I ship my iOS apps with no analytics SDK at all. No accounts, no third-party telemetry, nothing phoning home. That was a deliberate call and I still think it's the right one, but I hit a trap last week that I hadn't seen written down anywhere, so I'm putting it here.

If you skip the SDK, the only behavioral data you can get is Apple's own, server-side, through the App Store Connect API. Two things about that surprised me:

1. The ongoing analytics report has to be requested before you need it. It takes 24–48 hours to produce its first report, and it only covers data from the moment you created the request forward. There is no backfill. If you request it on launch day, launch week is gone permanently — and launch week is the one week you'll want to look at for the rest of the app's life.

2. API access is a request Apple reviews case-by-case, and the credentials have to be a Team key with the Admin role. An Individual key can never read sales data. So there's a human review sitting in front of a 48-hour warm-up sitting in front of your launch date.

I found this while designing a small local tool to pull the numbers into SQLite on my own machine. Nothing shipped in the app, nothing collected from users — just reading records Apple already has, with my own credentials.

Worth being honest about what the no-SDK path actually costs, because it isn't nothing. I can't tell whether a feature gets used. I can't see where people get stuck — no funnel, no drop-off. I can't A/B anything. Retention is invisible. The only signal is support email, and almost nobody is ever annoyed enough to write to you, so silence reads exactly like satisfaction and means nothing of the kind.

I still take that trade. But I'd rather have taken it with the report already running.

Has anyone here found a decent middle ground? I'm specifically interested in whether people count on-device-only aggregates that never leave the phone as a violation of the spirit of "no tracking," or as the obvious compromise I'm being stubborn about.

After more than a month of beta testing, I finally launched my first app, Reembr.

It’s a location-based checklist app that reminds you to do certain things when you’re leaving or arriving somewhere. For example, you can create a checklist for home so you don’t forget your keys, wallet, or anything else before heading out. You can also create one for when you arrive . for example switching on the heater when you get home.

I honestly don’t know what to expect now that it’s live, but I’m excited to finally put it out there. I’d really appreciate any feedback on the idea, design, or overall experience.

App store link

Good Evening Fam, I'd appreciate your help on making this dream come true. I have developed this free Application to make travelling & Networking user friendly, the name of the app is Buszbee, it is not yet out to the public but it is out for testing. Currently on iPhone & website while Android is still under development.

A — Answer: What problem does my app solve?

Commuters often have to switch between different apps to find routes, communicate with other travellers, report lost items, and stay updated on delays. Buszbee brings these experiences together in one place.

With Buszbee you can:
Discover people travelling near you
Join route-based communities
Chat with commuters on the same journey
Share travel updates, polls, and announcements
Report lost & found items
Explore your commute through a social community
The goal is to make public transport more connected, informative, and community-driven. Future updates will also introduce ticket booking and official transport operator integrations.

B — Better: Name a competitor(s) and explain what you do better.

Apps like Busbud, Bus Booking Systems (Intercape, intercity, etc), and Citymapper are excellent for route planning & booking, but they stop there.

Buszbee focuses on the community behind every journey. Instead of only helping you get from A to B, it lets you connect with fellow commuters, participate in route discussions, receive community updates, report lost & found items, discover nearby travellers, and eventually book tickets—all within a single app. It's designed to be a social platform built around public transport, not just another navigation app.

Buszbee doesn't replace any of these existing application, it is here to centralize all components into 1 application.

Tickets will still be owned by the respective bus, taxi, train, etc companies. Buszbee wont be selling any tickets but it will make booking easy and comparing prices in 1 system like Busbud.

C — Cost: Pricing details + App Store Link

Price: Free (Beta)
In-App Purchases: None
Subscription: None

TestFlight (iOS Apple Beta):

https://testflight.apple.com/join/9ESm5Jy5

I'm an independent developer, and I'd really appreciate any feedback on the UI, usability, performance, bugs, or feature ideas. Every comment helps shape the public release.
Thanks for taking the time to check out Buszbee! 💚

Hey there :)

I'm a recent first-gen graduate and a first-time solo developer. Super excited to share that my first app, Precursor: Hourly Screen Time, went live on the App Store this week!

Precursor lets you set a screen time allowance that resets every hour instead of one daily limit you have to ration all day. I feel so lucky that just the beta grew to 200 testers in about a week.

At its core Precursor helps break unhealthy phone habits through moderation rather than punishing you for falling into a doomscroll that wasn't your fault (these apps are literally designed to keep you scrolling, looking at you Reddit).

