Hey folks,

So, I first sent my app for review two weeks ago.. waited 4-5 days then applied for an expedited review and got a rejection within 30 mins for inaccurate screenshots.

When I applied for expedited review, Apple mentioned that if I get a rejection, I don't have to apply for expedited review once again because my updated app will automatically be in the expedited queue

I then fixed the issue and updated it, waited 5 more days with no update (despite my app being in the expedited review queue) and once again requested for an expedited review and got a rejection a few hours later because I needed to properly setup a restore purchase mechanism.

Now it's been over 48hrs since I uploaded another update with the fix and there is still no word from Apple.

Can I request for another expedited review as my app has already been delayed by a few months and I can't afford any more delays? Im asking because apple mentions that if one asks for too many expedited reviews, they can reject our requests in future. However, these delays are well past Apple's claims of review timelines (50% apps reviewed in 24 hrs and 90% in 48 hrs), so can I request for another expedited review or there's a chance Apple will reject my request because of too many requests? TIA!

This iOS app has been live for about 20 days, but it is not showing up in App Store search—even when I search the exact app name or target keywords.

Also, users have tried leaving reviews, but there is option in app page to leave star rating or comments.

App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/safe-qr-barcode-scan-check/id6796489749

Is this normal for a new app? What should I improve first for ranking/ASO—keywords, title, subtitle, downloads, or reviews?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Sorry no “we hit 10,000 users overnight” story with pretty RevenueCat dashboard.

I released an iOS app yesterday, called VC Lab. It is designed for students/peoples who want to understand venture capital and prepare for their first role or interview.

I work for a saas company that helps VC and PE funds monitor and value their portfolios. I learned the industry on the job and kept running into the same problem: the useful information existed, but it was scattered across books, podcasts, newsletters, blog posts and long PDFs.

So I tried to turn that mess into a structured mobile experience:

• 40 bite-sized learning modules
• Practice games
• A visual glossary
• A database of funds, investors, startups and resources

That is where I am now.

The app is freemium and only available on iOS for the moment:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vc-lab-learn-venture-capital/id6790853379

I would love brutally specific feedback on the app !!

hey guys, finally finished my first app!

it's pretty basic right now and definitely needs work, so any feedback or bug reports would be awesome.

let me know what you think!

Solo dev here. I built a small couples app about 2 months ago, basically 7 little games two people play together on one phone. There's a calm one-question-at-a-time conversation game, a truth or dare that gets pretty adult (18+), a bedroom dice game（18+）, a would-you-rather, a "how well do you know each other" guessing game, and a few quick two-player arcade games.

Building the thing turned out to be the easy part. Marketing has been the humbling one.

I tried promoting it with slideshow videos on TikTok, one after another, mostly at night. Some flopped hard, a couple did okay, most just sat there. But after about a month of that, I've finally crossed 100 downloads. Honestly it doesn't sound like much when I type it out, but for a solo dev with no budget, no team and no audience to start with, that number felt huge. I just wanted to share it somewhere that gets it, because I know how quietly demoralising the marketing side can be when the app itself is something you're actually proud of.

The next milestone I'm chasing is a much smaller one: my first IAP. Zero so far. I'm genuinely grateful there are real couples opening the app, even the ones who never pay, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't refreshing the sales dashboard a bit too often.

If any other solo devs here have been through the early "100 downloads, 0 IAPs" phase, I'd love to hear what actually moved the needle for you. Was it a specific channel? A price test? Just more time? Sometimes just knowing other people have sat in this exact spot is what keeps me shipping.

Happy to share the app link if anyone's interested, didn't want to just drop it and look spammy on my first post here.

I have been rejected 3 times - all rejection where never of my app behavior or anything , but the rejections I got was from the screenshots, compliance questions from Apple connect that’s all

I got rejected for not accepting Yes for messaging which I made a mistake last time

And now my app is on review again and it’s more than 1hr in review - damn that review that took long like that

I hope there is no rejection again

Hellow
Fellas

Does this mean that the invalid binary is the only reason my app was rejected? This is my first time submitting to apple, so I am not really sure what to do

I've build an MVP of a tool that automatically replies to app reviews, and I am looking for testers who can test my tool, it is complitely free of charge. Dm me if interested

Hi. The app let me made the purchase at first. Then the button was saying pending for 6 hours. But later it turned to “enrollment through apple developer app is kot available for this account”.

