MobileAction dropped their 2026 ASO Report: Keyword Trends, Visibility Benchmarks, and Top Apps in the US App Store.

In 6 out of 20+ major categories, “AI” is now the single most-used keyword in app metadata. Here are the occurrences of the word “AI” in each category, and if it appears in top 10, top 5 or even #1 for these categories.

Also, some striking notes:

• Productivity: AI is #1 keyword, above “notes,” “tasks,” and “daily”

• Photo & Video: #1 also, above “photo,” “video,” and “camera”

• Health & Fitness: #2, just below “health” itself

• Education: #2, just below “learning”

• Graphics & Design: #1, above “design” and “create”

• Lifestyle: #1, above “time,” “daily,” and “life”

• Utilities: #1, above “device,” “phone,” and “manage”

• Entertainment: #1, above “TV,” “content,” and “subscription”. Yes you read that correctly, “AI” now outranks “TV”.

What’s actually happening

There are two distinct dynamics here.

Dynamic 1: AI as a genuine utility signal.

In categories like Productivity, Photo & Video, and Utilities, AI is describing real, differentiated features: on-device processing, generated outputs, adaptive personalization.

• When Notion puts “Notes, Tasks, AI” directly in its title, that’s precise positioning.

• When Canva leads with “AI Video & Photo Editor” it’s describing something users can find immediately in the product.

In these contexts, AI is functioning as a capability keyword with relatively clear user expectations.

Dynamic 2: AI as a credibility badge with no substance.

In categories like Entertainment, Lifestyle, and increasingly Health & Fitness, “AI” is being used as a quality signal without any underlying specificity. It means “we have better recommendations” or “our algorithm is smart”. But these things are mostly invisible to users and indistinguishable from competitors.

This is the keyword equivalent of every app calling itself “the best”.

It once meant something, but now it’s noise.

The ASO mechanics behind the saturation

From a pure keyword strategy standpoint, here’s what the saturation means in practice:

1. Indexation is not the problem, ranking is.

   Ranking for “AI” in your category is easy, but getting in the top results requires authority, volume, and relevance signals. If you’re a mid-sized Health & Fitness app competing against MyFitnessPal or Calm, both of whom have massive download velocity and engagement, your “AI” keyword placement does essentially nothing.

2. Conversion risk is real.

   A user searching “calorie tracker” who lands on a page that leads with “AI-powered health companion” faces a messaging gap. The more generic your AI framing, the less it matches the specific intent that drove the search. This is the exact kind of metadata inflation that impacts Conversion Rate negatively.

3. AI saturation is real.

   The irony of AI saturation is that specific AI use cases, even with low volume, stay relatively crowded. “AI calorie counter”, “AI photo editor” editor for reels,” “AI habit tracker”… these carry a lower volume that the same keywords without “AI” in it, while having as much difficulty shown (see Astro screenshot).

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The categories where AI is absent

What’s equally interesting is where “AI” doesn’t appear in the top 10: Games, Travel, Shopping, Navigation…

These are the categories where user intent is either highly transactional (Shopping, Travel) or real-time utility-driven (Sports, Navigation, Weather). Developers in these verticals are correctly identifying that AI framing doesn’t match the search behavior of their users.

This gives you a contrarian signal:

• In categories where AI saturation is highest, specificity is the edge.

• In categories where AI is absent, early mover advantage exists for apps where AI genuinely changes the product experience; think AI-powered flight deal alerts in Travel, or AI injury prevention in Sports.

Three apps, three different ways to handle “AI”

Gauth puts AI front and centre: “Gauth: AI Study Companion.” The screenshots they quantify the claim: “Solve 98.99% of questions”, “Live AI tutor explains in real time.” This is an app where AI is the entire product mechanism. The 1.4M ratings and #2 Education chart position suggest users are finding it exactly when they search for AI-powered homework help. AI in the title is honest, specific, and converting.

Canva, with 3.3M ratings and an established brand, the AI addition is a repositioning signal, not a discovery tool. They’re telling existing users the product has evolved, not trying to win a keyword. Notice they’re also running an In-App Event specifically about their AI launches, using every App Store surface available to make the claim feel current rather than generic.

Notion does something subtler, leading with the outcome. AI is third in the title and completely absent from the first screenshot, which reads: “Your life, beautifully organized”. The outcome leads. AI is positioned as a feature inside a broader product promise, not as the product itself, and captures the AI search intent without making AI the brand identity.

With or without AI

Looking at the health & fitness category now, especially around Calorie Tracker / Counter. What’s interesting, is of course, that this category has been completely disrupted by Cal AI. So I looked at competitors here, Lifesum & MacroFactor.

Lifesum takes the middle path: “Lifesum: AI Calorie Counter” with a screenshot headline that reads “Healthy eating. Simplified by AI”. The AI is present but attached to a concrete outcome. “Simplified by AI” makes a claim about the user’s experience, not just the technology stack. Still, it’s a competitive keyword landscape: per MobileAction’s data, Health & Fitness has 28,973 AI mentions in metadata, second only to “health” itself.

MacroFactor, on the other hand, doesn’t mention AI anywhere visible, and yet it sits at #54 in Health & Fitness with a 4.8 rating on 13K reviews, higher rated than Lifesum’s. MacroFactor is genuinely AI-powered under the hood, since they still use the word “Smart”, but the positioning leads with what the user gets, not how it works.

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Use CPPs to fix the exact problem we just described

If “AI” as a standalone keyword is too saturated to rank organically, Custom Product Pages let you target AI search intent directly through Apple Search Ads, without touching your default listing.

The mechanic is straightforward: in Apple Search Ads, you assign a specific CPP to a specific ad group, gathering keywords by themes. For example, when someone searches “AI calorie counter” or “AI study app”, they see screenshots built for that exact intent.

MobileAction’s data shows 22,636 CPPs were created across the US App Store in 2025. Health & Fitness alone produced 1,792. Education hit 1,498. These are the exact categories drowning in generic AI metadata.

TL;DR

The question was never whether to use “AI” in your metadata. It was always whether your app needs it.

The data from MobileAction’s 2026 report makes the saturation impossible to ignore: 44,000 Productivity apps, 36,000 Photo & Video apps, 28,000 Health & Fitness apps all using the same word to say different things.

The apps that cut through aren’t doing anything complicated, they’re just attaching AI to something specific like a task, an outcome, a user who searches for exactly that thing. Otherwise, they’re leaving the word out entirely and competing on the strength of what the product actually does. Both strategies work. The one that doesn’t work is using “AI” as a badge and hoping users connect the dots themselves.

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This morning I opened the JP App Store and noticed LINE Manga had changed their app icon to sakura. A small detail, but that’s exactly the kind of intentional move that separates local Japanese apps from external ones. Most teams worldwide just translate their screenshots and call it localisation. But if you really want to take on this market, you’ll have to do more than that.

Experiencing sakura season in Japan is really something else. Beyond the aesthetics, being here has reminded me of something I used to tell clients every spring when I was at Apple Ads in London: Golden Week is one of the highest-value activation windows of the year. This year, it runs April 29 – May 6, which means you have roughly four weeks to prepare.

Here’s what to actually do with them.

1. Spend some time browsing the Japanese App Store

Open the App Store set to Japan and browse the Today tab, the Apps & Games tab, and your category. Screenshot what you see and start a library with inspirations.

Competitors running seasonally-themed creatives, curated editorial picks, in-app events… this is free competitor intelligence. Do it now and again closer to April 29th to track what’s shifting.

Explore the JP App Store Now

2. Don’t just translate, actually localise

Running Apple Ads ? Then start with keywords that are already working there. Those are validated intent signals. Run them through a JP localisation pass such as AppFigures’ Translation feature, which is useful for spotting which of your existing keywords are underperforming in JP compared to other locales; or use Astro MCP + Claude to surface keyword opportunities at scale.

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3. Align visuals with what Japanese users actually respond to

Translating screenshot text is the first step, then you need to adapt your creatives too. Japanese App Store creatives tend to be character-forward, high-contrast, and emotionally expressive.