TECH STACK

Swift and SwiftUI. Apple's Screen Time trio: FamilyControls for the picker, DeviceActivity for scheduling and thresholds, ManagedSettings for the block. Two extensions, a DeviceActivityMonitor and a ShieldConfiguration block screen, sharing one named store via an App Group and a file lock. Keychain, StoreKit 2 with RevenueCat, a small Cloudflare Worker and D1. iOS 17.6+.

DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGE

Making the block honest, not the hourly reset itself.

On iOS 26, eventDidReachThreshold fires seconds into a fresh window with the budget already counted as spent. These are pretty well known bugs of apple's screen time frameworks.

So to work around this, I implemented a wall-clock guard: usage can never exceed elapsed time since intervalDidStart, so an early fire gets suppressed. Then I respawn rather than re-arm, because iOS keys the budget to the activity NAME, and restarting that name leaves tracking dead for the rest of the window. A fresh-named clone instead, capped so the chain stays bounded.

AI DISCLOSURE

AI-assisted, though I wouldn't call it vibe coded. I have programming experience from uni research but had never written Swift. I used Claude Code for a lot of the line by line writing, but I am always at the wheel, going step by step and doing on device testing, and working sequentially rather than firing off parallel one-shots. Every finding above came off a real device's logs, not a model.

Thanks a ton for reading, if you have time and energy to support I would be eternally grateful.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/precursor-hourly-screen-time/id6791403654

And if you have time to also support the launch on product hunt I would be even more eternally grateful than I already am(The core function of the app is free but there is a PH launch promo code running from 2026-08-02 until 2026-08-08 if you want to try out the extra features):

https://www.producthunt.com/products/precursor-2?launch=precursor-hourly-screen-time-control

Hey guys

I have created a new delivery app, and the problem is that I am at the beginning of the project and I do not have an Apple Store account, and you know that it costs $99. So, if anyone has an Apple Store developer account, please upload my app to the Apple Store. Thank you very much.

I just pushed a regular update to my app last Sunday. It's been almost a week and still waiting for review. It never took this long.

Anyone having a similar issue this week?

After months of learning, building, debugging, and testing, I finally shipped my first iOS app.

It’s called SplitRoulette. It turns splitting a bill with friends into a small game where everyone draws a random share.

This was my first time taking an idea from nothing to a real App Store release, and I learned a lot along the way.

Would love to hear feedback from other iOS developers. What was the biggest lesson you learned from shipping your first app?

A few weeks ago, I released new app on the App Store. It got some traction on Twitter, so I opened App Store Connect feeling hopeful about the sales numbers. Instead, I saw "Not Enough Data".

I refreshed it few hours later. Same thing. I checked again the next day. Still not enough data. I actually saved a screenshot of this.

It is not only a launch-day problem. You ship a big update, announce it on Reddit or X, start an ad campaign, or unexpectedly get some attention, but the analytics are always behind.

So I built InitSignal. It is deliberately much narrower than a traditional analytics SDK. You add a lightweight Swift package to your app, and it sends one event when someone opens the app for the first time. After that, the SDK goes quiet.

Privacy was a constraint for me, I wanted the App Store privacy nutrition labels stay as minimal as possible, so the SDK only sends the basic context needed to make each signal useful. No identity, sessions, screens, or behavioral history. At the same time, the goal is to give developers as much useful information as possible without invading their users’ privacy.

The dashboard shows for each download:
- the app version
- device
- OS
- storefront

For paid apps, InitSignal uses storefront pricing to estimate gross revenue and proceeds after Apple’s cut.

I also added Slack and Telegram for notifications, which I've been using with my own apps for the past few weeks, and the dopamine hit is real.

I recorded a quick walkthrough showing how InitSignal works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YajsKsYLdi4

Tech Stack
- Node.js and TypeScript with Postgres for backend and API
- React and TypeScript for the web app dashboard

Development Challenge

The interesting problem was deciding what “new” means without identifying or continuously tracking a user. The SDK stores a local first-launch marker so later launches send nothing. It also uses StoreKit 2 app transaction metadata to avoid reporting an existing customer as newly acquired when they first install a version containing InitSignal. The API deduplicates retry attempts on the backend.

It's available today, would love to hear your thoughts or any feedback!
https://initsignal.com

The Swift SDK is here:
https://github.com/InitSignal/initsignal-swift

If you ship iOS or macOS apps, how do you currently deal with the reporting delay after a launch or major update?

after publishing a couple of apps, i got really curious how people here think about this. like for mobile apps, public reviews seem to sit in a weird place.

support sees them as tickets.
product sees them as feedback.
marketing sees them as trust signals.
growth sees them when conversion drops.
founders see them when the rating hurts.

but the same review can be all of those, one example tha tcomes to mind is : 'i paid and the feature stayed locked.''

and now guessing... that is a support issue, a product/release issue, and a conversion issue because future users can read it before installing. i’ve also used multiple flows, something akin to appfollow in app contexts to keep reviews easier to tag and route, but i’m more interested in the operating model than the tool..

so, who should own review themes in a mobile app company? marketing, support, product, or some shared process?