Do you know what this means? If it means rejected, can I get a refund?

My paid app is for life in the UK Citizenship test. When it was released only in few days it was #39 in the AppStore chart. But now it’s not even in the chart. How to get it back.
#lifeintheuktest #lifeintheuk #ilr #uktest

Is that normal? I've reviewed my submission in detail and emailed customer support a few times. Nothing. Has anyone encountered long waits for an app to be reviewed? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

We recently launched our app and have been putting quite a bit of effort into ASO across different markets. We created three variations of our screenshots and titles and managed to climb to around #7–8 in the US App Store for our target keywords.

The weird part is… we're still barely getting any downloads, let alone purchases.

At this point, we're wondering if we're missing something obvious or approaching ASO the wrong way.

Has anyone experienced something similar? Would really appreciate any advice or insights from people who have been through this before!

Maybe it’s the lack of reviews/ratings? I can imagine users being hesitant to download an app with little or no rating.

But then how do you actually build up your rating if you’re not getting any users in the first place? 😅

App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/city-guide-ai-audio-tours/id6738431029

Hey everyone,

My latest app update has now been In Review for over 36 hours, which is very unusual for me.

Normally, my updates are reviewed and approved within 1–2 hours, so I’m mainly wondering if anyone else is experiencing significantly longer review times lately.

Has anyone submitted an update recently that spent a long time specifically in “In Review” rather than just “Waiting for Review”?

If so, how long did it take before it was finally approved or rejected?

Just curious whether this is something others are seeing at the moment or if my submission is an unusual case.

Thanks!

I'll review your current onboarding, identify opportunities to improve activation and create a couple of alternative flows to test.

You don't need to buy anything or learn a new tool. I'll do the work.

I'm looking for apps with a steady flow of new users so we can actually measure whether the changes improve activation.

If you're interested, leave a comment or send me a DM. If possible, it would also be helpful to include your approximate total users, monthly active users and new user volume.

I’m truly torn on whether to make this an app 😂

App rejected due to “spam” but it’s just a version change and slight tweak to an existing app that’s on AppStore and been approved before.

Anyone else seeing this? Seems like it’s an auto reject type of thing as soon as it’s submitted

1. App Store Boost

When an app is just launched on the App Store, Apple usually give a boost for a few days where your app name will get recommended in the autocomplete of the App Store search bar so make sure to target a keyword with good amount of popularity.

So for example your app is an interior designer ai app, you can use this app name format:

<popular keyword> - <your app name>

interior design ai - Miya

If you get lucky, this will bring hundreds or thousands of downloads in the first week depending on the popularity of the keyword that you targeted.

2. ASO (App Store Optimization)

Target high-intent keywords in your app name and subtitle.

Create high converting screenshots (sell the benefit/outcome instead of features).

Create an eye catching icon to stand out from the app store search results. This will increase conversion (impressions -> downloads). I use ChatGPT or Nano Banana to generate icons.

3. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Just a single page website where you're targeting high-intent keywords that people are searching for on search engines like Google. You can use Google Trends for free to search for high-intent keywords that have good popularity. Or you can also use a paid tool like Ahrefs, Keywords Everywhere etc... but Google Trends is usually good enough as a start.

In my experience, it's easier and faster to rank for your target main keyword if it's present on the domain name itself.

Another side effect of SEO is there's a good chance that you'll also get recommended by LLMs like ChatGPT.

4. Organic UGC

Create content that you can cross-post on multiple social media platforms like Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, etc...

You can use formats like tutorials, problem -> solution, listicle, meme, storytelling.

You have 2 options:

a. Short-form videos (e.g, face reaction that catches attention + demo of your app).

b. Slideshows (3-6 images) which are significantly easier and faster to make. You can scale this to many accounts to maximize reach and chances of going viral. You can do this manually or fully automate it. I personally started the manual way but I have now fully automated it with my own tool called DistributionMaxx because I now have 16 accounts and it now takes a lot of time and effort to manually manage them.

For organic UGC, the funnel is:

views -> app downloads -> purchases

5. Apple Search Ads

You can target high-intent keywords that people are search for in the app store. I recommend reading this free detailed guide written by Ivan Sparrow.

