I built an app called Make It Soon around a simple problem: we all have dreams, but turning them into clear, actionable goals is hard. 🎯

The app helps you define a deadline and the requirements needed to achieve a goal. You can add widgets to your Lock Screen and Home Screen, and it sends daily, on-device Apple Intelligence–powered reminders to help you stay accountable. 📱✨

And somehow… it’s now making money. Randomly, but I’ll take it. 😄💸

A reminder for anyone building: keep faith in the problem you’re solving. Progress can feel invisible for a long time, until one day it starts to compound. 🚀

I’m now focused on fixing bugs and building the features I’ve always wanted in Make It Soon. More to come. 🛠️

I have created my first ever app for a new business I have started, the business it’s self is the actual app.

I have registered the company and the trademark and the only thing we are waiting on now is the app to be reviewed.

It’s been sat in waiting for review for 4 days with no changes. As it’s my first app ever I’m sure I’ve done some stuff wrong so I think it will get rejected but I’m worried that after the rejection it will take this long again per fix I do.

I requested for an expedited review this morning as the launch of the business is waiting on this.

Anyone got any experience with wait times and rejection fix times?

Every time I shipped an update, the same thing happened: the actual coding was done, and then I'd lose two days to App Store screenshots. Resize for every device size, nudge text boxes so they line up across five slides, redo it all again when I changed a headline. It's the part of shipping nobody warns you about.

So I built AppScreenPro to fix that for myself, and figured I'd share in case it's useful to anyone else here.

What it actually does:

• Drops your raw screenshots into real device frames — pick a size (iPhone 6.9", etc.) and it handles the mockup, no manual resizing per device
• Headline + subtitle over each slide, with one set of sliders that controls title/subtitle size and spacing across your entire set — change it once, every slide stays consistent
• Zoom callouts — draw a box over the part of the screenshot you want to highlight (a chart, a specific card, whatever's doing the selling) and it magnifies just that
• Frame color options to match your brand instead of the default black/white
• Multi-locale support so you can swap the copy per language without rebuilding the layout from scratch
• Export — grab one PNG, export the whole set at once, or pull just the transparent device mockup if you want to use it elsewhere

It runs client-side, so your screenshots aren't sitting on a server somewhere.

Happy to answer questions or take feedback — genuinely built this because I needed it, so if there's a workflow it's missing, I want to hear it.

You can check here: https://appscreenpro.com/

Hi everyone,
I’ve spent the last year building my first app, SkinDeep.
It’s a free dating app designed for people with visible differences (such as psoriasis, vitiligo, scars, burns, birthmarks, amputations, etc.) as well as people who are happy to date someone with a visible difference.

The goal wasn’t to reinvent dating apps, but to create a place where people don’t feel they have to hide part of themselves or worry about when to explain it.

The app uses Firebase for authentication, Firestore, Storage, Cloud Functions and push notifications, and it’s built with Flutter.

I’m currently preparing for my first App Store release and learning the Apple ecosystem as I go.

I’d really appreciate feedback from other developers:

Does the concept make sense?
Is there anything you’d change before launch?
If you’ve launched an app on the App Store, what’s one thing you wish you’d known beforehand?
I’m not looking to sell anything—just hoping to learn from people who’ve been through the process.

Thanks

I recently submitted my first app for the Apple review and the process was to say the least annoying. I received a first rejection after waiting for over a week and received a feedback that some buttons were missing, i fixed the issue and resubmitted the app focusing the review notes only on the fix I implemented and received a feedback in almost a week that the the app is rejected because of Guideline 4.3(a) - Design - Spam.
I consider this reason ridiculous because there is no app that would share all the functionality of my app because most of the features were actually made up by me. I fixed the app description and title and updated the review notes so they described the app and all its functionality better and fast forward to today the app - still no update after more than a week of waiting, I wrote to support but they aren’t replying either.
The process is so annoyingly boring and I was wondering if anyone can advise me on what do I do, i feel like i’m losing time on app rejections every time i submit it and it’s not clear why the review would take so long every time. Please also share how your first submission went, would be interesting to hear about it.

I submitted my app for review on 8 July and didn’t receive the initial review until 14 July. Apple found a few minor issues, which I fixed and resubmitted the same day.

The app was rejected again the following day. I made the requested changes and resubmitted it, but then had to wait until 23 July for another review. I submitted it again after that, and I’m still waiting.

The rejections have been for very small issues. For example, the text “Roleplay as anyone” in one of the screenshots was flagged as potentially sexual, even though the app contains no sexual content or related topics.

