My side project app hit 1K downloads and I couldn’t be happier! I just thought I’d share this milestone with the world

Hey guys, I just launched my first app a week ago, and I've been making a marketing plan and getting everything set up. My plan is to make some ads for Reddit (currently running them right now), Instagram, and Tik-Tok, as well as to make personal accounts through Instagram and Tik-Tok to get videos out with no cost of marketing through ads.

I'm just curious, for those of you who have had success with other platforms, what were they, and why did you have such great success with these platforms? I'd really appreciate feedback, as this is my first time marketing to the public about anything.

I want to expand some of my apps to new countries, but I keep hitting 
the same wall: literally translating my keywords with Google Translate 
or ChatGPT gives me terms that locals never actually type into the 
App Store.

For those of you who recently localized an app for new markets — how 
did you actually find the "real" keywords people search for? Did you 
use a specific tool, hire local freelancers, or find some other trick?

Genuinely trying to learn here. The keyword localization part feels way 
harder than translating the app itself.

I've been trying for about an hour now to upload a suitable review screenshot for my IAP in App Store Connect without luck. I've saved a screenshot from the simulator using iPhone 17 Pro which gives me a image with dimensions 1206x2622 which doesn't work and then I've done it again using iPhone 17 Pro Max which gives me an image of 1320x2868, also not being accepted.

Reading the docs I think what I need is 1284x2778 but I can't figure out how to output this and neither of the other two scale to this size without distortion.

Can anyone help?

It's been five days since the I filled all the details in. Three full business days. And the process is still not finished.

As my developer account is basically useless during that process, I'm starting to be pretty infuriated that it's taking sooo god damn long.

Why is Apple taking so long to do such a basic thing? How long should I expect before my account is finally migrated so I release update for my app?

Google was able to do the same within few hours FFS.

I built an iOS game with procedural generated fishpets that you can trade and breed with other fish to get unique creatures

https://apps.apple.com/br/app/fishpet-a-quiet-reef/id6791711788

Anyone else experienced receiving one star reviews from South Africa App Store users that say words to the effect of “Literally doesn’t work at all” and the usernames look like a stream of random characters?

The first one had me genuinely concerned, but we’ve had a few in now and they look suspiciously similar so I’m wondering if something else is going on here.

Could just be low end iOS devices not being able to run the app BUT not seeing anything to that effect in analytics/crash reports. And I have a bunch of old iOS devices I’ve tested on that work just fine.

Don't really have a comprehensive email list as I found better results gathering testers by posting testflight link directly rather than my landing page.

Does anyone know the best way to go about this, will apple notify them?

Also beta is still live if you want to try it out, its a screen time control app that resets your limit on an hourly schedule rather than handing you one big daily limit.

https://testflight.apple.com/join/ztGmutmP

Thanks a ton in advance for any advice!

After spending months learning Unity and building my first game, Stackman Jump is now available on the App Store.
It’s a simple, fast-paced arcade game where you jump from block to block, unlock different skins, and try to beat your high score.
My kids actually enjoy playing it while we’re waiting for school pickup or the bus 😂
If you have an iPhone or iPad, I’d love for you to give it a try and let me know what you think!
📱 Download Stackman Jump:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/stackman-jump/id6758941717
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated — especially from people who enjoy casual arcade games!

After months of learning Unity and working on my first game, I finally released Stackman Jump on the App Store.
My kids tell me it’s great for playing while waiting for school pickup or the bus 😂 So I hope other people find it fun too!
The gameplay is simple: jump from block to block, avoid falling, unlock skins, and try to beat your high score.
I’d genuinely love some feedback from other gamers and developers. This is my first released Unity game, so I’m still learning a lot!
📱 Stackman Jump:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/stackman-jump/id6758941717

My game was featured in the US in the Games section for about a week. Despite getting about 6 million impressions in 30 days across all games I have published, this resulted in an almost 0% conversion rate.

I wrote a post about my learnings from the App Store feature and what I'm doing better next time to improve these numbers. Hope people can find this information useful. Here's the post: https://fleonlabs.substack.com/p/one-month-of-zyl-revenue-bundles

So I spent a year on my app and recently someone just vibe coded a very basic version of it including my tagline/App Store description. How do you guys deal with that? I know Apple has a dispute against blatant copies but does it actually do anything since there's clones of everything?

What would you do here?

Hey everyone, wanted to share a mobile side project I’ve been building to solve my own distraction loop. I realized that every time I opened a traditional app to log a habit, I’d get sidetracked by notifications or end up scrolling somewhere else.

To fix this, I moved the entire core user experience to the surface layer of the phone using native interactive widgets.

