Others seeing a drastic decrease in app downloads and product page views recently? Not just for one app but all apps. I'd say almost 70% drop in the last 2-3 months.

Today I witnessed the real power of AI beyond just writing code. I am using it as a super marketer to drive up my app business, and the results are incredible.

This is what I have set up. I provided read access to the AI using their official APIs for:

• App Store Connect
• Apple Search Ads
• Meta Ads
• Firebase Analytics
• Local app source code

By combining the source code with real performance data, the AI ran a thorough analysis and suggested concrete, actionable items to improve my overall app business.

My main concern is whether this is allowed by Apple. Specifically, does Apple permit using AI agents to query App Store Connect and Apple Search Ads through their official APIs?

The setup is too powerful not to use, but we still need to abide by Apple rules. Has anyone else looked into this or tried a similar workflow?

A bit of context - I'm a personal trainer that is considering various "app options", I've narrowed my choices down to 2 that currently fit my criteria but one of them is a web app. I was wondering if there was a way for me to pay my own app developer account for a wrapper for said web app.

I don't own the webapp and the wrapper would be pointing to my client portal for the app.

Hey r/iOSProgramming! I'm an indie developer, and I just submitted DuoBeat 1.0 to App Review. While it waits, it's open on TestFlight and I'd love feedback from this crowd.

What it is: a beat-making app inspired by Teenage Engineering's Pocket Operators. It has 16 step pads, four knobs per sound, a pixel mascot that reacts to your beats, and a pocket-sized interface that's quick to jam on.

The fun technical part: the layout adapts to the device's form factor.
iPhone / outside screen of the iPhone Duo: compact PO-style groovebox
Folded "laptop" posture: split screen, with the editor on the top half and pads/controls on the bottom, like a hardware groovebox
Unfolded / iPad: full studio DAW layout

Stack: Swift/SwiftUI. I also leaned heavily on Claude Code during development, and I'm happy to talk about what worked and what didn't.

Things I'd love input on:
How intuitive the UI and UX are.
How layout transitions feel.
Audio latency and timing on your device.
Recording, exporting, and sharing.
Anything confusing you see!

TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/pstMWvHV

Happy to answer questions about the posture detection, the audio side, or the design. Thanks for checking it out!

There it is! I got my first 1 star review from someone pissed off with my app not offering everything for free.

Shall I just tell him to build its own app if mine is so limited? And in the process burn more token than the price asked?

I've been building apps for a while now but I still can't get over this kind of reviews.

If you have suggestion (funny or not) I could answer, let me know.

I submitted a recent update for my app, got through review and hit the manual release. It’s showing as “ready for distribution” as per usual, but the App Store listing is still on the old version.

After 24hrs I went scouring ASC and saw a business agreement needed re-signing so I did that and still nothing. Is it just stuck? Anyone have this?

I did include Duo support but I believe that doesn’t result in holding back until the 23rd?

spent way too long this week figuring out why I couldnt find the Duo in the simulator list. turns out 27.0 just doesnt have it, you need 27.1 which came out on the 15th. 27.1 also wants macOS 26.6 or newer fwiw
posting what worked in case it saves someone an hour before the 23rd.

get the runtime (didnt ask me to sign in with an apple id, which surprised me):

xcodebuild -downloadPlatform iOS
xcrun simctl list devices available | grep "iPhone Duo"

theres already an "iPhone Duo" device after that so you dont have to create one. then:

xcrun simctl boot "iPhone Duo"

open -a Simulator

for tests its just the destination. ran a small test package this way and it passed in about 19 sec incl booting the sim:

xcodebuild test -scheme MyApp -destination 'platform=iOS Simulator,name=iPhone Duo,OS=27.1'

screenshot came out 1398x2034 for me with xcrun simctl io booted screenshot duo.png. havent checked yet if thats what app store connect wants so double check that. apple says duo screenshots are going to be required for every submission from april 2027 so might as well sort it now

for the poses/orientations apple points you to Device Hub, which is hiding inside Xcode.app/Contents/Applications/DeviceHub.app. took me a while to find lol

one weird thing: over ssh simctl bootstatus said "Data Migration Failed" but the sim booted fine anyway. when I ran it inside the actual logged in session it said Finished. so ignore that if you see it

full disclosure I run a small Mac mini rental thing (macrun.dev) and set this up on our machines, thats how I ran into all this. wrote it up longer here if useful https://macrun.dev/guides/iphone-duo-simulator but everything above works the same on your own mac