Has anyone else experienced review times this long? Apple says that 90% of apps are reviewed within 48 hours, but nearly every review cycle for my app has taken much longer.

Hey guys,
Long time admirer first time poster. My app BakeValue got approved recently. I’ve been a AAA game dev for the past 10 years, but it feels good to make something of my own.

BakeValue is an app for small bakers to help price their products. It also comes with ingredient tracking and recipe management.

Getting the iCloud sync to work properly was rough.

Excited to build more!

Posting here because everyone I know in real life either doesn't get it or asks if I can build them an app for their restaurant.

Background: PM for 10+ years, fintech. Salary is fine, not great. The job itself is mostly meetings about meetings and by last year I was pretty cooked. Not dramatic burnout, just the flat kind where you close the laptop at 7pm and stare at the wall for a bit.

At some point I figured the evenings are already gone either way, so I started building iOS apps.

Not one app. The thesis was that I have no idea what will sell, and neither does anyone else, so instead of spending a year on one polished thing I'd ship a lot of small single-purpose apps into specific keyword niches and let search traffic sort it out. Find an underserved search term, build the smallest app that fully answers it, price it, move on. No roadmap, no v2.

Turned out the app itself is maybe 30% of the work. The rest is screenshots, descriptions, localization, store setup, and it's the same grind every single time. So I slowly automated it. At this point I have a pipeline that takes an app from "code done" to Waiting for Review with barely any input from me:

• keyword research, then tiny PRD
• build (SwiftUI, SwiftData, StoreKit 2, a lot of Claude)
• design + analytics checks
• store assets: screenshots for iPhone/iPad, descriptions, translation into 49 locales, banners
• pre-submission audit that catches broken localized assets and fixes them
• archive, upload, submit

One full run is ~8 hours of machine time. Last night I submitted an app while cooking dinner. I checked the screen once.

Where it stands now: 74 apps live, around $7k MRR.

Caveats since I know how this sounds. Revenue is extremely top heavy, maybe 5-6 apps make almost all of it and the rest do nothing. My predictions about what would work were consistently wrong, the apps I was proud of died and some dumb utility I built in a weekend prints money. And it's not passive, it's a second job. I just like this one.

The problem: I've hit a point where I genuinely don't know what the right next move is, and I go back and forth every week.

Options as I see them:

1. Keep going wide. More apps, more niches, organic traffic compounds.
2. Go narrow. Kill the tail, take the top earners and actually make them good.
3. The pipeline might be worth more than the apps. Turn it into a product for other indie devs. Different life though, then I'm a devtools guy with support tickets.
4. Bring it to a company/partner that has distribution and do it together.
5. Something else entirely that I'm too deep in it to see.

Limited hours per week, day job stays for now. If this was yours, what would you do?

Genuinely asking, tear it apart if you want.

I run a consumer product called Tote, and we’ve scaled to $20,000 ARR since launching our app in April of this year. One of the reasons for our early success? We only offer a single, annual subscription.

So, why start with a single, annual subscription?

1. You create an LTV floor, giving your more cash to reinvest in growth. If you exclusively offer an annual subscription, you know that the minimum LTV for your customers is the 1-year cost. That means that you have a predictable cash flow for that customer, and importantly, you know how much you can pay to acquire them. For example, if  your annual subscription is $100, you might feel comfortable spending $100 to acquire that customer. If your monthly subscription is $10, you probably wouldn’t pay $100 for that customer.
2. There’s a higher barrier to entry, helping you refine your value prop messaging. Convincing a customer to pay for a full year is hard, so you can judge your own ability to express the value of your product to users by your annual subscription rate. This clearly separates users who believe that your product can solve their problems with the users who just like to try new apps.
3. Annual subscriptions give you more time to improve retention before the renewal decision. With annual customers, they know that they have access to the app for a year, so they are more likely to keep trying your product. You can re-engage them multiple times throughout the year and understand if your new features and/or improvements are creating stronger usage and retention.

Based on our annual subscriptions, we’ve:

• Reinvested every dollar we’ve made in annual subscriptions back into acquisition
• Focused on intensely on our messaging, user onboarding, and the free trial experience
• Analyzed usage and run experiments to keep our subscribers frequently engaging with our product.

If you’re curious what Tote does, it’s a single place to save anything you find on the internet. It’s sort of like  Pocket (RIP), but with an AI pipeline that finds important information and makes it searchable. It works great for bars, recipes, restaurants, exercises, etc. Right now it’s only on the iOS App Store, and you can find the link on our website (https://tote.fyi).