Seasonal cues land well. Think sakura, holiday family time, the feeling of having a week off, taking time to relax…

Here are some great examples I’ve found, across several categories.

4. Seasonality is perfect for In-App Events

If you haven’t submitted a Spring or Golden Week in-app event yet… well it’s time to think about it.

Apple needs review time so even a simple seasonal event or limited-time offer creates an additional surface on the App Store product page and signals editorial relevance to Apple.

5. The real ASA opportunity is before Golden Week starts

This is the one most teams miss. The window that matters most is 14 to 3 days prior to the actual peak, so roughly April 15th to 26th.

CPTs climb fast once Golden Week begins so here are my tips: get your JP campaigns structured, bids ready, budgets allocated and creatives approved now.

If you’re not active in JP Search Ads at all yet, even a broad match campaign, or a “Maximise Conversion” will compound over the holiday. Don’t wait for the week itself.

If you have extra budget, here’s something I would test:

• Search tab for re-engagement. If you have an existing JP user base, Search tab is an underused surface for bringing them back. It shows up just before users have typed anything. Pair it with a seasonal angle, a spring or Golden Week screenshot, and you’re reaching people in browse mode right when they have a week off to actually use your app.

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Why this market, why now

The underlying context: in 2024, Japan was the world’s third-largest consumer app market at $16.5B (Adjust data: consumer app spending Japan 2024).

As tens of millions of Japanese travelers and shoppers turn to mobile ahead of or during the holiday rush, it’s expected to see install and engagement spikes across travel, food, entertainment, gaming, and e‑commerce apps.

• People finally have a full week off so entertainment and streaming sessions surge: entertainment installs were up 14% YoY in H1 2025, with video streaming averaging 55 minutes per session (Adjust × Sensor Tower Japan App Trends 2025).

• On May 1st during Golden Week 2021, player spending in Japan reached $137.7 million in a single day, the second highest day for game revenue that entire year, behind only January 1st (Sensor Tower, Top Mobile Games in Japan 2021 by Revenue & Downloads).

Golden Week is when multiple high-value categories spike simultaneously. So it’s most likely the opportunity you’ve been waiting for to unlock it.

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What Happened

Anthropic had signed a $200M contract with the Pentagon in July. The terms they’d negotiated included two hard limits: no use of Claude for fully autonomous weapons, and no mass domestic surveillance of American citizens. It was non-negotiable.

The Department of Defense refused to budge, as they wanted AI available for “all lawful purposes”, and told Anthropic to drop its restrictions or lose the contract.

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, made his position clear: “These threats do not change our position. We cannot in good conscience accede to their request”.

Trump’s response was quick, and ordered every federal agency to immediately cease all use of Anthropic’s technology. Defense Secretary Hegseth went even further, designating Anthropic a “Supply-Chain Risk to National Security”, a label normally reserved for foreign adversaries.

Then came the move that changed everything.

Hours after Anthropic’s blacklisting, OpenAI announced it had struck a deal with the Department of Defense to deploy its models on classified networks. Medium Sam Altman moved fast... maybe too fast. By Monday, he publicly admitted OpenAI “shouldn’t have rushed” its deal, calling it something that “looked opportunistic and sloppy”.

But users noticed, and they responded in the only way that actually hurts a tech company: with their behaviour.

The Charts Don’t Lie

Before the government standoff even happened, Claude was already having its best month ever.

Their Super Bowl ad in early February drove 170K downloads in a single day, already well above their 62K daily average. By February 18th, they’d hit 225K, an all-time high, per Appfigures. The trajectory was already pointing up.

Then the standoff hit. Claude’s downloads surged 37% day-over-day on February 27th, then a further 51% on Saturday. Claude climbed to #1 on the U.S. App Store, rising over 20 ranks in under a week. For the first time ever, daily Claude downloads surpassed ChatGPT’s.

Meanwhile the opposite was happening at OpenAI. U.S., as uninstalls of the ChatGPT app jumped 295% in a single day. One-star reviews surged 775%, and LinkedIn became a real-time feed of people announcing their switches.

This is what values-driven churn looks like at scale: it’s people who were already slightly dissatisfied, handed a reason to finally act.

The QuitGPT campaign formalised it too, with about 1.5 million sign-ups at launch, reaching 2.5 million by March 3rd, with physical protests outside OpenAI’s San Francisco HQ.

, one of the most widely-read AI writers on Substack, published “Why I Deleted ChatGPT After Three Years”. The cultural signal was as loud as the data signal.

Claude briefly crashed from the surge, with the company’s servers buckling under the weight of a values moment.

This Is Not a Coincidence

Let me connect this back to what I wrote few weeks back.

The apps winning right now, Proton, Bluesky, Vinted, Back Market, StoryGraph, are winning because users are making active choices about who they trust, what they consume, and who they support.

Anthropic drew a real line, with real financial consequences, and users rewarded them for it in the most direct way possible: downloads.

Anthropic updated its competitor-switching feature, making it easier to import preferences and context from other LLMs, and directly capturing the wave of users arriving from ChatGPT. That’s smart, reactive product growth.

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The Uncomfortable Nuance

I want to be honest here, because this newsletter is not a PR piece for Anthropic.

Anthropic is STILL a $35B company backed by Google and Amazon, two of the largest data collection operations on earth. The “values vs. Big Tech” framing gets complicated when the cap table is Big Tech.

Anthropic’s own investors didn’t publicly back them during the standoff. In a meeting between Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and Defense Secretary Hegseth, Jassy reportedly declined to take Anthropic’s side.

So what do we make of this? Anthropic isn’t a scrappy indie. But in this specific moment, on this specific issue, they held a line their competitors didn’t. And in the absence of meaningful legislation, Americans are largely left relying on a tech company CEO to protect privacy, which is exactly the kind of fragile, unsustainable situation that makes you realise how badly proper legal frameworks are needed.

This doesn’t make Anthropic perfect, but it makes them a better alternative right now. And at the moment, that’s what users respond to.

What This Means for Growth

Here’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.

Anthropic hit #1 on the App Store with values decision, made under pressure, with significant financial cost. It became the most effective growth lever in the company’s consumer history.

This is the logical endpoint of everything I wrote few weeks ago. The funnel started with trust, with a public stance that users could see, verify, and act on.

For growth teams, the lesson is uncomfortable: you cannot manufacture this. You can only build toward it, by being genuinely aligned with your users’ values long before a moment like this arrives, so that when it does, your App Store page, your community, and your brand story are already telling the right story.

Anthropic’s App Store page didn’t change last Friday.

Their ranking did, because everything they’d built before that moment made the choice obvious for users looking for an exit from OpenAI.

That’s the new growth strategy: being more legible about what you stand for.

One More Thing

I predicted last week that this category was accelerating. That values-aligned apps were winning ground. That the App Store charts were becoming a mirror of something much larger than product preferences.

I didn’t expect the proof of concept to arrive within seven days. But here it is, in the data, in the charts, and in 2.5 million people who decided their AI assistant was now a political choice.

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It made me start asking bigger questions: Can we actually grow out of Big Tech? Is digital sovereignty even possible for a normal person? How do we reclaim something we gave away so gradually we didn’t notice it was gone?

Because here’s the thing: I’m not just observing this from the outside. As someone who’s always felt a bit like an outsider myself, I’ve always been keen on using tools that are better for the planet, for the users, for the culture. I use Bandcamp and gave hundreds to support indie artists. I’m also on Bluesky, as I left Twitter and everything I built for years when it got acquired. I only buy secondhand, either thrifting or using apps. I test smaller apps, support independent artists, pay for things that feel worth paying for.

And somewhere between being a user who cares and a growth consultant who thinks about the App Store for a living, I started wondering: what if being indie, being small, having actual values, is a growth strategy? Turns out it is. So here we are.

Update - March 1st, 2026

Since publishing this piece, the topic got even more interesting, and faster than I expected.

Anthropic refused to allow the U.S. government to use Claude for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. Trump responded by banning them from all federal contracts. OpenAI immediately opened their arms to fill the gap.

