r/appledevelopers

I built Stamped because finding great iOS apps started to feel like playing hide and seek.

The App Store tends to surface the same big brands year after year. Apps with large marketing budgets and established audiences get most of the visibility, while independent developers with genuinely useful apps often launch and disappear before anyone discovers them.
Then I started building my own apps and experienced the other side of the problem. Getting your app in front of real users is just as difficult as finding great apps in the first place.

That’s why I created Stamped.
Stamped is a community driven iOS app discovery platform where users can discover new apps, follow creators, leave ratings across five categories, and help quality apps gain visibility based on community feedback instead of marketing budgets.

If you’re an indie developer looking for more exposure, or someone who enjoys discovering apps beyond what’s featured on the App Store, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

https://stampedios.com/welcome

i released my first app 2 weeks ago, did some marketing on insta, tiktok, also on reddit a little...

this is my app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/stampr-create-photo-stamps/id6793936737

It’s not the idea that will make your product successful. It’s repetition.

I see a lot of people here creating app after app. They barely finish one before starting another.

I used to be like that.

Why? Because we think, “Ah, I tried, but the idea wasn’t good. I’ll make another one.”

That ends up hurting you. You’re constantly showing people a new product, and it looks like you never finish anything.

To reach the point of success, you need to keep improving. Constantly. For a long time. You need to become known as a reference in that particular space.

And that doesn’t happen overnight.

Hi everyone
I am slowly but surely forming a new opinion about Apple. I have been a loyal customer and on the "consumer end" of their business via many hardware and software purchases throughout the years.

Now that I am also on the developer side of their business my experience is quite different.

- Endless phone queues.
- Unanswered emails.
- Lengthy processes.

After waiting in phone queue for over 1 hour today I gave up and tried to make a constructive post on the developer.apple.com forums.

After authoring the post for a little while describing all the details and pressing send I see: Your post is being reviewed and will be published if approved.

I am seriously contemplating about just canceling my apple developer subscription and posting the app code as a public repo on GitHub. There I can at least interact with the people that use my stuff.

So far being an Apple developer has been nothing put painful and it has cost me 99 USD without giving me any tangible value back.

Just needed to vent a bit about Apples fetish for endless reviews that seem to be going nowhere fast.

This community has been so supportive of Precursor and I want to say thank you so much, we are keeping the free lifetime train going!!

If you already have been trying Precursor I'd love to hear how its been going for you!

For anyone who hasn't seen Precursor before, it's not just another vibecoded screen time app:

I just pushed a big update this week that introduced:

1. easy, normal, and hard limit modes
2. the ability to have your limits active only during specified hours and days
3. as well as a new parent mode which locks down limits a bit more concretely for anyone trying to help someone else practice healthier phone habits!

Redeem in the app settings, no code necessary!

I am so happy rn! the last few days were the best days ever for my consumer App. 10 Downloads a day with 21+ trials/subscirpitions

If I can help anyone out just ask and i will share everything!

If you can help me tho I would be open to chat about Marketing :)

Hi!

I built pawtrck, an iPhone app for dog owners who want their dog’s care records in one place.

It started from a pretty simple problem: dog care is usually scattered across Notes, Reminders, photos, screenshots, fitness apps, and memory. pawtrck brings the main parts together:

• Walks, runs, and bikejoring sessions
• Distance, duration and estimated pawsteps
• Meal, treat, calorie and weight tracking
• Medications, vaccinations, symptoms and vet visits.
• Training plan and progress
• Shareable activity cards after exercise

One thing I’ve heard from dog owners is that dog walks can mess up their own fitness stats because they’re slower and more stop-start than normal workouts. pawtrck keeps the dog’s activitiy separate and dog-specific.

The app is freemium, with Plus ($3.99/mo) for advanced features and a 1 month Free Trial.

I’d really appreciate feedback from iOS users, especially around onboarding, pricing and whether the app feels useful enough to keep using long term.

App Store link: https://apps.apple.com/tr/app/pawtrck/id6769860025

How are they getting info about recent releases that don’t even have 20 downloads?

I’m only 18 and I developed this app by myself and got it in the App Store!

Please help me get to the 100 user mark!