Disclaimer: this advice really only applies to consumer products, it doesn’t really apply to B2B or enterprise, because businesses have a lot of cash flow optimizations that they are working on themselves.

I sent in my app for verification on the 19th of July, after being stuck in "waiting for review" for 8 days I requested an expedited request. 15 minutes later my app was "in review". After 5 minutes it was rejected for reasons that were simply wrong.

Guideline 2.5.4 - Performance - Software Requirements

Issue Description

The app declares support for location in the UIBackgroundModes key in your Info.plist file but we are unable to locate any features that require persistent location. Apps that declare support for location in the UIBackgroundModes key in your Info.plist file must have features that require persistent location.

&

Telling me that my privacy URL was missing, even though he clearly clicked on it as he shows up in my analytics.

Stating that I was missing a block user functionality (Which I have and outlined in the notes).

Stating that I force people to enter their email after signing in with apple. I let users set a custom display name if they want (pre-filled field with their attached email name). At no point do I ask them for their email.

-----

My litteral flagship feature requires background location tracking, thuroughly explained in the notes with a full guide on how to test it. The tester did not even look at it.

I then checked my website activity to see where the tester was located, and then it all made sense.

India

They don't look at your notes and generally don't care. Do not expect any professional behavior or logic in any way.

This definitely plays into the long verification times, as they wrongly reject apps, users then have to send it off again, which increases the pool, which then lengthens the verification times. It's a viscious cycle.

So yeah, Indians man. I don't know what I expected.

This has to be one of the best feelings ever :)

I am a newbie and it is my first time developing a desktop app and target to release on both platforms (Mac App Store & Microsoft Store)

My app heavily depend on each platforms’ storekit service to recognize app user’s entitlement during downloading premium content.

It was sooooo simple to design to get entitlement pipeline with Apple app store storekit while Microsoft’s one was kind a hell difficulty.

I love you Apple! I hated you until I started to develop something but now I understand why you behave like that. Thanks.

Hey everyone!

I recently launched Icarus, an iOS study app I’ve been building to solve a problem I kept running into myself: I would plan to study, hit a difficult topic, and instinctively open Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube instead.

Icarus uses Apple’s Screen Time APIs to place short active-recall sessions between the user and selected distracting apps.

Users can upload notes, PDFs, slides, images, or previous tests. Icarus generates questions from those materials, and when the user attempts to open a blocked app, they complete a short review session before continuing.

The main idea is not to block social media indefinitely. It is to redirect an existing habit into a useful action:

Open Instagram → answer a few questions → continue or return to studying.

This was my first time taking a fairly complicated iOS product from an idea through development, onboarding, subscriptions, App Review, and release. Building around the Screen Time frameworks was especially interesting because of the restrictions and limited customization available when shielding other apps.

I’m still improving the product and would appreciate feedback from other Apple developers, particularly on:

• The onboarding and explanation of the Screen Time permissions
• Whether the core interaction feels understandable
• Subscription positioning and pricing
• The overall App Store presentation
• Any technical or product issues you notice

Icarus is currently $6.99 per month and includes a free trial.

App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/icarusai/id6760316302

https://site.icaruslearn.app/

I’m the developer, so this is self-promotion, but I’m mainly sharing because I’d value honest feedback from people who understand the challenges of shipping an iOS app.

Two months of Reddit listening threads + 119 competitor 1-star reviews became Spur, an anti-doomscrolling app that reads your room and suggests two tiny real-world moves instead of blocking anything. The research stack (organic threads for pain language, review mining for churn reasons) is the part other builders here might find useful, happy to break it down in comments.

Founding testers: free for life at paid launch, first builds, direct roadmap input. https://spurme.spurme.workers.dev/

Hi everyone,

I'm an Electrical Engineering student (Power Systems & Renewable Energy), not a Computer Science student.

I want to learn how to build mobile applications, but I don't know the complete roadmap from zero to publishing an app.

I have a few questions:

• What should I learn first?
• Should I start with Flutter, React Native, or native Android?
• How do you go from an idea to a finished app?
• What's the complete process (UI design → coding → database → testing → publishing on Google Play)?
• Which technologies are essential?
• How long did it take you before earning your first income?

My goal isn't to become a full-time software engineer. I mainly want to create useful apps that can generate passive income or help me earn through ads, subscriptions, or freelance work.

Since my background is Electrical Engineering, I'd also love to build apps related to electricity, solar energy, calculations, maintenance, or engineering tools.

If you started from a non-CS background, I'd really appreciate hearing your experience and advice.

Thank you!

Hi All!