Users noticed and Anthropic hit #1 on the App Store charts, in front of OpenAI, for the first time ever. As I write this, over 1.5 million people signed a petition to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions at quitgpt.org.

Everything I wrote below? It just happened.

I’m covering this in full in the next issue.

Let’s start with an interesting chart that came across my feed few weeks ago: 60% increase year-over-year in iOS app releases as of December 2025.

All this linked to AI and the rise of agentic codic. Now everyone can build and launch an app, for a relatively low fee. Then agentic coding tools dropped in early 2025 with Cursor, Claude Code, Replit Agent, Bolt.. and the App Store basically broke its own ceiling.

I briefly covered it in my 2026 Predictions, and now it’s time to look into how this shift is affecting growth & product strategies.

The big discomfort nobody can ignore

There’s also a slow-burning anxiety building among app users.

I covered part of this last month when TikTok’s U.S. restructuring triggered an unexpected reshuffling of the Social Networking charts. Users didn’t necessarily delete TikTok overnight, but they paused and looked around. In that window of attention, apps like Skylight and Upscrolled surged, because they were present and credible when trust cracked.

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The triggers are stacking:

• EU–U.S. data transfer tensions, and sovereignty is becoming a real question. It’s not just about governments and enterprises, but about everyday users who are starting to ask where their data actually lives, and under whose laws.

• The creeping realization that most of our digital infrastructure runs through 5 American companies aka the Big Tech. The dependency was always there, but what's changed is that people are now aware of it.

• A post-ATT world where Apple itself normalized the question “who owns your attention?”. When the most powerful platform in mobile forces a consent prompt on every app, it changes the conversation and users started asking questions they never thought to ask before.

People are actively looking for alternatives, and for the first time in a decade, those alternatives are genuinely good.

The Alternatives are winning ground

The indie and ethical apps winning right now aren’t worse than their Big Tech counterparts. In several cases they’re similar or even better, built by people who cared about the problem. Here are the ones worth knowing.

Productivity & Utilities

Proton Mail — The Swiss Fortress

The end-to-end encrypted alternative to Gmail that turned privacy from niche paranoia into a mainstream feature. Proton passed 100 million accounts in 2024. The Swiss jurisdiction angle, your data lives outside U.S. and EU law enforcement reach, has gone from a footnote to a selling point. The product is competitive, not just principled.

Le Chat by Mistral — The European Answer to ChatGPT

Probably the most strategically important non-U.S. AI consumer product right now. Mistral raised at a €6B valuation in 2024. Le Chat runs on models that compete at the frontier, and it carries the rare credibility of being European-built, European-funded, and European-regulated.

In a post-GDPR world, that’s a structural advantage. For French users especially, there’s a pride dimension driving organic growth.

The Music Stack: a full counter-ecosystem

The music industry has quietly assembled the most complete set of alternatives of any vertical.

Bandcamp remains the gold standard for artist-first distribution, where artists keep around 80–85% of revenue. In here, the model is the product and drives growth, as artists happily share links to the platform.

Deezer is making a genuinely contrarian bet: leaning into human-curated, AI-free music as a positioning story. In a world where Spotify is known for leaning heavily into AI, “a human who loves music picked this” is becoming a real differentiator.

SoundCloud is THE platform for DJs, producers, and electronic music communities. With 40 million creator-uploaded tracks, it remains the most democratic music platform ever built. No streaming service has replicated what it does, because what it does was always about sharing culture.

Discogs is the analog internet. A marketplace and database for vinyl, CDs, and cassettes with 15 million+ releases catalogued and a community that treats music as something you possess, not stream. In a world where your Spotify library can vanish with a licensing change, Discogs represents the place where you get physical media, permanent ownership and zero algorithmic intermediary between you and the record.

Second-hand is here to stay

The secondhand economy has quietly become one of the most values-driven categories in the App Store, as well as one of the fastest growing.

Vinted crossed 100 million users in 2024 across 20+ European markets, while Depop became the default wardrobe marketplace for Gen Z. Together they represent a direct rejection of the fast fashion model: one secondhand purchase saves roughly 3kg of CO₂ compared to buying new. That’s not marketing copy anymore, it’s a purchase motivation.

Back Market is arguably the most quietly radical app on this list. The entire premise is a direct challenge to the consumer electronics industry’s core business model, always wanting the latest device. Founded in Paris in 2014, raised at a $5.7B valuation in 2022. The fact that it’s French-built and European-first makes it particularly resonant in the sovereignty narrative: here’s a company that challenged Apple’s and Samsung’s upgrade pressure, from France.

The ownership thread running through this section, own your vinyl, own your hardware, own your wardrobe history, is the physical-world version of the same instinct driving LeChat and Proton. Sovereignty isn’t not only a data question, but also a consumption one.

What Agentic Coding actually changes

For 10 years, the moat for Big Tech wasn’t just money or data, but engineering velocity. A two-person team couldn’t match a 200-person product org on shipping cadence. Agentic coding tools are collapsing that gap in real time: a solo developer with a clear product vision can now ship, iterate, and maintain an iOS app at a speed that would have required a team of 5–8 engineers two years ago.

The 60% surge in App Store releases is the first data signal of what happens when the production cost of software drops by an order of magnitude. The question is which alternatives will have the product-market fit, the community, and the trust to stick around.

What this means for ASO and Growth

And this is where I want to be direct, because most growth teams are misreading the implications. More apps means more noise. In a noisier store, the apps that win are the ones with earned trust and clear values, not the biggest install budgets.

The pattern I keep seeing: ethical alternatives win on conversion.

Users arrive already half-convinced as they’ve probably read a Reddit thread, seen a post on Bluesky, heard about the app from someone who actually cares about privacy. Their intent is high and the App Store page is the last filter. And right now, let’s be honest, most indie apps are failing that filter.

• Metadata that leads with values, not features: title and subtitle should answer “why does this exist and why should I trust it”. Proton doesn’t say “Email App” It says “Encrypted Email & Calendar”.

• Screenshot 1 is a trust signal: When users arrive from a privacy-concern context like a tweet, a news article or a moment of institutional distrust, the first screenshot needs to immediately confirm they’re in the right place.

• Keywords are getting longer-tail and more values-driven: Search queries like “private email no ads”, “open source social”, “ethical music app” are growing. Low volume but extremely high intent.

• Apple Editorial is supporting values-aligned apps: Apple is actively curating a narrative around the App Store as a place for thoughtful, user-respecting software. StoryGraph, Too Good To Go, Proton… these apps are often featured. So if your app is genuinely ethical, your store page should reflect this for both users and Apple’s editors. Also when you pitch it for Featuring, always make sure to highlight these elements.

• Community is your retention layer: The apps winning here, from Bluesky, Bandcamp, StoryGraph to Discogs, all have communities that actively evangelize. That organic word-of-mouth is bringing growth and trust, and that’s something you can’t buy. You build it by being genuinely aligned with your users’ values from day one.

The growth takeaway: fewer, more committed users beat higher volume of disengaged ones, especially in a trust-driven, privacy-aware acquisition environment.

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Takeaway

The window is open right now. Trust is fragile, agentic tools just collapsed the cost of building, and Apple is actively featuring apps that tell a better story.

The brands and growth teams that move now and that build values into their metadata, their screenshots, their community before it becomes table stakes, will own positions that will be almost impossible to displace in 18 months.

The ones waiting for volume to come back are optimizing for a world that’s already gone. So instead of focusing on growth, volume, and acquisition, just look back and decide what values are you deciding to align with. This could be your biggest growth move.

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For a long time, gamification was a feature.

It showed up as streaks, badges, points, progress bars… small UX layers added to increase engagement, retention, or habit formation. Something you sprinkled on top of a “real” product.

That era is officially over.

What we’re seeing now is gamification as a product strategy. Entire apps, and even full segments, are being built around game logic, as the core reason for users to show up every day.

Apps are no longer borrowing from games, they are becoming games in their own right.

🎯 Read my 2026 Predictions:

From features to actual products

The first wave of gamification was functional and was mostly about behavior control: come back tomorrow, don’t break the streak, complete the task.