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6785907718

A few weeks ago, I released new app on the App Store. It got some traction on Twitter, so I opened App Store Connect feeling hopeful about the sales numbers. Instead, I saw "Not Enough Data".

I refreshed it few hours later. Same thing. I checked again the next day. Still not enough data. I actually saved a screenshot of this.

It is not only a launch-day problem. You ship a big update, announce it on Reddit or X, start an ad campaign, or unexpectedly get some attention, but the analytics are always behind.

So I built InitSignal. It is deliberately much narrower than a traditional analytics SDK. You add a lightweight Swift package to your app, and it sends one event when someone opens the app for the first time. After that, the SDK goes quiet.

Privacy was a constraint for me, I wanted the App Store privacy nutrition labels stay as minimal as possible, so the SDK only sends the basic context needed to make each signal useful. No identity, sessions, screens, or behavioral history. At the same time, the goal is to give developers as much useful information as possible without invading their users’ privacy.

The dashboard shows for each download:
- the app version
- device
- OS
- storefront

For paid apps, InitSignal uses storefront pricing to estimate gross revenue and proceeds after Apple’s cut.

I also added Slack and Telegram for notifications, which I've been using with my own apps for the past few weeks, and the dopamine hit is real.

I recorded a quick walkthrough showing how InitSignal works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YajsKsYLdi4

Tech Stack
- Node.js and TypeScript with Postgres for backend and API
- React and TypeScript for the web app dashboard

Development Challenge

The interesting problem was deciding what “new” means without identifying or continuously tracking a user. The SDK stores a local first-launch marker so later launches send nothing. It also uses StoreKit 2 app transaction metadata to avoid reporting an existing customer as newly acquired when they first install a version containing InitSignal. The API deduplicates retry attempts on the backend.

It's available today, would love to hear your thoughts or any feedback!
https://initsignal.com

The Swift SDK is here:
https://github.com/InitSignal/initsignal-swift

If you ship iOS or macOS apps, how do you currently deal with the reporting delay after a launch or major update?

I'm pretty emotional right now haha. I've been checking App Store Connect for the last 2 weeks religiously, and today I was afk all day and didn't realize I was approved this morning!

Anyway, I built Koko, a fully offline conversation practice for language learners. You can listen and speak as much as you want, everything scaled to your level. Best of all your voice and info stays on your device.

Check it out if this is up your alley! https://apps.apple.com/us/app/koko-language-learning/id6794011726

Quick backstory: I'm not a developer. No CS degree, never written a line of Swift before this. But I kept missing return deadlines, forgetting free trials before they turned into paid subscriptions, and losing track of invoice due dates — so instead of just complaining about it, I decided to try building the fix myself using Claude Code (Anthropic's AI coding tool) as my actual dev partner.

The result is Untilly: you photograph a receipt, contract, invoice, or trial confirmation (or upload it as a PDF), it detects the relevant date, and reminds you before it's too late. A few decisions I made early on:

The AI only ever suggests a date — you always confirm it against the real document before it's saved. I didn't want a "trust the black box" tool for something people rely on.
No account, no cloud, everything stays on your phone.

Different wording for different situations (a return deadline feels different from a trial about to charge you, so the app treats them differently).
What surprised me building this without a coding background: the app itself came together faster than I expected, but everything around it — App Store Connect, subscription setup, tax forms, privacy questionnaires — ate at least as much time as the actual product. Nobody warns you about that part.
I also tried adding a Share Extension (send a PDF straight from Mail/Files into the app) and had to abandon it after fighting an entitlements bug for hours — sometimes you just cut scope and ship what works.

It's live now on the App Store, free to try with a few tracked items, optional premium for unlimited: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6792659522

Curious whether other non-technical folks here have tried building with AI tools instead of learning to code or hiring out — did it actually hold up once you got past the prototype stage?

After so many iterations on the app store and updates to the app, I finally got my first paying customer for my first ever app!!

I've been trying to do as little spending on marketing as possible, mostly doing tiktoks. I tried to do $100 worth of apple ads which they give as a credit, but it didn't convert into any paying customers.

Getting your first sale really gives that push to keep going, it's a great feeling.

Here is the app if you are curious: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/halvy-split-expenses/id6782474367