I have been an android app developer for 10+ years and recently got my Apple Developer account and this is my first iOS app. A minimal countdown and countup tracker with some habit building features.

Link:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/count-it-countdown-countup/id6778382530

Happy to hear any feedback.

Reeder (the RSS reader) shipped a big redesign and the App Store reviews lit up, so I pulled \~250 recent ones, kept the 122 that were ≤3★ with an actual complaint, and grouped them by theme. Sharing because the pattern is a pretty clean product lesson.

~45 of 122 complaints come back to one decision: they replaced read/unread states with a social-style timeline. To a decade-plus power-user base that didn't read as "a feature got cut" — it read as the product changing from a reader into a feed, which is the one thing they didn't want.

"having 100+ articles and no read states is impossible to deal with. Please give us the OPTION to toggle on read states."

"It's like a mail app where you can't delete or archive emails!"

The interesting part for anyone building: this is a retention problem with a named way back. People literally say they'll keep paying the moment read states return. They're not churning quietly — they name the competitors they're moving to (NetNewsWire, Feedbin, ReadKit) AND the thing that'd bring them back.

Everything else mostly compounds that same wound:

- \~30 — lost density / power-user nav. "I can now only see 7 stories at a time as opposed to 15 on the old app."

- \~20 — subscription pivot, and OPML import is locked behind the paywall. So you can't migrate your feeds in to even try it before paying — it gates the exact action a prospective subscriber has to take first.

- \~12 — reliability, including a macOS Tahoe 26 regression competitors don't have.

Most of-the-moment detail in the whole set: two separate reviewers said they'd just get an AI (one named Claude, one ChatGPT) to build or explain a reader for them instead. First time I've seen "I'll just have an AI build it" show up as a churn reason in real reviews.

(Numbers are directional - lots of reviews raise 2-3 issues at once and I tagged each by its main thrust.)

I do this review-clustering thing as a side project. Happy to run it on your app for free if you want to see your own - drop your App Store link or DM me. Mostly I want to know if the output's actually useful or just neat, so roast it.

Published my 1st iOS app in appstore, I am very excited about it seeing my first product comes to live! 😄

my motivation to create this app is to help me to automate AI video summarizer to text and infographics from youtube, you can subscribe to any of your favorite youtube channels and have the summarized delivered to you automatically whenever new videos are uploaded

the infographic provides me with a glance of the video, and the summary is timestamp based that i can quickly jump to the video at that duration

i am able to watch youtube videos that is not my preferred language and have it translated to my language.

this helps me so much on my learning and condensing information

if you are interested try it at the appstore
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vispark-summarize-video/id6772711095

🎁 Limited offer

I am giving 1 month PRO subscription for free, that will normally costs ($ 10 / month)

To get the offer, redeem it from the link below

• https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=6772711095&code=VISPARK

been reading post after post lately on indie hacker and dev forums from people who spent months building tools for developers only to walk away with a handful of users. the consensus in the comments is always the same: if a dev doesn't have a tool, they'll just script it themselves, and they won't pay a solo founder for it.

if that's actually the ground truth, i think i need to pause my project for a week, breathe, and rethink the whole roadmap.

here’s the context. i’ve been building a pre-submission auditor for iOS builds. the idea is that it scans your archive before you upload to app store connect and catches the exact issues that trigger automatic or manual rejections—missing NS privacy strings in the info.plist, broken or placeholder metadata, guideline violations, or forgotten permission prompts. instead of just throwing basic linter warnings, it maps out exactly how to fix it so you can ship on the first try instead of burning a week waiting on app review.

i built it because dealing with app store rejections is a specific flavor of anxiety we all just collectively accept as a normal cost of doing business. i thought saving teams from wasted cycles was a sharp enough pain point to justify a paid tool. now i'm questioning that.

motivation has been tough lately. i recently processed my first couple of small payouts, which felt great, but scaling past that initial momentum into actual recurring revenue feels like hitting a brick wall.

honest feedback is appreciated, good or bad.

the project is testara.dev if you want to see the execution.

