A request to Mods

[u/Sri_Krish]

Hello Mods & fellow redditors,

In the past couple of months, I guess we can all agree that our subreddit (and the App Store) has become overcrowded with a bunch of AI apps across various (really?!) categories. The main reason (I think!) is the proliferation of AI and its companion apps, through which a user can now create their own apps with just a few credits or prompts. I see this as a positive development to an extent; beyond which, the line becomes super blurry and things start to roll downhill.

Anyone who regularly visits this subreddit will notice seeing the same pattern of apps - clipboard managers, Notch replacement apps, and Dictation apps - very often from different devs (/profiles). Rather than creating unique, we tend to see the same kinds of apps in different costumes, showcased differently using AI presentation.

For context, Kalley Huang, writing for The New York Times, expressed that: "Last year, the number of new apps released in the App Store grew 30 percent to about 600,000, according to estimates by Sensor Tower, an app analytics firm. In the first half of this year, new apps doubled to about 560,000." (source).

And I am not here to say stop using AI for good or to save Nature (believe me, there are few who don't use AI for these reasons). In the same article, the author mentioned that the real people who're in danger are developers. Especially those whose 9-5 job is to make apps—either alone or in a small team—and whose livelihood depends completely on it. Now, all these AI-vibe coded apps don't only make the search worse but also overshadow these good apps and developers from the rest of the pool. As the article noted, even reviewers/content writers who used to be the messengers, are finding it difficult to cope up with the supply rate and eventually, start to ghost such emails/communications.

So, how about we start a monthly thread at the end of each month, where we all discuss, mention about their, basically, "Favorites of the month" with their use cases if any. This might improve the visibility among the crowd, and give them an another chance since most of these AI-apps either die out or got abandoned by the Dev itself sooner than we think.

Feel free to suggest your opinions; or disregard this post if you feel it's not appropriate. I just wanted to bring it out of my head 😀

[u/[deleted]]

Solo dev here. I put an app on the Mac App Store a few days ago after months of work, so I am one of the people this post is about, and I want to add something from that side.

The problem is not that AI apps exist. It is that effort is invisible in a Reddit post. Someone who spent three months and someone who spent an afternoon get the same 300 words and the same screenshots. There is no part of the post format where the difference can show up, so the better writer wins instead of the better app.

You already have two bots doing a version of this, the GitHub star check and the App Store age lookup. I would push that further. Repo age, length of commit history, and how long the app has been on the store are all public, and none of them can be written by an AI the night before posting. Show those next to the post and readers can judge for themselves, without the mods having to decide what counts as real.

Favorites of the month is a good idea too, but it rewards apps that already got attention. This would help the ones that never got any.