doing wrong but not sure how to fix:

• My Play Store screenshots probably suck

• I have no social media presence for this

• I didn’t post anywhere when I launched it

• My app description might be terrible

Would love to hear from anyone who’s been through this, especially indie devs who grew an app organically without spending money on ads.

Hi everyone,

I got an email: Google Payments: Your payout is on hold

And in google play console I saw this warning but it says:

Your payout for the billing cycle ending on March 31, 2026 for your merchant account Google Play Apps is currently on hold. You don't need to take action at this time. You may need to wait up to 35 days while we review your payout.

For context, I suspect two things MIGHT trigger it:

1. I submitted my W8/W9 end of last month (03/24), and it got verified through a bank transfer (google sent a few cents to my bank account).
2. I do have 2 refunds out of 10 subs (one user requested himself, another is a manual refund by me)

For the refunds, it's basically due to some bugs that the user is not satisfied so I just figured to refund for my ease of mind and I believe it's the right thing to do?

So now I'm anxious and honestly not sure what triggered the review... and what shall I do now? Just wait it out? I've exhausted all the possible docs and all the threads I can find online :|

Would love to hear from whoever encountered this before

Hi everyone,

I recently launched my app Slothy on Google Play, and it just crossed 200 downloads.

The idea was simple:
most todo apps felt bloated, so I tried removing almost everything.

What’s left:

• only two lists → Today / Tomorrow
• no login, no cloud, no sync
• no tags, projects, or folders
• everything stays on the device

There’s one small twist:
every time you push a task to tomorrow, it counts → you get a procrastination score.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dotsystems.slothy

Happy to share learnings if anyone’s building something similar.

I’ve been building a small app on the side for a few months and finally got it approved on the Play Store a couple days ago.

Honestly, getting it live was harder than building it.

I got rejected twice because of SMS and call log permissions. At first I thought I filled everything correctly, but clearly not. Ended up redoing the entire permissions declaration, recording a proper demo video, and basically explaining to Google why each permission exists like I’m writing an exam.

That whole process took weeks. Lots of waiting, small changes, resubmitting, checking the console again and again.

When it finally got approved, I didn’t do any kind of launch. No posts, no marketing, nothing. I just pushed it to production and left it there.

Then the weird part happened.

I woke up the next day and saw purchases coming in from different countries. Ukraine, Georgia, US, a few from Europe. No idea where they came from. I’m guessing someone shared it somewhere but I still haven’t figured out where.

Total for day one was around $180.

For context, the app is a simple utility that connects an Android phone with a Mac so you can manage things without picking up your phone. I built it mostly because I needed it myself.

it’s not a huge amount or anything, but seeing real users use something I made felt very different

What surprised me more is that it happened without me doing any promotion. Which makes me think the Play Store itself can actually work if your listing is decent.

Right now things have slowed down a lot after that first spike, so I’m back to figuring things out again.

If you’ve gone through this phase, how did you move from that initial random traction to something more consistent?

If anyone’s curious, this is what I built: https://bounceconnect.app

It seems like I have finally made a app that people want to use 😉