But once every app started doing the same thing, it stopped working as a differentiator. Streaks became invisible, badges lost meaning and engagement flattened.

That’s when product teams pushed further. Instead of asking “How do we make this task more engaging?”, they started asking something much more radical:

“What if the task itself was play?”

That question changed product strategy entirely.

Apps started shipping real games

Duolingo is the most obvious example, as it has always been gamified with XP, leagues, leaderboards, streaks. But its recent move into chess marks a new phase.

Chess isn’t a learning mechanic layered onto language education. It’s a standalone game, embedded inside a learning app. It extends session length, increases emotional engagement, and creates a reason to open the app that has nothing to do with language learning.

Duolingo isn’t just teaching anymore, it’s slowly becoming a playground for the brain.

What’s particularly interesting is how they shipped it.

Instead of launching a standalone Chess app, Duolingo integrated chess directly into the existing product. On the App Store side, they differentiated using Custom Product Pages, with screenshots showcasing the chess experience served specifically to users searching for “chess”.

In other words, the product page adapts to user intent. Someone searching for languages sees one story. Someone searching for chess sees another.

From an ASO perspective, it’s a smart move: Duolingo leverages its existing brand, distribution, and install velocity, while testing a new game-driven use case without starting from zero.

That said, it’s a debatable choice.

Launching a separate app would arguably make more sense from a positioning and product clarity standpoint. But it would also mean rebuilding acquisition, rankings, and trust from scratch.

When games deserve their own app

NYT Crossplay follows a different but equally telling strategy.

While a Crossword game is available within NYT Games app, the team still decided to launch Crossplay as a standalone app, with its own identity, positioning, and growth path. By spinning it out instead of embedding it, NYT is treating games not as a feature to support news consumption, but as a product category worth owning independently, effectively stepping into the role of a game publisher rather than a media company.

What’s interesting is that this isn’t a sudden pivot. I actually reviewed this strategy back in August 2025, when The New York Times crossed 11.6M subscribers. Even then, it was already clear that games were doing more than driving engagement as they were becoming a meaningful revenue lever. Looking at Crossplay today, that trajectory feels even clearer. NYT keeps growing its subscriber base, and games are taking up more space in the value proposition, not as a side benefit, but as a core reason to subscribe and stay.

One last signal that’s hard to ignore: when searching for “NYT” on the App Store, the first result is now NYT Games, not the main The New York Times news app. That’s a reflection of user behavior, engagement, and download velocity. Games are increasingly the primary entry point into the NYT ecosystem.

For many users, the relationship with the brand now starts with play, not news. That shift in discovery perfectly mirrors what we’re seeing at the product and revenue level: games aren’t a side experience anymore, they’re becoming the front door.

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Turning daily routines into games

Health, fitness, and productivity apps are going through the same transformation.

Step counters like Sweatcoin or WeWard turned physical movement into a game, where effort is translated into points, rewards, and progress rather than goals or guilt.

Productivity and habit apps followed a similar path with the most emotional evolution of gamification is happening in self-care. Apps like Finch or Habit Rabbit ask users to take care of something by nurturing a character through daily habits.

This is Tamagotchi logic applied to modern life, and it works because it removes pressure. The product is all about attachment, softness, and care. Once users care emotionally, retention stops being a metric and becomes a feeling.

The most successful products in these categories no longer frame themselves around discipline or optimization, but around participation and continuity.

The most successful products in these categories no longer frame themselves around efficiency or self-optimization, but around participation and continuity. By shifting from performance to progression, they turn wellness and productivity into ongoing experiences rather than checklists, borrowing directly from casual game design to make showing up feel lighter, not harder.

What’s also telling is how explicitly this shows up in App Store positioning. Many of these apps openly use “gamified” in their metadata, sometimes in the description, sometimes in screenshots, and occasionally even in the title or subtitle.

That’s a strong signal: gamification is no longer just a design tactic, but it’s a selling point users actively search for.

Games exported their playbook

While games mastered retention, monetization psychology, progression pacing, and emotional stickiness, apps brought massive audiences, real-world relevance, and daily utility.

Once those two worlds merged, the outcome was inevitable:

• That’s why learning apps ship games

• Why news companies run puzzle ecosystems

• Why self-care apps feel like tamagotchis

Gamification moved from being a feature designed to increase engagement, to becoming the core structure of entire products and entire segments.

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This kind of movement rarely comes from a single viral post or a clever launch.

It usually happens when something external shifts user behavior all at once.

That shift is happening right now.

🎯 Read my 2026 Predictions:

TikTok U.S. has now officially moved to the U.S.

Last week, TikTok confirmed the creation of a new U.S. based entity, backed by American investors, designed to comply with U.S. regulation and avoid a potential nationwide ban.

From a corporate and regulatory standpoint, this was positioned as a stabilizing move with local ownership and clearer governance.

But moments like this are never neutral for users.

Structural transitions come with rewritten terms, updated privacy policies, and subtle changes in how responsibility, access, and control are defined. Even when the product experience stays the same, the relationship between the platform and its users shifts.

This wasn’t a loud announcement in the app. It was rather quiet, very legal and procedural.

Which is exactly why people paid attention.

Why users are uneasy

The reaction to TikTok’s transition has been driven by new terms in the privacy policy. What surfaced repeatedly across Reddit threads, complaint forums, and press coverage was the explicit introduction of precise location tracking, which hadn’t been part of the policy before.

Adding to this, some users also pointed to wording that appeared to allow broader use or sharing of sensitive attributes, including citizenship or immigration-related status, depending on jurisdiction and enforcement context.

In the current U.S. climate, with heightened immigration enforcement, political tension, and growing skepticism toward institutions, precise location tracking does feel worrying and personal. It raises questions that go beyond product features and into trust, exposure, and control.

Most users already assume large platforms collect data. What unsettles them is when a platform asks for more; especially when that request coincides with a major governance change.

This is what makes this moment different from previous TikTok controversies. The reaction is situational. People are saying that they’re not comfortable agreeing to this now.

When trust cracks, charts move

When users hesitate, they don’t always delete an app immediately. Instead, they pause, they delay updates, reduce usage, and eventually.. they start looking around.

That’s when charts move.

Moments of trust uncertainty create a brief window where users are open to alternatives, because they are actively willing to explore.

In those moments, the App Store becomes less about loyalty and more about availability.

This is exactly the kind of environment where smaller apps can surface unexpectedly.

Attention temporarily fragments; and fragmentation is enough to reshuffle rankings in a category as competitive as social.

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What Skylight & Upscrolled get right

1. Skylight, the open-source alternative to algorithm-heavy social feeds

Skylight positioning matters more than any individual feature.

Launched just last year and backed by investors, the app is built on the AT Protocol, the same decentralized foundation that powers Bluesky, which now counts more than 42 million users.

Skylight positions itself as a short-form, vertical video app reminiscent of TikTok, but with a radically different posture: open source, lightweight, and transparent by design. That positioning suddenly resonated as it signals restraint, visibility, and alignment with user interests at a time when opacity feels risky.

Following TikTok’s U.S. transition, Skylight crossed 380,000 total users, with growth accelerating sharply over a single weekend. According to the team, the app added around 20,000 new users in just a few days, pushing January monthly active users to roughly 95,000.

Skylight simply needed to be present as a credible option when people were ready to look elsewhere.

2. UpScrolled, the transparent & censorship-free alternative to mainstream platforms

Upscrolled benefited from a similar dynamic, but at an even more extreme velocity.

According to data from Appfigures, Upscrolled recorded approximately 41,000 downloads between last Thursday and Saturday, immediately after TikTok finalized its U.S. deal. That short window alone accounted for nearly one-third of the app’s lifetime installs.

On January 29th 2026, it reached the #1 spot in the U.S. Social Networking chart, ahead of apps like Threads and WhatsApp.

It happens because users are actively sampling alternatives.

Upscrolled’s appeal is subtle but well-timed: free expression, support for different media types, a simple feed, no visible AI positioning, and a general feeling of being lighter and less intrusive.