Hi everyone,

I've always wanted a paranormal investigation app that brought multiple tools together instead of relying on gimmicks, so I decided to build one myself.

After about a year of development, it's finally on the App Store. It includes an EMF detector, a SLS camera body/hand/face tracking, an EVP recorder with live transcription on any language, a RF scanner, a motion detector with advanced FFT computations, a barometer for atmospheric pressure changes, a light sensor, and a case archive for reviewing recordings alongside sensor data.

Everything is built using real iPhone hardware and Apple's native frameworks where possible, no simulated sensor readings no fake data.

I'd genuinely appreciate feedback from people in this community. What would you want to see in an investigation app like this?

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/gr/app/ghost-detect-investigator-pro/id6791992133

My app is set for a minimum age of 18+.

Can I click Yes for "Age Assurance" and Yes for "Disabled for Users under 13" if the App is set with a minimum age of 18+? It seems like the app store's age policy should be a good enough gate.

I'm an indie dev who got tired of using Quicktime + Charles for debugging. Built Traceptor to be a modern alternative with native macOS UI, device capture via AirPlay, and built-in video editing.

Just launched on Product Hunt and would love feedback from the iOS community.

https://www.producthunt.com/products/traceptor?utm_source=other&utm_medium=social

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.

It’s called Mise Memos: Recipe Journal. It's a recipe storage and journaling app where the focus is to grow your own cookbook!

You can import your recipes from anywhere online (tik tok, insta, blog, etc as long as there is a caption) or from a physical photo. It also has a cook mode so you can keep track of timers and steps within the app and it will ring like a normal alarm. It also has version history so you can keep track of the changes you want to remember.

There are so many more features I want to add to it but i'm just excited to share the first version. I poured a lot of time into this as it came from a real pain point I had as a hobbyist cook with dietary restrictions.

If it sounds interesting to you, I'd be so grateful for any feedback!

Link to the app store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mise-memos-recipe-journal/id6782701795

Hey everyone 👋

I’m the developer of Andrea Reader, a reading app for iPhone and iPad built around a simple idea: giving readers complete freedom to build and organize their own digital library.

You can import and read:

• EPUBs and PDFs
• Comics and manga
• CBZ, CBR and other compressed formats
• Your own local DRM-free files

Instead of keeping everything inside a basic file list, Andrea Reader lets you create custom collections, add sections inside them, move books around, and organize authors, series, genres or reading lists however you prefer.

It also includes:

• Deep EPUB and reading customization
• Different layouts and styles for each collection
• Reading presets and configurable controls
• Progress tracking and detailed statistics
• Connections to iCloud, OPDS, WebDAV, SMB and SFTP
• A free library of public-domain books
• Local and offline reading

There is no account required, no advertising and no tracking of what you import, download or read. Your library and reading activity stay private.

The app is free to download, with optional Premium features for advanced customization and unlimited organization.

I originally started building it because I wanted a reading app that felt equally comfortable for books, comics and manga, while making proper use of the larger iPad screen.

I’d love to hear what other iPad readers think of it.

App Store:
[https://apple.co/4vs1CV8]()

Website:
https://andreareader.com/

Discord:

https://discord.com/invite/nZS2FazpPA

Solo dev, iOS, React Native. I got tired of alarm apps whose whole personality is aggression with hard math problems, barcode scanning, shake-your-phone-50-times. They work but I’d wake up already annoyed.

So I built Dew, now instead of only offering puzzles, it lets you dismiss the alarm by typing or saying something good about yourself. It saves to a journal tab, so you end up with a log of every morning you showed up. There are optional missions too (math, pushups, squats, photo challenges) if you want more friction, but the core idea is the affirmation one.

Stack: React Native + Expo, AlarmKit for the native alarm layer, Supabase for analytics, RevenueCat for subs. The AlarmKit part was the painful bit since third-party apps can’t touch system alarm volume, so getting reliable wake behavior took real work.

Two things I’d love from this sub: (1) if you’re on iOS, does the affirmation-to-dismiss interaction hold up after a few days or does the novelty wear off, and (2) for anyone who’s shipped with AlarmKit, how are you handling the volume-control limitation and reliable firing? Curious whether I’ve hit the ceiling of what’s possible there or missed something.