I'm enrolling in the Apple Developer Program as an organization (US Delaware corp, DUNS already issued and visible on dnb.com). Everything goes fine until the identity verification step, which fails every time with:
"Unable to Verify Your Identity. Verification could not be completed at this time. Please contact support."
I've tried my passport, my US work permit (EAD) and my state driver's license. All three refused within seconds, so it looks like an automated check, not a human one.
I opened a support case two days ago and only got the automatic acknowledgement so far. I also called.
Separately, I can't create a new Apple Account with my company email "Your account cannot be created at this time", on three devices and two networks, after the verification codes arrive.

Has anyone hit this? What actually unblocked it for you: waiting, a specific support channel, a different document, matching the account name to the ID exactly? Any timeline you saw would help.

I'm building an app that sends check-in notifications at random times: you pick a window (say 9 am to 9 pm) and how many a day, and it asks at unpredictable moments inside that window. With a few questions on random schedules, the 64 pending local notifications iOS allows run out quickly. Here's what I ended up with, and one part I'm still not happy about.

What it does now:

1. Every reschedule removes all pending requests and builds the next 7 days of fire dates for every active question.
2. All candidates are sorted by date and added in that order, so when the 64 run out it's the far-future slots that get dropped, not an entire question.
3. The list of questions is cached in UserDefaults. A BGAppRefreshTask rebuilds the window from that cache, so it doesn't need the network.
4. The app also reschedules every time it comes to the foreground.

The part I'm not happy about is 3. BGAppRefreshTask runs when iOS decides, and it runs less often for apps that aren't opened much, which is exactly the user who most needs the window rolled forward. So for someone who installs it and only answers from notifications, the pings can thin out after a week. Opening the app fixes it, but that's a nudge I'd rather not need.

How have you handled this? Has anyone found anything more reliable than BGAppRefreshTask for keeping a rolling window of local notifications topped up without push?

(For context, this is for ObserMe, a self-tracking app I'm working on.)

I’ve been working on Argent, an open-source MCP server that lets your agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, etc.) tap through your app in the iOS Simulator, read the view hierarchy and logs, and profile with Instruments. That way it can check its own changes instead of just saying it’s done

A lot of the feedback so far has come from React Native folks, but it works with plain Swift/SwiftUI/UIKit apps too, and that’s where I’d love more input. If you’re already letting an agent drive your app, what’s working, and where does it fall apart? 😊

I have about 500 emails of people wanting to get on the beta and I probably don’t need that many testers. I wasn’t expecting the kind of response tbh.
I haven’t closed the sign up yet but I will put a note saying we are probably full, you’re welcome to add your email for updates etc.

I’m thinking to stage rollout maybe to 50 or 100 users at a time. I’m not expecting all of them to sign on obviously but I hope enough will.

I just don’t want to disappoint people that gave their email expecting to definitely get on the beta. But at the same time I guess why not just give everyone access that signed up? I’m curious what the downsides are, whether it’s better to keep a % that hopefully will just purchase? Or offer discount via email to sign ups chronologically? something like that.

Another thing is do you usually wait for the app to pass review before you TestFlight? Or finish testing before?

What’s the best strat in your experience? Thanks !🙏

I just shipped an iOS and Mac app that have the same bundle id. The Mac app was reviewed first and rejected because one of my screenshots had references to price and showed a free trial banner. I made the metadata updates and resubmitted. Next thing the iOS app got approved in one shot, a day after I resubmitted the Mac app. Yesterday afternoon it flipped from waiting to in review. I got excited thinking that the review would be over soon. Now it’s almost a full 24 hours later and it’s still in review. I know others have experienced this. But I’m interested in learning if there was something I did that triggered it, whether it’s the initial rejection or maybe it’s just a coincidence. But it’s a simple second brain app and rich md editor so I don’t see what they need that long to review.