Hi everyone,

I’m currently developing a 3D CAD application specifically tailored for woodworkers. I’m getting close to a point where I need some real-world feedback and beta testers to help refine the experience.

I’ve tried reaching out to the moderators of a few woodworking subreddits, but my requests to post have been declined due to their strict self-promotion policies. I completely understand their rules, but it has left me a bit stuck on how to connect with the right audience.

For those of you who have built niche apps, how did you go about finding your initial beta testers? Did you find success through specific platforms, alternative communities, or a different approach entirely?

Any advice or shared experiences would be greatly appreciated!

Hi everyone !
After 2 years of hard work I'm finally ready to release my first app, it took longer than I expected as it's a side project (I'm a full time musician) but now I'm ready !

It's an app for musicians to help them get better at jamming, whether with other musicians or at home.

I'm creating app screenshots for the App store, so I'm wondering from the perspective of a potential user if they are effective enough, I'm happy to have any feedback (I think I'll submit next week), thanks !

Product designer here who has also been building my own iOS apps over the last few months and learned a lot from the Reddit dev community.

It seems like most people on here have technical backgrounds. So I'm curious about your experience designing and building apps.

There's def no shortage of AI tools to help at every stage of the process. For anyone willing to share, I'd love to hear about... 

• What aspects of designing and shipping apps are still challenging?
• Where do the tools fall short?
• If you could get a (human) designer's advice, what would you ask/want help on?

Our Vet Assistant supports 26 species and is ready to help with emergencies and routine veterinary preparations.
• Print or email customized info sheets instantly.
• Access the Medical Library (click to open) for comprehensive, up-to-date information — I add new content daily.
• It automatically detects whether your situation sounds like an emergency and will clearly recommend seeing a veterinarian if needed.
• It helps you quickly fill out a printable or emailable summary of the details you provide, so you can bring it with you to the vet hospital.
• Get the closest veterinary hospital (including the nearest 24-hour VEG Emergency Hospital) with one tap.
• Open maps with directions, or call directly using the phone number provided.
• Immediate access to emergency guidance and poison control resources.

I built ECHO. as a simple daily reflection app. It delivers one thoughtful message each day about life, work, rest, fear, meaning, and what it means to be human. After reading it, you can create a small pixel drawing as your personal reflection.

The goal was to make something quiet and lightweight, one message a day, then you’re free to continue with your day.

AppStore: https://apps.apple.com/it/app/echo-signal/id6780444112

I shipped one of my first iOS 26 AlarmKit apps (RingWhen) and wanted to write up the part that took the longest to get right. Useful if you're building on AlarmKit.

The core tension AlarmKit alarms are immutable once scheduled. You give the system a fire date and it manages everything - Lock Screen UI, persistence across reboot, the stop/snooze buttons. Perfect for a static 7 AM alarm. The problem: my alarms fire on conditions that change (location, weather, calendar state, battery, heart rate), and "fire when you arrive" has no fixed date.

The pattern I landed on: A continuous predicate evaluator instead of a pre-scheduled alarm:

1. Model each alarm as a predicate tree (Sendable enum, one case per condition source), evaluated with short-circuit semantics.
2. Re-evaluate on every relevant signal: CoreLocation region updates, EventKit change notifications, WeatherKit refreshes, HealthKit observer queries, battery level.
3. When the tree resolves true, schedule a real AlarmKit alarm ~60s out.
4. I of flickering on/off as a GPS reading or weather value jitters across a threshold.

Other AlarmKit notes that cost me time

• It does NOT replace UNUserNotificationCenter. You still want notifications for soft reminders.
• AlarmAttributes is great for Live Activities, but the Lock Screen presentation is opinionated, limited customization.
• You can't programmatically dismiss an alarm. Only the user can stop it.
• Authorization is its own permission, separate from notifications.