Growth Opportunities

Both Skylight and Upscrolled did the hard part already: they were present when demand leaked. Now the question is both simpler and harder: how do you lock in trust at the store level?

Skylight: strong positioning, under-leveraged store page

Skylight’s biggest strength is clarity of intent. Open source, decentralized tech, and a TikTok-like format without the opacity. Unfortunately, it does not translate well inside the App Store.

Right now, the page still leans a bit too much on what the product does, and not enough on why it exists; which is exactly what users care about in a trust-driven moment.

ASO opportunities:

• The title and subtitle could be sharper about differentiation: openness, transparency, independence.

• The screenshots are the biggest opportunity: frame-1 should immediately answer the question users are asking when they arrive: “Why is this safer / different?”

  • Call out open-source explicitly

  • Explain what Skylight does not do

  • Reinforce simplicity and user control

• The description is way too short and conservative, while it could be more opinionated & confident.

Upscrolled: massive momentum, but fragile conversion layer

Upscrolled’s growth is explosive, which comes with risk.

When an app jumps from niche to #1 in days, the App Store page becomes a bottleneck. Every ambiguity costs installs and every vague message increases bounce.

Upscrolled’s product philosophy is actually very compelling: free expression, multiple media types, no visible AI layer, and a feeling of being quieter and less extractive.

But that story isn’t yet obvious enough at first glance.

ASO opportunities:

• The title and subtitle currently undersell intent: expression, simplicity, or independence should be mentioned.

• The screenshots should move faster and do narrative work. Users need to understand why the feed exists.

  • Copy should be bigger

  • Highlight values more than features: “freely express thoughts, share moments, and connect with others”, as mentioned on the app’s website

  • Reinforce privacy and user control

• App icon feels slightly heavier and more “engineered” than the product experience itself.

This matters more than it sounds as during spikes, users scan fast and visual friction hurts conversion.

The growth takeaway

This moment isn’t about TikTok failing, but about trust becoming more important than ever.

Governance changes, privacy updates, and policy shifts are no longer background noise. Users notice them, discuss them publicly, and factor them into their behavior.

For growth teams and founders, the takeaway is simple but uncomfortable: distribution leaks at moments of institutional change.

If you’re building in social, wellness, finance, or any category that touches identity or personal data, your privacy posture is part of your funnel. Your values need to be legible in seconds. And your App Store page needs to confirm a story users have already heard elsewhere.

Skylight and Upscrolled didn’t create this demand, but they were ready when it appeared.

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Creator Studio just makes sense.

At $12.99 a month, Apple bundles Final Cut Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage, and premium features across Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and later Freeform. On Mac, iPad, and iPhone.

On Mac, apps like Keynote, Pages, and Numbers are natively installed as they ship with the machine. On iPad and iPhone, they’re free, Apple-owned, and heavily surfaced. Even when they’re not preinstalled, they behave like defaults.

Legacy apps suddenly revive.

For a long time, these apps has been overlooked by Apple. They were useful and reliable for sure, but not ambitious.

Final Cut and Logic Pro were available as one-time purchases, but updates were sparse and momentum felt low. That model made sense in 2011, much less in 2026.

Creator Studio fixes that without breaking trust.

Long-time users aren’t forced to subscribe, since one-time purchases will still exist on Mac. But the subscription becomes the natural path forward.

Why this matters beyond Apple.

This is a great portfolio strategy, as Apple is showing that you don’t always need a new product, brand or audience to grow.

Sometimes you need to look at what already installs, already ranks, already converts, and look at it from a new angle.

Bundling plays a big role here too. A few months ago, I analysed the New York Times strategy with their News, Games and Cooking apps. One number stuck with me: 52% of digital subscribers were on a multi-product bundle.

Apple is looking at this strategy too, because very few people “need” both Logic and Final Cut. But many people touch audio, video, create visuals or presentations.

Apple isn’t betting on specialization here, they’re betting on hybrid creators.

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The playbook (this is the part to steal)

1. Upsell the past, don’t abandon it

Growth slows, revenue flattens, and the instinct is to move on to a new app, something cleaner and more exciting.

Apple did the opposite here: it looked at apps that still install, rank, open without friction, and asked what one additional layer could make them valuable again.

Just a smart upsell and cross-sell strategy applied to products people already trust.

If an app still has distribution, it is most likely under-monetized.

2. Keep the core free, then add something people actually want

Apple didn’t take anything away. The apps you had yesterday still work exactly the same today. What changed is what happens on top of that: templates, AI, updates..

Freemium works here because free still feels generous, and paid feels like an upgrade. You pay because the extra value is obvious and the trade-off feels fair.

Gentle premium features look very different depending on scale:

• Indie apps usually monetize relief: narrow AI shortcuts, better exports, pro presets, version history, or simple cross-device sync.

• Large apps and portfolios monetize momentum: cross-app intelligence, full cross-platform continuity, bundled tools, shared assets, etc.

In both cases, the rule is the same: keep the core free, add value instead of removing it, and sell speed, comfort, and continuity.

3. Bundle for curiosity

Apple is betting on people who want to touch everything, not specialists or experts.

Students, autodidacts, entrepreneurs, content creators. People who edit video one day, record audio the next, design visuals after that, and build decks at the end of the week.

Their audience don’t want to commit to an expensive suite like Adobe. They want freedom, flexibility, and depth without financial pressure.

This is where Apple goes straight at Canva: same audience, same curiosity-driven behaviour, but with more tools and professional ambition underneath.

The uncomfortable takeaway

Apple is accelerating their Services, and didn’t look for growth by launching something new, but by re-examining what it already owned.

That’s the part most teams avoid, because it’s less glamorous.

Before building your next product, it’s worth asking whether the real opportunity is already sitting in your oldest one.

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We started to slowly ramp up thanks to their insanely creative team, their fidèle audience, and a budget that was basically non-existent. I helped them figure out ASO, new creatives, new angles.

After their last update, I sent a nomination for an App Store featuring because I genuinely believed the app deserved it. A few weeks later, there it was:

durevie featured in “La sélection de la semaine” on the French App Store 🪩

I was honestly so proud and happy for the team. The downloads weren’t as crazy as I expected, but that’s not the point.

What matters is that the editorial team saw the app, reviewed it, and chose to spotlight it. Because featuring is a strategy: once you get noticed, you stay on the radar. So here’s how to make that happen, and a few great examples to get inspired.

FYI: no, I haven’t used any contact at the App Store, mostly because I don’t have any. Not in France, not in the UK. Yes, I worked at Apple, but on the Apple Ads team. And trust me, they made sure we had zero contact with the editorial team (which honestly makes total sense). Especially since developers would ask us all the time: “Can you help us get featured?”. Spoiler: we couldn’t.

⭐ 1.Find your angle (editors LOVE angles)

If you look at how editors think, it becomes clear why dure vie resonates. The App Store Pitch Guide by Anastasia Radek is honestly one of the best resources out there (go read it, it’s pure gold). It shows exactly what the editorial team gravitates toward: cultural relevance, beautiful design, inclusive storytelling, and products that genuinely add value to their local community.

At the end of the day, strong pitches answer one simple question: What makes your app different, and how does it align with Apple’s editorial values?

You see this pattern everywhere.

• Apps like Tiimo won iPhone App of the Year, and got featured several times before, because they solve real-world constraints with inclusive UX.

• Not Boring and GoClub Step Counter, stand out thanks to their meticulous, opinionated design.

• Apps led by under-represented founders get highlighted during moments like Women-Led stories.

• And anything that taps into the Apple ecosystem early such as CarPlay, Apple Watch, iOS 18/19/26, Spatial Video… gets noticed fast. Apple literally has curated sections like “Great apps updated for iOS 26”.

durevie fits right into that universe: culturally anchored, beautifully executed, and meaningful for the local audience. Exactly the kind of story editors want to tell.

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⭐ 2. Some storefronts are just harder

One thing founders often miss is how uneven the competition is between storefronts. The US, Japan, and China are brutally competitive, with intense submission volume and limited space.