The Mac app uses temporary exception to import Apple notes into the new app. I don’t know if that is what is causing the extra ordinarily lengthy review. I explained my use of the exception in the review notes and it wasn’t any of the rejection reasons from the first round. The iOS app doesn’t have the mcp bridge which is the core second brain functionality the Mac adds for agents, I had to keep it that way to maintain zero knowledge architecture. An MCP service on iOS would have required a cloud I manage where people’s notes get passed through for the bridge, that’s why I decided to go for mcp Mac only and local.

Looking for advice from experienced devs on how I could avoid falling into this next time, if it’s any fault of my own. On a side note I have 2 react native apps with external LLMs on iOS, they were both rejected atleast 5 times. I have 2 zero knowledge Apple Intelligence powered swift apps including this new ones, and they were both accepted in one shot. So I think devs would save themselves a bunch of review headache by opting for swift/AFM in their stack. Ultimately helping Apple achieve their intentions of making AFM have practical use cases.

Also this is my first Mac release so I don’t know if the reviews typically take longer. The first review with the metadata issues took less than an hour. I appreciate all your feedback so I can learn on this journey, I’m only 18 months in.

We really do not need another generic habit tracker or expense tracker on the App Store.

Right now, paying $99 a year gives people a free pass to flood the store with unlimited low effort clones. If Apple charged $100 per published app instead, people would actually have to think twice before submitting another template.

Would this clean up the spam, or would it just hurt devs trying to test ideas?

I’ve always ignored the size of my app. But now that I’m approaching 1gb I’m imagining how many potential users I’m losing at the download phase. Perhaps a metric I’ll never truly have visibility into. How do others view this topic?

I wasted far too long debugging this.

codex, kept insisting we throw more javascript at it.
It didnt think about making a simple example, to test, verify.

Only once I pushed back and we dived into it, did we start to peel back the bug, and the paper trail on the internet.

This was only reproducible on a physical device.

What this experience highlighted for me, keep using AI, but if they fail to fix it after the first bug fix attempt, do an old fashioned search to see if the problem has any history.

As sure enough, signs were there.

This guy published 293 apps most of them is in just five months 😂 I think a lot of developers have been using this dark pattern over the past year.

I’m working on a personal Card Vault app using React Native, which I’m planning to support on Android, iOS, and Windows. I want to add a feature that lets me read EMV data from my own bank cards using NFC, rather than having to enter everything manually.
I’m developing on Windows, and unfortunately, I don’t have access to a Mac or Xcode. Since this is just a personal project, buying a Mac or paying for the $99 Apple Developer Program subscription isn’t really an option for me right now.
I’m hoping to find someone with a Mac and Xcode who’d be willing to help me get the iOS NFC functionality working.
Here’s what I need help with:
Implementing NFC reading for compatible EMV bank cards using Apple’s Core NFC.
Connecting the native Swift code to my React Native app.
Setting up the required NFC capabilities and figuring out what data can actually be read.
Building and testing it on a physical iPhone.
I’m handling the rest of the app myself, so I mainly need help with the iOS-specific parts that I can’t properly work on from Windows.
I understand that bank cards have security restrictions and that not all data will be accessible. I just want to explore what’s possible with my own cards, not clone them or bypass any security.
I’d be happy to collaborate through GitHub and share a small test project to make things easier.
I can’t offer paid work at the moment, but if anyone could spare some time to help, offer guidance, or let me use their Mac/Xcode environment briefly, I’d really appreciate it. If you’ve worked with Core NFC or EMV card reading before, I’d especially love to hear about your experience.
If you have any suggestions or know of an affordable way to get this working, feel free to comment or DM me.
Thanks for reading! Any help would mean a lot.

TL;DR: I’m building a personal React Native Card Vault app on Windows and need help implementing and testing iOS NFC reading for EMV bank cards. I don’t have a Mac or Xcode and can’t afford one right now. If you have Mac/Xcode access or experience with Core NFC and EMV cards, I’d really appreciate any help or guidance!