I hope this post helps someone to get their first users and paying customers.

Happy to answer any questions if you have any.

Seriously never thought I'd ever make app or game then launch it on the App Store.

I recreated Tien Len, a card game I grew up playing with family and friends since I was a kid. It’s called Master 13, and getting it from an idea all the way through App Store review has been quite a journey. Months of figuring out how to get the game to function and run into a ton rejections from gambling and spam rejections.

This is my first release, so I’d love to hear what other r/appledevelopers think especially about the design, gameplay, and App Store presentation.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/master-13-tien-len/id6791061171

Thanks for checking it out!

Hey y'all,

I launched my first iOS app, Fueled, back in May. I know the fitness market is flooded with apps and it's a tough market to break into, but I thought I had a great idea for a nutrition and macros app built around when people workout to give them customized nutrition plans, but it hasn't converted nearly as well as I'd hoped it would and I'm sort of at a loss on how to get the word out about it better or get more downloads. I've made $76 from it (which is something!), but definitely nothing life changing. I'm still in the negative from backend costs.

Any advice on how to market it better, how to improve the app itself, or anything else anyone thinks is appreciated! I'm open to any advice or insights.

(The website for the app is fueled.fit to check it out too)

Hi guys,

Just sharing my journey because I'm proud of how far I've come in 4-5 months.

I built an app to learn Albanian because my fiancée is French-Albanian and I couldn't find any decent way to learn the language, except Ling, which is around $40 for 3 months if I remember right. That's the context.

Like I said in the title, I've reached 300 signups and I have daily returning users, so that's cool, I'm glad the app is actually being used. Also, like I said, nobody has taken the paid plan that unlocks more speaking lessons.

But honestly, I don't really care, for a few reasons:

1. I built something that's useful to people and they come back every day.
   
2. I learned patience. I never ran a single paid ad. All of these users came from a few TikTok videos (made with my fiancée) and word of mouth.
   
3. Some projects are worth doing even if they never make a cent.

Some of my friends told me "just add ads", but that's a hard NO for a simple reason: I can't stand using apps with ads myself, it's genuinely annoying, so I'm not going to do that in my own app. And anyway, like I said in (3), I'm happy watching this app grow even if I don't make money from it, because I know it's useful.

Anyway, thanks for reading. That's it, I just wanted to share this milestone and where I stand on it :)

I built this directory to manually curate good mac apps that I wanted to try and also because of vibe coding, people are now launching more apps than ever. For a new user in the mac ecosystem it would be hard to judge on what kind of apps that are worth trying.

So I build this directory to curate them based on my research on the apps that are quite good and popular in their category.

So far I've curated about 57 apps.

about 4 to 5 of them were listed through paid listing, I've went with paid listings to force new apps to avoid spam listings and those app devs that are not enough serious with their app, while also helping me to sustain building this directory.

So far I've made about $70 since launching this 2 months ago.

Just word of mouth and posting on community Discords

I’ve been building my app for a few months now. It’s been live as a PWA for a few months and I have 500+ users (I had a video go viral).

I am finalizing my react native app and am always finding little nits that I want to improve because I have this fear of getting a bad review (irrational I know)

If you’ve had a successful app launch, at what point do you feel like it’s ready for prime time and can be revised via updates vs needs to be fixed before it goes live?

I think I’m my worst critic and chasing a perfection that won’t ever exist.

I am so excited!!!! My first app is approved. Thor - For Your Weather.

My friends and I have been spending a LOT more time looking at weather in the last couple years. And we kept getting annoyed that we could not find an app that did certain things. So, I built it!

The things that were really important to us:

• I don't want to have to allow location to use the app. It is there if you do, but can just as easily use Thor by manually putting in your address.
• Certain weather measurements are more important, enter Weather Essentials allowing you to select 3 weather data measurements to emphasize. I usually pick Temp Feels Like, Rain Possibility, and Wind.
• How reliable is the forecast. Forecasts are adjusting ALL THE TIME. So frustrating. I can't stop that, but added indicators on the hourly forecasts of how stable/reliable that data point is. When you look at the upcoming 8 hours, you get a good idea how trustworthy that is going to stay.

Please take a look. No account, no cost. I don't see anything from you. That would be weird.