France and Canada, and even European countries in general, by contrast, offer a much more accessible path. Getting featured in France doesn’t mean it’s “easy”, but it means that strong design, local context, and thoughtful UX genuinely have room to shine.

⭐ 3.Every nomination gets reviewed

Editors want pitches, and every nomination gets looked at.

Editors need fresh stories every week. The Today tab updates daily. The Apps tab updates weekly. In-App Events now appear across multiple tabs and even get their own curated sections. You can check all the different placements in The App Store Pitch Guide by Anastasia Radek (slide below is coming from there).

Apple is hungry for good apps, new angles, and meaningful updates. If your pitch wasn’t selected the first time, it simply didn’t match that week’s editorial theme. It is not a rejection of the product.

⭐ 4.How to detect a featuring (since Apple never tells you)

Apple will never notify you directly. The only visible sign is in your App Store Connect dashboard. When your Browse impressions suddenly spike, that’s the editorial effect. It’s subtle and often temporary, but extremely valuable. It boosts trust, views, and long-term visibility more than most people realize.

It might have a big hit on your Conversion Rate, but that’s totally normal. The more impressions you will get, the less they will convert.

⭐ 5.If it happens once, it can happen again

The biggest misconception is that featuring is a one-off stroke of luck. In reality, getting featured once means the editorial team added you to their internal radar. You are now “known.”

From this point on, consistency matters. Editors notice when a developer keeps showing up with quality. So keep sending:

• New updates

• In-App Events

• Seasonal content

• Stories about the team

• Design refreshes

• Apple Watch / iPadOS features

• Local cultural angles

• Trend-aligned updates (e.g., NYE, festival season, Mental Health Month, Pride Month…)

The real takeaway

durevie getting featured in France is evidence that thoughtful, culture-driven, well-designed indie apps can stand out.

You don’t need to be top-grossing.

You need a narrative, a purpose, a point of view, and a connection to the world your audience lives in. Apple’s editorial team is always searching for stories worth telling.

This week, they chose durevie. And if the team keeps evolving the product with the same intention, it won’t be the last time.

If you want help crafting a strong pitch for your own app or a simple “editor-ready” template, let’s connect :)

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Because if the page feels too polished, too formal, too feature-driven, too “2015”, Gen-Z immediately feels the disconnect. It doesn’t match the energy they saw on TikTok, in the UGC, or in the creator content that brought them there.

The viewers are Gen-Z, but the landing page is millennial.

This generation has a completely different relationship to their phone, to social apps, to intimacy, and to the idea of “being online”. And if the App Store page doesn’t reflect that, you might lose the users at the very end of the funnel.

So for this edition, I dove into some of the social apps built for this audience: Locket Widget, noteit, Bump, Vibes, ten ten, BeReal…

Different angles, different behaviors, but the same underlying patterns that reveal how Gen-Z evaluates an app within seconds.

Here’s what’s changing, and how it needs to translate into your App Store strategy.

1. The Phone is the Product, not the App

The biggest cultural shift is that Gen-Z doesn’t treat apps as destinations, they treat apps as extensions of their device identity.

Home Screen, Lock Screen, widgets, Live Activities: that’s where the product experience actually happens.

It’s not “open app to consume content” anymore. It’s “install app to my phone becomes more like me”

• The entire value of Locket Widget lives on the Home Screen, and that’s how they promote the app on the screenshots too. Competitors also use this

• Vibes updates your lock screen with your best friend’s mood, and explains it in their subtitle & screenshots.

• ten ten lets your friend’s send voice notes even through your locked phone.

Gen-Z are not only looking for apps, they’re looking for presence.

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2. Intimacy > Audience

Gen-Z doesn’t aspire to large networks, follower counts, or broadcasting themselves. The global audience model is too big for them, now it’s all about community. They want are smaller circles, closer friendships, private spaces & low-pressure communication.

Every app we looked at leans into this, using words like “best friends”, “bff” or even “your people”.

It’s a cultural shift driven by overstimulation and algorithmic exposure. They’re retreating into tighter, safer, closer digital relationships.

3. All About Authenticity

BeReal didn’t create authenticity but surfaced it. It understood that Gen-Z wants moments, not performances. They want context and real experiences.

No filters, no retakes, no curated persona, just the moment you happen to be in.

It resonated because Gen-Z was already exhausted by the pressure of looking “put together” online. BeReal built its whole identity around this cultural shift: no follower counts, no algorithmic feeds, no explore page and endless scrolling, no filters.

Just you and your friends, exactly as you are.

And that shows up directly on their App Store page: the tone is plain, the screenshots feel candid, nothing looks overly designed. It doesn’t try to impress you. It doesn’t pretend to be something else.

For Gen-Z, that’s the point. A store page that feels too glossy or “agency-polished” reads as trying too hard, and trying too hard is instantly cringe.

4. Streaks is the new Social Glue

Streaks sit quietly at the centre of modern Gen-Z behavior. Duolingo popularised them, Snapchat turned them into a cultural phenomenon, and now every Gen-Z-first app integrates some version of them, even if it’s subtle.

This generation look for rhythms. It is continuity, almost like trust. A gentle daily or weekly habit that keeps a connection alive, with a new photo, mood, ping or a moment. It’s a shared routine, and it seems that Gen-Z responds to routines far more than to features.

If your App Store page hints at this ongoing rhythm with screenshots or description, it signals that the app has a place in their everyday life.

5. The new Language

Because behavior shifts, language shifts too. Gen-Z isn’t searching generic words, they’re searching for:

• widgets

• BFF

• live pics

• map friends

• rizz

• the culture

These aren’t just “trendy keywords”, they’re really intent. They reflect how this generation understands digital interaction. If your metadata still relies on “messaging”, “social”, “photo sharing”, or “community app”, you might be speaking to a generation that already moved on.

Takeaway

The 2015 formula: “share with the world” with high-polish screenshots, feature grids, influencers, broadcast energy… well, it’s over.

The new formula is all about rituals, device-layer presence, micro-moments, small circles, low pressure.

If your App Store page doesn’t reflect that shift, you might get the right traffic (thanks to creators and algorithmic reach), but not the conversion.

Your App Store page has to evolve beyond “feature explanation” and into cultural alignment. Show how the app is on the device, who it’s meant for, the daily rhythm it creates, the words Gen-Z actually uses, the tone their world operates in, the intimacy they seek, the authenticity they expect.

If you get that right, everything else, from installs, retention, to even monetisation, has a much better foundation.

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With this release, Gemini finally topped ChatGPT in the Charts for more than just few days, effectively owning the App Store throughout late September.

Then came October 1.

The Big Shift in Rankings

From mid-September through early October:

• Gemini #1 → sustained dominance across top geos like US, UK, France, Germany, Brazil..

• ChatGPT → #2 for the first time in months

• Launch of Sora October 1st → takeover in US & CA charts

In short: Gemini’s “Nano Banana” drove the hype, but Sora’s launch stole the narrative.

Sora’s Launch

On October 1, OpenAI launched Sora, its new invite-only app. Despite being in limited access, it triggered one of the strongest iOS debuts of the year with 627,000 installs in its first 7 days in US & Canada.

• Sept 30: ~56K installs.

• By Oct 1: a record-breaking 107,800 daily installs.

• By Oct 3: Sora hit #1 overall in the US, dethroning Gemini.

• By Oct 6: still strong with 84,400 daily installs, sustaining top-3 positioning.

For context, this debut outperformed Copilot (Microsoft), Claude (Anthropic), and matched xAI’s Grok launch peak.

Sora’s arrival flipped the App Store rankings. After a couple of days, Gemini lost its top spot, and OpenAI moved fast by pushing paid ads for ChatGPT.

The Paid Visibility War

ChatGPT began appearing in premium placements on the App Store (Today Tab + Search Tab) on October 3, with a large-scale paid push.

Today Tab Clash

Since early 2025, Gemini had been one of the top Today Tab advertiser (which I covered in an article posted in January here) with Temu & Fortnite.