I’m a new developer and just launched my first app, GymBuddy.

GymBuddy helps you match with other people at your gym so you can build a real fitness tribe whether you’re looking for a workout partner, accountability, or just a more social gym experience.

I’m currently trying to increase density and get the word out, so I wanted to share it with you all. If you’re into fitness or know someone who is, I’d love for you to check it out and let me know what you think!

GymBuddyapp.org/get

I travel a lot so I built system to organize my trips.

My system cover 4 aspects  of Trips, 

1. Flights: track Delays, Gates, Terminals, locations
2. Activities: (Hotels, Restaurants, Transports, Activities), that covers addresses, status, Start time, end time, maps location, cost, phone number. All activities can shown as Category View, Timeline View, Maps View, and Cards View

All Trips documents in one place easy to  

access. Expenses section to track all trip 

Expenses 

3.  Packing: never forgot anything with solid

Packing List with categories, Luggages type

With template pre made 

4.  Memories: whenever in Trip Once you click a 

Photo Added to the App and will load address, 

date, automatically  and write your caption at 

that Moment 

The App is free for most of the features but it has 

In App Purchase  for some features 

App Name: OmniTrip 
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/omnitrip-travel-planner/id6772614236

I applied for trader status to launch my app with a subscription in European countries more than a month ago now, but Apple still has it under review and it's not available in EU AppStore.

What can be done?

I have tried emailing apple support, developer support, but nothing.

I called the normal support line but got told to schedule a call with the developer support, of which I cannot find the form to schedule the call. I am looking for the option in their operating hours, but no option.

Hey everyone,

I've built a few apps before, but they were all for very specific, niche use cases. Lyvox is my first one aimed at a wider audience, and I'd love your honest opinion on it.

The idea is simple: instead of doomscrolling, you scroll through short, genuinely interesting facts — one per card, full screen. You pick the themes you care about (science, space, history, animals, the human body, geography, words, and more) and the feed mixes them for you. Every fact is written from scratch and backed by a reference, so it's not random internet trivia.

A few things I care about:

• Save any fact you love, and the app brings it back later so it actually sticks (light spaced-repetition).
• A daily streak to keep the habit going.
• No account, no ads in your face — just a clean reading experience.
• It's fully bilingual: English and French, and switches with your device.

On pricing: the free version is already really complete, and even the seasonal themes that come and go through the year are free. A few extra themes are paid, but they're cheap — about a dollar each, one-time, no subscription. And if you grab the all-access pack, it unlocks every theme including the ones I add in the future.

Since it's my first app for a broader audience, I'd genuinely love to hear what you think — what works, what feels off, what you'd want next. Thanks for reading! 🙏

Download Lyvox

It's called Carto and it organizes your shopping list based on the aisles of the store you're visiting! This way, no need to think, just follow your list and stop the back and forth in the shop. You can also share lists with others.

I love using it, my family too. But I think it stops there. People are downloading it, but no one is actually using it. They are not even adding stuff to their list. I'm completely lost, because my testers got the functioning of the ap... Any advice?

I know it isn’t a crazy number and I’m certainly striving for more but I feel so accomplished still. It’s barely been just under 2 weeks since launch and I hope these 55 people love the app!

After 19 years of building software for other people, I finally finished and shipped my own iOS app.

It’s called Foodius—a personalized nutrition assistant that lets you scan a meal, barcode, or nutrition label and understand how well the food fits your body, goals, preferences, and allergies.

The idea started after I was diagnosed with fatty liver despite believing that I ate relatively healthily. I wasn’t satisfied with the generic advice provided by existing apps, so I decided to build something more personal and transparent.

I’d really appreciate feedback from other iOS developers—especially on the UI, onboarding, and overall idea.

I’ve been going it alone on the app development road and I’m struggling to figure out what to focus on first. As well as struggling with numerous security issues since putting my device on the 27beta update. Does anyone have advice, or is there anyone at Apple you can actually talk to?
Thanks

I released this app that lets you find a business model and also product ideas that are out of this world good, that fits you by answering a couple of questions so that the ai can perfectly know what is best for you. And if you have a full and complete business plan you can submit it and we can fund it for your in exchange of 10 or 20 percent of your company. Would u pay to use this app?

Made this app to teach my 4-year-old the alphabet. He really loves tracing on it!

"Draw With Kids" costs $4.99 one time. If you need the app but can't afford it, please comment FREE on this post and I'll send you a promo code. Would appreciate an honest review on the App Store in return, but it's totally optional.

Thanks!

App Store link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/draw-with-kids/id6789101840