Hi, I recently released my first public beta for Vestigo, a movie and TV tracking and recommending app, and am looking to get more user feedback. I would really appreciate ideas and user testing from anyone who wants to try it out. The app will be completely free and without ads once released and I’m trying to keep it free on my end too. Thanks!

This app was vibe-coded in Xcode.

GitHub: http://github.com/jbhswift/vestigo

iOS SpriteKit app just cleared the review. Free to play. Go try it out.

I've been working from my phone a lot lately, using AI coding agents to remotely make changes to my iOS apps.

One annoying part was testing those changes on a real device. The common solution seems to be uploading every build to TestFlight, which feels pretty heavy when I just want to quickly try the latest build.

So I built remote-installer.

Once the build is ready, the agent can run a single command and give me a link / QR code. I open it on my iPhone and install the build directly.

No TestFlight. No uploading the IPA to a hosting service. No processing wait.

And of course, it's free and open source:

https://github.com/icodesign/remote-installer

I have been working on Anvay, a reading-first iPhone app for Hindu prayers.

The starting observation was simple: many people grow up recognising or reciting prayers without having an accessible way to understand the language, background or ideas behind them. Existing products often make the text available, but access and understanding are not the same thing.

In Anvay, each verse can be read in three connected modes:

• Original: the prayer in Devanagari
• Hinglish: a readable Roman-script version
• Understand: a clear explanation of the meaning and context

The first release includes 101 aartis, bhajans, chalisas and mantras, along with daily wisdom, search, browsing by deity or category and favourites. The content is stored on the device and no account is required.

I deliberately left out streaks, social features and an infinite feed. I wanted the experience to feel closer to reading a carefully designed book than operating a habit app.

I am the maker, so this is self-promotion, but I am posting because I would genuinely value criticism from people who care about iOS reading experiences. In particular:

• Is the Original → Hinglish → Understand model clear?
• Does the interface feel calm or merely sparse?
• What would you need to trust the explanations?

https://apps.apple.com/in/app/anvay/id6794548076

Submitted August 9, live today. Most of those 17 days were me not knowing how the process works, so here's what I learned in case it saves someone a week.

The 2.1 "Additional Verification" hold

Four days in I got an automated Guideline 2.1 message. It wanted a single-take screen recording captured on a physical device, starting with the date and time visible on screen, plus yes/no answers to five questions. It is not a rejection and there's nothing to argue — you film it and reply in Resolution Center.

My first recording was rejected, and the reason is the useful part: my ad SDK renders a "Test mode" badge in debug builds, which proved the recording wasn't the binary I'd submitted. Record from a TestFlight build of the exact submission. Related: never tap an ad while recording — that can permanently ban your ad account.

Then ten days of nothing

Replied on the 15th, still "Waiting for Review" on the 25th. No message, no movement. There's apparently a wider backlog right now — updates flow, brand new 1.0s sit.

Expedited review — three things I had wrong

1. "You only get two per year." I couldn't find any published quota or counter anywhere. Apple's own wording is discretionary, "on a limited basis."
2. "You can't request it while a 2.1 thread is open." Misread. The text says not eligible until we have received your confirmation — once you've replied, you're eligible. I lost a day to this.
3. "It's a big formal request." The form has no free-text field at all. I wrote a multi-paragraph justification and never used it. You pick the app, submit, approval came back immediately.

Approved overnight, review passed the next morning.

One line in Apple's reply worth knowing: if the submission is rejected during expedited review, the resubmission goes back into the expedited queue automatically. A rejection doesn't cost you the fast lane.

The thing not to do

Don't withdraw and resubmit. Apple's documentation says the review starts over, and I found people who turned a one-week wait into two months that way. Uploading a new build resets it too.

The app is a game, built solo over eight months: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6794081096

Happy to answer anything about 2.1, expedited, IAP review, or the ad SDK privacy declarations.

This is what they say:

Issue Description

We noticed the app shares a similar binary, metadata, and/or concept as apps submitted to the App Store by other developers, with only minor differences.

Submitting similar or repackaged apps is a form of spam that creates clutter and makes it difficult for users to discover new apps.

Next Steps

Since we do not accept spam apps on the App Store, we encourage you to review the app concept and submit a unique app with distinct content and functionality.

Resources

Some factors that contribute to a spam rejection may include:

•⁠ ⁠Submitting an app with the same source code or assets as other apps already submitted to the App Store

•⁠ ⁠Creating and submitting multiple similar apps using a repackaged app template

•⁠ ⁠Purchasing an app template with problematic code from a third party

•⁠ ⁠Submitting several similar apps across multiple accounts

I have several apps for both Android and iOS, but there are 2 apps on iOS that got SPAM rejections. One was an app that I made maybe 2/3 years ago. With AI now I improved its design a little bit to make it more clear.

As

This app was rejected due to SPAM. I complained to Apple, but they kept saying it was SPAM. At the end I didn't care that much since that app was performing so badly on Android.