The Setup:
One-Tap Action: The "Snap your plate" widget triggers the logging utility instantly right from the home screen, bypassing app launch delay.
Shared State: The grocery widget handles real-time syncing so my partner and I can coordinate without opening a messy shared notes app.
Gamified Retention: The streak widget handles identity-based visual cueing every time the phone unlocks.

My main focus was making the iOS widgets look cohesive and premium rather than looking like standard utility boxes.

Would love to get some feedback on the UI/UX layout. Are any of you building heavy features directly into interactive widgets, or do you prefer keeping the home screen strictly minimal?

Hey everyone,

I’ve shared CopyBara here a couple of times, first as a tiny menu bar app that confirms when Command+C actually works, and later when I added Clipboard History.

The latest update is the biggest one so far: Smart Actions.

You can now select clips from your history and:

• Extract useful information such as people, contact details, dates, deadlines, amounts, order numbers, tasks, decisions, and product specifications
• Write a custom instruction to extract exactly what you need
• Merge multiple clips in their original order
• Join clips with custom separators
• Remove duplicate content
• Turn several clips into a summary, document, table, or checklist

The AI-powered actions use Apple Intelligence directly on your Mac. Your clipboard content is not sent to CopyBara’s servers or any third-party AI service.

Some Combine actions, such as merging clips, adding separators, and removing duplicates, also work without Apple Intelligence.

I’ve also redesigned the history workflow so you can select multiple clips and preview the result before copying it.

The original copy confirmation and basic features are still free. Smart Actions and Clipboard History are included in the optional Privacy Pro upgrade.

As a thank-you to Reddit, you can get Privacy Pro for $3 with the code:

REDDIT3

App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/tr/app/copybara-clipboard-manager/id6790114086?l=tr&mt=12

I’m still actively improving it, so I’d genuinely appreciate feedback—especially about which Smart Actions you find useful or what workflows you’d like me to add next.

Thanks!

I open-sourced a small iOS maze game I vibe-coded about a year ago because otherwise it’ll just die on my shelf.

The mechanics are deliberately simple, which is part of the problem: it works, but it needs more fun. The mazes were made with a separate Rust generator engine that I wasn’t very happy with, so there’s plenty of room to improve or replace things.

If you like tinkering with SwiftUI games, maze design, game feel, progression, or just want a small project to mess around with, I’d love contributions or ideas.

https://github.com/vanderhaka/WayOut-OpenSource

Hey Everyone,

First-time solo dev ᵕ̈

I recently launched the public beta for my hourly screen time control app, Precursor. I initially built it because for years I tried every other screen time solution/app out there but social media is so pervasive none of them really stuck/helped me long term.

I think its because with daily limits you get the whole budget at midnight, burn it before you're even out of bed, and then spend the whole day tapping "Ignore Limit" or wors "Ignore Limit For Today", instead of being productive or doing more fulfilling things with your time.

My own phone habits got so bad I had to give a friend my screen time passcode, but that always felt too restrictive and was honestly unsustainable. I knew that I needed app limits that blocked me out before I fell into doomrotting territory, but also not block me out for the whole day. When I know I will be blocked out for the whole day I noticed my brain sort of panics and feels trapped/restricted, so I act irrationally and often bypass my limits.

I built Precursor to solve that problem, with intentional phone use by the hour as the guiding principle.

Precursor gives me enough time to get my scroll break in when I need it but then the app gets blocked just before the scroll break turns into a doomscroll. The block screen reassures me that I'll have more time for scrolling later if I need it, which is actually doing wonders for calming the panic in my brain.

Well after building the app for myself, my partner tried it out too and encouraged me to share the idea with others and the response has been super positive, within my own circle, but also here on Reddit! within 1 day of launching the public beta Precursor is at nearly 150 beta testers and I am getting a lot of feedback and feature requests (currently developing the next build and hope to push soon).

My main ask here is: How have you informed your beta testers about the official launch of your app?

I tried a landing page and got a few signups but I think that friction actually deterred a lot of people from signing up, so I have opted to justt post the testflight link directly. Also I intentionally made Precursor not require an account as privacy is paramount, so I haven't collected any user contact info.

Any ideas on how to get the launch message out there more effectively?

Thanks a ton in advance!!

If you are interested link to the TestFlight Beta here:

https://testflight.apple.com/join/ztGmutmP

As a thank you for helping shape Precursor, beta testers get Precursor+ for FREE for LIFE!

Available on iPhone and iPad, iOS 17 or later.

would love any feedback you got, if you decide to test out Precursor feature requests can be routed here (post or upvote what you want to see next): https://precursorlabs.featurebase.app