But on October 3, ChatGPT appeared for the first time:

• Oct 4: ChatGPT & Gemini represented around ~90% of all Today Tab impressions in the US:

  • Gemini: 50%

  • ChatGPT: 38%

• Oct 5–6: ChatGPT took the lead with 55% Impressions Share vs 30% for Gemini, indicating either an increase in budget / bids from OpenAI, or a pull back from Google.

• Oct 7: Combined share normalized around 65%, signaling a cooldown in daily budget and bids intensity.

Search Tab Battles

Similar strategy was observed on Search Tab:

• Oct 3: ChatGPT enters Search Tab for the first time, with modest share.

• Oct 4: OpenAI claims ~30% of all Search Tab impressions, while Gemini drops to 14.2%.

• Oct 5: ChatGPT hits 33% of Impressions Share while Gemini rebounds to 22%, suggesting Google increased bids to fight back.

• Oct 6-9: ChatGPT & Gemini still at the top, but Kraken & Fortnite increasing their presence too, reaching almost 80% of Impressions Share between all 4 apps.

Across all placements, it seems very likely that both apps were bidding aggressively with high Cost-per-Taps (CPT) / Cost-per-Installs (CPI) tier, using massive daily budgets to sustain top visibility, and push away any competitors.

The Strategic Play

Each move over the past month was a coordinated visibility play.

• Gemini used Nano Banana to fuel virality, scaling fast on the App Store through organic momentum + used CPP segmentation (Gemini vs Nano) for relevancy.

• Sora relied purely on organic buzz with an invite-only launch that created scarcity and immediate demand.

• ChatGPT followed with paid push, taking over Today Tab and Search Tab placements from Oct 3 until now to regain visibility and stay top-of-mind while Sora dominated organically.

It’s a visibility triangle: Gemini wins on virality, Sora on scarcity, ChatGPT on paid dominance. All converging on the same front; the App Store.

What It Means

1. Even category leaders need paid amplification.

   ChatGPT’s push shows that brand awareness isn’t enough. Paid placements now define visibility ceilings, even for global AI brands.

2. The App Store has become the AI battlefield.

   Gemini’s Nano Banana, Sora’s invite-only frenzy, and ChatGPT’s ASA surge all illustrate one truth: discovery has moved to the App Store.

3. Aggressive ASA bidding is the new brand marketing.

   Both OpenAI and Google are using premium placement share as a proxy for mindshare; a play once reserved for top gaming and e-commerce apps.

Each AI giant is playing a different growth game. In doing so, they’re rewriting how major tech brands approach App Store visibility.

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After years of leaning on Premiere Rush, Adobe just launched a brand new Premiere app for iPhone and iPad, and they came ready.

Here’s what they nailed:

• Pre-orders enabled → giving the app early install velocity and store ranking momentum

• Localized on Day 1 → full translations across key storefronts (US, UK, DE, FR, BR, JP, MX, etc.)

• High-volume keyword targeting → Adobe is already ranking top 10 for high volume terms like:

  • “free video editor”

  • “video editor”

  • “editing apps”

Instead of chasing brand recognition alone, Adobe executed a highly strategic ASO play to own high-intent generic searches. And it’s working.

• Ranked in top charts for Photos & Videos apps on iPhone, and #6 for Top Free iPad Apps!

🧠 Takeaway: They understood the new App Store algorithm (semantic > exact match) and designed their launch for maximum reach.

🤖 Monetization: Freemium First, then Gated Features

Adobe Premiere for iOS is positioned as a free, pro-feeling mobile editor. But the real business model kicks in once you hit some key features. Because unlike the full Premiere Pro, the iOS version is free to download and use, but of course, not without limits.

What’s included for free:

• Multi-track editing (video, audio, text layers)

• Auto-captioning and social exports (TikTok, YouTube Shorts, etc.)

• Standard Adobe fonts and media assets

What’s locked behind paywalls:

• AI-powered tools (speech enhancement, Firefly-generated assets, sound effects)

• Creative Cloud storage

• Advanced editing features likely to expand over time (e.g. face tracking, smart transitions)

In short, Adobe is using Premiere iOS as a lead-generation funnel into its Creative Cloud ecosystem, rather than trying to monetize heavily in-app.

As Mike Polner, Adobe’s VP of Creator Product Marketing, puts it:

“With Premiere on iPhone, we’re bringing that same creative power that filmmakers, designers, animators, and YouTube creators use… to the most convenient place to move from capture to publish: your phone.”

🧠 Takeaway: It’s a classic platform play: free product → paid AI tools → ecosystem lock-in. Clever, but the value wall comes fast.

🧪 What’s Next: Custom Pages, PPOs, and Review Loops

Despite the strong launch, Adobe has left conversion and growth levers on the table.

1. Screenshots Are Polished… But Not Performance-Optimized

Their creatives lean corporate: clean, minimal, branded. They don’t push feature emotion or use case.

Compare with competitors like CapCut or VN Video Editor:

• Zoom in on core tools

• Show AI in action

• Highlight user value over brand polish

Suggestion: Run PPO (Product Page Optimization) tests by feature cluster, using keywords tied to user pain points like “AI video editor” or “edit fast on phone.”

2. Reviews Are Already Pouring In, and Point to UX Gaps

We scanned early user reviews and noticed two clear themes:

✅ Praise for UI simplicity, export options, and social share workflow

❌ Complaints about bugs (photo import issues), and missing pro features (no speed ramp, blend modes)

They need to review mine + prioritize updates for v1.1 or use “What’s New” screenshots to proactively show iteration and listening.

3. Apple Ads On but No Custom Product Pages (CPPs)

They’re already running Apple Search Ads, but not using CPPs.

That’s a missed opportunity.

CPPs now appear in organic search results, not just paid ads. And in 2025’s semantic-driven App Store, they’ve become one of the most powerful tools to align search intent with the right value proposition.

Think about the different audiences searching for:

• “AI video editor” vs “easy video editor”

• “timeline editing” vs “TikTok export”

Each of these queries reveals a different goal, need, and user profile. Yet Adobe is showing one generic page to all of them.

What they could do instead:

• A CPP focused on AI video editing tools (Firefly, speech cleanup, auto sound design)

• Another targeting ease-of-use with one-tap templates and simple UI

• A page built for pro features like timeline control and multi-track layering

• A social-focused page for Reels and TikTok creators, highlighting auto-resize and one-tap exports

Each version could:

• Use different screenshots and copy

• Be deep-linked from Search Ads or App Store search

• Convert better by matching what the user actually wants

🧠 Takeaway: With just a few variations, Adobe could dramatically improve conversion, especially on high-intent generic keywords. Right now, they’re playing with reach… but not with relevance.

🧵 Final Thoughts

Adobe’s iOS Premiere launch is one of the most deliberate and ASO-savvy big brand launches of 2025.

What they got right:

• Leveraged brand without relying on it

• Understood semantic keyword shifts

• Built visibility through localization + pre-orders

• Made a freemium AI tool that feels premium

What still needs work:

• No CPPs testing yet

• Creative doesn’t sell features clearly enough

• Monetization is tied tightly to Creative Cloud, great for retention, but risky for adoption

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For users, it’s just another update. But for growth teams, this release is a turning point.

I’ve already broken down the full list of changes here, but today let’s focus on what actually happens next week as adoption begins.

🚀 What changes on Sept 15th?

1. Liquid Glass design is live

The most visible change is the new Apple-driven design language.

And apps like Polarsteps and WaterLlama are already showing off their updated Liquid Glass UI on LinkedIn.

→ Why it matters: teams moving fast on design are not just ahead on user experience, but also more likely to get featured by Apple (confirmed by devs who’ve received early emails). Apple cares and highlights early tech adopters, so make the most of it.

2. The new Games app launches

A dedicated hub for games on iOS; with immense visibility potential for mobile titles.

Think of it as Apple Arcade meets the App Store but algorithm-driven, pushing multiplayer, challenges, and re-engagement.