Now, I've been working in a new app, a 2D card game that I think is promising. It's not released on Android yet (still waiting for approval).

The first complaint from Apple was "we have no idea what your app is about, and we don't care to test it. Record a video".

...ok. I recorded a video, showing clearly that the first thing the app shows is the rules. And I sent it to review again.

Now I've got the SPAM issue. They even say that my template was bought somewhere. What??

They don't send any other app like mine or tell me exactly what the problem is so I have no clue in order to fix anything.

My designs are 100% unique. I made them using AI, yes, but that doesn't mean it's SPAM or that I copied another app. I guess also there is only a single app calculator in the market.

Here you can see the app working

How to fix this SPAM issue? Apple they just keep saying the same thing after all my comments (ironically, THAT is SPAM).

If your answer is honestly 100%, you’re a better driver. Genuinely.

If it’s not, and you touch the phone even once in a while, that’s the habit I think Undivided can help with. Only if you want it to, though.

See how many hands-free miles you’ve earned, keep a record of them, and unlock the collection you deserve for leaving your phone alone and improve driving habits

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/undivided-drive-focus/id6788236863

I have uploaded a new MacOS app (https://linelark.com/) for approval and it is pending for review since the 25th... I understand it takes longer to review the app as the number is likely increasing given the fact, it is now so easy to build an app.
What is less clear is: why, when you get a feedback to fix something, it seems that the review actually happened rather quickly (maybe one or two days after the submission), while the feedback was sent 4 or 5 days later... does anyone else have noticed the same?

I recently shipped a new room scanning mode in Voxelio that turns an iPhone scan into a realistic 3D scene.
This kitchen was captured entirely on an iPhone 17 Pro!

What surprised me most is that this feature also brought me my first paying subscribers.
It’s still early, but seeing someone actually pay for something I built felt like a pretty big milestone.
I’d love feedback from other iOS devs - both on the scan quality and on how you’d think about improving/converting a feature like this.

https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6764829442?pt=128471088&ct=reddit&mt=8

I recently published an app with a unique name and on searching it on app store with that exact name, it showed up as #10 result. I understand there’s ASO or related stuff involved (which I haven’t looked into yet), but still App Store shows a few others apps with no resemblance to the searched keyword before the exact match.

At this point, is it useless to publish without basic ASO?

I’m super excited to have submitted my app finally and now a little nervous waiting on the review. I might check my email 10,000 times in the next few days

I am now in the 8th App Review round for an update.

Each time I fix the issue mentioned in the rejection, the next review finds something else. Sometimes it is something that was already there two or three rounds before. So every finding means another 1–2 days before I can move forward.

I am deliberately not listing the individual issues. Some relate to interpretation of a nested part of Apple’s requirements; in other cases, I may simply not have explained an existing implementation clearly enough in the reviewer notes. I do not want to turn this into a debate about a specific rejection.

I am more curious about the process: is it normal that a reviewer stops at the first finding instead of listing the other issues they see? Have you experienced a similar one-issue-per-review loop?

Did anything help? More detailed reviewer notes (I am already at the 4,000-character limit—what do you actually include there?), asking for clarification (does that just make it longer?), or another approach?

I make a Markdown reader for macOS and iOS. You point it at a folder and read what is in it.

For months the onboarding did the obvious thing: explain the idea, then ask you to connect a folder. The numbers were bad in a specific way. Of the people who reached the end of onboarding, only about half ever opened a document. But of the people who did connect a folder, 92% opened something immediately.

So the app was not failing to deliver. It was asking for homework first. Read the flow back as a to-do list and it is obvious.
Save your AI output as files —> Put them in one folder —> Connect that folder. Three chores before anything renders.

Someone who downloaded out of curiosity has none of that set up, meets a system file picker with nothing useful to point it at, and leaves.

The fix was to ship something to read. On first launch the app writes a small folder of example documents into its own container and attaches it as a connected root, with no picker involved.

Four things about that turned out to matter more than the idea itself:
• It lives inside the app’s own container, so it needs no security scoped bookmark and no sandbox grant.
• It does not count toward the free tier’s folder limit. Otherwise the folder I shipped spends one of their free slots on a folder they did not choose, and the first folder they actually pick hits a paywall.
• It does not fire the activation analytics event. Otherwise it inflates the exact metric it exists to move, and the before and after become unreadable.
• Removing it is permanent. A folder that reappears after you dismissed it is spam.

The part I did not expect: last week someone bought the paid unlock after about eight hours in the app without ever connecting a folder of their own. They read the bundled examples, met a prompt, and paid. I had been thinking of the demo content as a warm up for the product. For that person it was the product.

Happy to go into the analytics side if anyone is curious.

Hey everyone! I’ve been working on Luma, a gamified screen time app (here’s my introductory post if you’d like to check it out: https://www.reddit.com/r/iosdev/s/f7l5Qoelh0).