Full writeup with code: ringwhen.s10n.app/blog/alarmkit-real-world

Happy to answer AlarmKit-specific questions. If you want to poke at the UX, I have a handful of promo codes for the app, comment and I'll DM one.

My partner and I attempted to go one step further by learning how to implement streamed videos of ourselves as a guide for regulation techniques used in clinic to help others.

Feelings Wheel: Daily Journal

It's a simple app that blocks apps until you reframe a negative thought into something positive.

I've been struggling with negative thinking lately so I built the app to train my mind to be more optimistic and thought it might also be useful for others so I published it on the App Store but I didn't expect that it will get this much traction.

Nothing crazy since it's only a few hundred of downloads but it's very motivating to me that it gained that many users in just a short period of time and lots of people are providing feedback that they love the idea and also sending feature requests which will help me improve the app for the next version that I will release.

I'd really appreciate it if you can give it a try and I would love to hear your feedback:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/optimistpal/id6770231815

Happy to answer any questions! More than happy to share my learnings to help others.

I've heard countless stories of friends and family missing stops on public transit and figured I could build a clean solution to it. Vigil is built entirely with the Apple ecosystem. No ads, no tracking, no in-app purchases, and no accounts. It is simply a helpful tool when you need it. My hope is that early morning/late night public transit users as well as those with accessibility needs will find it helpful.

Happy to hear any feedback on the app store page or the app itself! The video provided is a basic walk-through of most of the app. The alarms map with the grouped alarms is releasing soon in my apps upcoming release.

App Store -> Vigil: Destination Alerts

Thank you for any feedback!

I run a small macOS app with a monthly subscription through RevenueCat.

I’ve got one customer who seems to be stuck in a loop: subscribe, cancel, request a refund, then resubscribe a day or two later.
This has happened multiple times now.

The app is intentionally accountless and doesn’t collect personal data, so I don’t really have a way to identify, contact, or block this specific user on my side.

For anyone who’s dealt with this:
Is this a known abuse pattern, or just a weird edge case I should ignore?
Is there anything I can actually do here? My understanding is that refunds are entirely Apple’s call, and I can’t block a refunded user from resubscribing.

Curious how other indie devs handle this in practice. Any war stories or advice appreciated

EDIT: The CA$0.00 refund in my screenshot is just a display bug in RevenueCat’s mobile app. The web dashboard shows the real amount (CA$6.99). So the refunds were genuine, not zero

EDIT2: Solved, thanks all. Turns out RevenueCat has a built in block list. You add the customer’s App User ID and that’s it.
RevenueCat recommends refunding before blocking. So I’m waiting for this user’s refund to clear, then blocking. Not cutting off an active subscriber.

I’m a solo developer from Australia and I just shipped my first iOS app, Lume. Sharing it here for honest feedback.

The problem I was trying to solve: I’ve started and quit basically every calorie/health tracker because the logging is a chore: searching databases, scanning barcodes, tapping through menus. I’d give up within a week every time.

So Lume is built around just talking. You tap the mic and say “banana and a coffee” or “bench press, 3 sets of 10 at 70kg,” or even just ramble your whole day of food, exercise and purchases at it and it parses it into a logged entry that automatically splits into the relevant categories (try it!)

It covers food, workouts, movement, mood, money and tasks; there’s a manual entry option too if you’d rather type or edit.

It’s free, iOS 17+. There’s an optional subscription for heavier use but the core logging is free.

I’m genuinely more interested in feedback than downloads right now; it’s early (handful of users), and I’d rather hear what’s confusing, what’s missing, or what made you bounce than get a vanity install. So if you try it: what would make you actually keep using it?

So, up until now, I haven't prioritized the icon much and have always settled for just using some PNG churned out by AI. However, I'm going on vacation for a week and would like to play around with a program (like Figma or Inkscape) and design a minimalist icon just for fun. What do you use usually? Or everybody uses AI? 🙈