Hi everyone! I'm a solo developer, and I've turned the street game I grew up playing in India, Lagori (Seven Stones / Pithu), into a chaotic little party game for iPhone and iPad.

How it plays: one team throws a ball to knock down a stack of seven stones, then races to rebuild it while the other team tries to tag them out with the ball. Finish the stack and you score: LAGORI!

What's in the beta:

• Play against bots (Classic, Quick Stack, Survival and a Daily Challenge)
• Nearby party: play with friends in the same room, no internet needed
• Online matches through Game Center: quick match, invite friends, or SharePlay. Empty seats fill with bots.
• Team voice chat in multiplayer
• 4 arenas with hazards (spinning sweepers, slippery ice, wind)
• A game speed slider, if you want more time to react

What I'd love feedback on:

• Is it fun? Are the controls clear?
• Multiplayer: does joining work, and does it stay smooth?
• Anything confusing, broken or annoying

If something goes wrong, tap the 🐞 button on the main menu to send me a log, or take a screenshot and use TestFlight's feedback option.

Needs iOS 18 or later. No sign-up needed (online play uses your Game Center account). Free.

Thanks for helping! I'll be in the comments.

So basically I’m building an iOS/ipad os app.
It’s a video editor.

My question is:

I want to make some functionality to be downloadable through a server, like presets, new packs, luts etc…
Maybe some new features etc…
Also handle user data like credentials, information etc…

Can I do it with a home server like running on a Mac mini for free ?
Or do I need to use 3rd party servers and services?

How is the local alternative handle the users, like more than 10k users simultaneously downloading stuff, updating their apps etc…

Is it possible to run this idea on a home server completely for free or almost free, or do I need to pay for this service ?
And how much will it cost me +/-?

Can someone help me please?

I ship a few small apps on my own, and localization was always the task I put off. Pasting strings into a chat window "works" until a translation drops a %@ or turns %1$@ … %2$@ into something String(format:) doesn't like, and you find out from a crash report.

Here's the approach that finally made it boring (in a good way):

1. Only translate what's missing. .xcstrings is just JSON. For each key, check localizations[lang]: no entry, an empty value, or state == "new" means it needs work. Skip shouldTranslate: false. If there's no source localization, the key itself is the English text. That one tripped me up.

2. Send comments, not just strings. I batch around 40 strings as JSON {id: {text, comment}}. The comment field (the one you set with String(localized:comment:)) is what stops "Delete" and "Save" from being translated as the wrong part of speech. Strings with no comment get noticeably worse translations.

3. Validate placeholders with code, not trust. Count the placeholder tokens in source and target with a regex (%@, %lld, %1$@, %.1f, %%, \(name), tags) and compare them as multisets. Reordering positional ones is fine; missing or extra ones are not. On a mismatch, retry that single string once with the error in the prompt. If it fails again, leave it untranslated and report it.

4. Plurals need the target's categories. English has one/other. Russian and Polish need one/few/many/other, and Japanese only other. Ask for exactly those keys and validate them.

5. Write it back the way Xcode does. json.dumps(data, indent=2, separators=(",", " : "), sort_keys=True, ensure_ascii=False) matches Xcode's own formatting, so the diff only shows real changes.

6. Mark everything needs_review. Then you can see in Xcode what no human has checked yet.

The system prompt I use:

You are a senior software localizer translating iOS app UI strings from English into {language}.
- Keep EVERY placeholder and markup token exactly: %@, %d, %lld, %1$@, %.1f, %%, \(name), <b>.
  You may reorder positional placeholders for grammar, never drop or add one.
- Use the developer comment to understand where the string appears.
- Buttons/tabs stay about as short as the source. No added punctuation.
- Follow the glossary exactly; never translate brand names.

Happy to answer questions about edge cases (device variations and substitutions I still do by hand).

I’d like to explore more open-source iOS projects—complete apps, Swift/SwiftUI libraries, and tools people are actively maintaining.

Where do you find projects that haven’t already become widely known? Do you follow particular developers, communities, newsletters or curated lists?

Which smaller projects have caught your attention recently, and what makes them interesting?