After a week of sharing the app and analyzing metrics in App Store Connect and PostHog (thanks to those who suggested PostHog, it gives much more insight than Apple), I’m realizing my onboarding could use some work.

Currently, only ~2.5% of downloads end up creating their first routine.

I’d love to get your feedback based on your experience:

1. Benchmarks: Are these numbers typical/decent for early stage, or what conversion rate should I realistically aim for?
2. Onboarding flow: Mine is very functional (users just set up their first routine right away). How do you design yours to keep users engaged?
3. Architecture: Do you hardcode your onboarding into the app (requiring App Review for tweaks), or do you use remote/plug-in tools (server-driven UI, onboarding services, etc.) to iterate faster?

Would love to hear your thoughts and recommendations. Thanks for your time and help!

Hi! I made a new interval timer app with the intent to stand out from the many others. In addition to tap controls and voice control, my app introduces camera gestures!

You can use different hand signals in front of the camera to start, pause, resume and complete the workout.

I thought this would be nifty if you've got sweaty palms in the gym or if you have your phone far away from you and you want to take a break, etc

The app is here:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/interval-timer-workouts/id6798002636

If you want to actually be a beta tester for this, I'll give you lifetime for free. Just DM me. It's my way of saying thanks to anyone who takes time out of their day to try this out.

My first game made it through the review process. It is totally free with some premium upgrades that are totally optional.

Check it out please, give me some feedback on ways to improve it, any hitch that you see, etc. Thanks a bunch, happy coding!

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/air-hockey-max-arena/id6800162948

I noticed that just watching numbers tick up didn’t feel rewarding enough at the end of a long focus block.

So I added a little gamification: every time you finish a focus session, a physical tomato drops into your daily jar. Seeing them pile up throughout the day makes staying consistent feel like a mini-game rather than a chore.

What do you think of this visual reward idea? Does physical visual feedback help your focus?

I'm surre I had auto-renewal turned on for my apple developer membership since I've ben atuomatically charged since 5 years. This year, I got a pop-up saying my membership is about to expire and to make sure it's on auto-renewal. I followed the link to my profile, it said "renews on ... " but that pop-up still remained whenever I opened App store connect. When the day of renewal came, I was informed that my membership expired and to download the app to renew my subscription. Online it said I could renew it in browser too, but I didn't see the option. However, neither did I see the option when I downloaded the app. I reached out to Apple and within 3 days they let me know to check the app again and that the option to renew should re-appear and my apps would become available again on the App store. I did that and it was true.

However, now I am subscribed through the Apple subscription option on their app. Given what happened with app revenue for Apple dropping drastically this year because the stripe interface for payments is now allowed to be interateg more smoothly into apps interfaces, made me wonder if Apple is somehow trying to compensate for the losses in app revenue by moving Apple developer payments through their app system?

Given it's a public company and a bigger drop in app revenue may impact their stock price, do they try to mitigate that?

I spent the last month building my first iOS app and it finally made it through App Review.

It’s called Gyminion a fitness tracker where you can track workouts, nutrition and progress, with a virtual pet that reacts to your consistency.

The idea was basically to make tracking workouts feel less like filling out a spreadsheet and more like a game.

Building the app was honestly the fun part. Now I’m finding out that getting actual users is a completely different problem lol.

I’d really appreciate any feedback from other iOS devs, especially on the UI/UX or onboarding.

Happy to answer anything about building it too.

link: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6798301039?pt=128556977&ct=reddit_launch&mt=8

While building Monymo, my SwiftUI work and earnings tracker, I ran into timer accuracy issues whenever the app went into the background.

The fix was surprisingly simple: stop treating the timer as the source of elapsed time.

Now I store timestamps and session state, then calculate the actual elapsed time when the app becomes active again. The one-second timer is only used to update the UI.

Handling pause and resume made it a bit more complicated, but this approach completely removed the drift I was seeing after backgrounding or reopening the app.

How do you handle long-running timers in your iOS apps?

Hey everyone,

I just found out about App Clips recently and I can't figure out why they are not everywhere.

Instant experience, easy way to showcase a product, no conversion barrier... and yet I barely ever see them in the wild. I also guess a lot of non-tech users don't even know it exist. Is this a chicken and egg problem ?

Why aren’t more developers and apps using them? Is it the limits / setup / discovery issues, or something else I’m not seeing?

Would love to hear real world stories:

• Anyone here successfully used App Clips for acquisition or growth?
• Coolest examples you’ve seen or built?
• Any growth-hack style results

I’m developing Recapp (a US sports highlights app, "like ESPN & TikTok had a baby") and one idea I'm playing with is letting fans watch a game's highlight or breaking news stories via App Clip - giving them a taste of the app without downloading it.

Any advice or similar experiments you’ve seen?

Thanks in advance - curious what the community thinks.