I covered it in a previous newsletter, so check out the full breakdown here: Apple’s New Gaming Hub

3. New ASO with Custom Product Pages (CPPs) going mainstream

Until now, CPPs in organic search were only visible for users on iOS 26 betas. Starting Monday, all users upgrading to iOS 26 will see them.

→ Expect progressive adoption over the coming weeks and months, but momentum builds fast.

I broke it down in detail here: Custom Product Pages in Organic Search

📊 What Growth Teams Should Know

• Adoption curve → iOS updates take months to reach high penetration. Early movers win visibility while competitors lag.

• Design alignment → Updating screenshots, widgets, and onboarding with Liquid Glass isn’t just cosmetic — it’s conversion rate optimization + featuring leverage.

• CPPs for scale → With keyword-driven CPPs now impacting organic search, UA managers can finally align paid + organic funnels more tightly than ever.

👀 What to do now

1. Audit your App Store pages + App design : do they look iOS 26-ready?

2. Work on CPPs for your top keywords.

3. Start aligning creative pipelines for Liquid Glass.

4. If you’re in games: plan Games app placements now → this is a rare new surface from Apple.

🎤 See you in London

Next week I’ll be speaking at Gamesforum London about exactly this: preparing for iOS 26, App Store algo changes, and the new Games app.
I’ll also be part of an incredible panel to discuss Organic Growth.

If you’re around, ping me! I’d love to meet.

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But the real story isn’t just better UX. The app defaults to Reels-first, Stories on top, and your friends’ feed hidden behind a sidebar.

This move has propelled Instagram’s iPad app, making it one of the biggest movers for iPad in the U.S. over the past few days, sitting alongside other big-screen-first apps like YouTube TV and NBC streaming apps.

This is a clear signal that the iPad experience is resonating most where video consumption dominates.

🔍 Quick Breakdown

1. The Major Shift: Reels-First

• Instagram now opens on a Reels feed → discovery beats social graph.

• Matches their new App Store creatives where “entertaining videos” comes before “people you love.” (see screenshot below).

• This is Meta making Reels the front door of Instagram.

2. Big-screen shift

• Sidebar navigation → iPad = “desktop Instagram.”

• Reels with comments alongside → YouTube-style layout that boosts session length.

• DMs with split view → better readability, Slack-like multitasking.

• New video editor → “Create Reels with a bigger screen” → Instagram isn’t just optimizing for consumption, but creation on iPad too (see screenshot below).

3. From “Following Feed” to Algorithmic Discovery

• Stories from people you follow remain at the top → the last “friends-first” entry point.

• Below that, the homepage defaults to Reels (1) with algorithmic recommendations.

• Users can use the left tab to switch to Following (2) and choose between (3):

  • All (Friends + Discovery)

  • Friends (mutuals only)

  • Latest (chronological)

• Choice still exists, but Instagram is training you to spend more time in algorithmic Reels, not your social graph.

📊 What Growth Teams Should Know & Do

The iPad has often been overlooked in ASO & UA. But for some categories, ignoring it is leaving performance on the table:

• Check your iPad vs iPhone split

  • Streaming apps: Netflix, Prime Video → better on iPad.

  • Games: RPGs, strategy, action.. → almost unplayable on iPhone, great on iPad.

  • News apps: iPad ≈ digital newspaper.

  • Photo/Video editing: Adobe, CapCut → iPad = bigger creative canvas, easier timeline & asset management.

• ASO differences

  • iPad shows only 2 screenshots by default (vs 3 on iPhone).

  • Optimize those first 2 for impact → immersion, multitasking, long-session storytelling.

  • In-App Events are highly visual on iPad and can become a strong discovery + conversion lever.

• UA segmentation

  • Test campaigns by device type to spot performance gaps.

    • On Apple Ads, you can target iPhone vs iPad separately.

    • Track metrics like Tap-Through Rate (TTR), Conversion Rate (CR) and CPI for each device.

    • If metrics diverge, create dedicated Ad Groups optimized for each audience.

    • iPad installs are often undervalued in UA reporting, while bigger screens can drive higher retention and longer sessions.

🎯 Takeaway

Instagram’s iPad app is more than a UX update. It’s Meta signaling that bigger screens are the next battlefield.

For growth teams:

• Stop treating iPad as “just a bigger iPhone.”

• Audit your iPad vs iPhone traffic split.

• Optimize screenshots, product experience & UA campaigns specifically for iPad where the category demands it.

👉 In 2025, the opportunity isn’t just on small vertical screens. It’s on bigger ones where users spend more time, and where competition is thinner.

As we’re moving to bigger screens, big companies like Apple or Meta are seeing it as an opportunity. Foldable devices are creating entirely new UX classes, iOS 26 is turning the iPad into a true mini laptop, and the extra real estate opens space for widgets, sidebars, and split views.

That also means new formats: video-first discovery, interactive layouts, and creation tools designed for larger canvases.

Growth isn’t just vertical anymore, it’s shifting toward bigger, smarter, more flexible screens.

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What do they all have in common?

They didn’t just build communities. They built apps.

Sometimes the app is perfectly aligned with their content like Neda’s Starcrossed.

Sometimes it’s a complement to a bigger business like Skims.

And sometimes it’s a thoughtful way to deepen connection with fans like Hank Green’s FocusFriend.

In 2025, this is the new playbook. Communities aren’t just for distribution anymore. They’re the launchpad for products.

Instead of relying on brand deals or sponsorships, they turned their audiences into assets. But how far you go depends on how well you connect that spark to ASO and Apple Ads.

🟢 Hank Green → FocusFriend (The Spark)

Hank Green is a science communicator, author, and entrepreneur, building one of the largest educational communities on YouTube and TikTok. He’s spent over a decade turning complex topics into accessible, entertaining content, which has earned him a massive, loyal online following.

His latest project, FocusFriend, is a cozy gamified Pomodoro app where a bean “knits” as you work. The app title even includes Hank’s name, and downloads spiked fast with a boost from a viral TikTok.

@hankgreen1Your Deserve a Focus Friend

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That’s the power of community: instant installs, reviews, and buzz. But the strategy is risky, and the momentum already started to fade, going from #1 of Top Charts in Productivity to #16 (screenshot below).

The app doesn’t rank for broader keywords like Pomodoro or study app, and discoverability outside Hank’s fanbase is limited.

→ Lesson: smart ASO is bigger than just relying on your name. It’s about owning the generic, high-volume terms that let you grow beyond your audience.

🔮 Neda Farr → Starcrossed (The Scale… with Friction)

Neda Farr is a TikTok creator and astrologer who built an audience of over 200K followers and 160M+ views with zodiac content focused on love and compatibility.

She leveraged that community to launch Starcrossed, a subscription astrology app that quickly scaled to around $60K/month in revenue.

It taps into existing belief (astrology), nails distribution (TikTok virality), and ranks on high-intent keywords like soulmates.

But dig into the reviews and cracks appear:

• ASO could be optimized to rank higher on competitor / generic keywords

• Many one-stars reviews

• Complaints of “money grab” and vague insights

On paper it’s growing fast, but retention and trust are weak.

→ Lesson: community + ASO get you installs, but product-market fit keeps them. A viral funnel won’t cover for a shaky product.

👗 Kim Kardashian → Skims (The Sustain)

Kim Kardashian is a global celebrity, entrepreneur, and media personality who built a multibillion-dollar brand empire across fashion, beauty, and entertainment.

She leveraged her massive following to launch successful apps, including in 2014 the Kim Kardashian: Hollywood game, which is not available anymore, and the Skims shopping app, which now ranks top 25 in U.S. Shopping.

The app isn’t about acquisition, it’s about retention.

• Screenshots highlight exclusive perks: early access to drops, restock alerts, discounts.

• The app makes users feel special, turning casual shoppers into repeat buyers.

• Rewards loyalty with “Exclusive App Benefits”.

But here’s the gap: they’re only running Apple Ads in the U.S., not in other English-speaking markets. And surprisingly, no Custom Product Pages. Not even on competitor keywords, where misalignment is obvious.

A user searching Lululemon (sportswear) or Victoria’s Secret (underwear) sees the exact same screenshots as someone searching Zara (everyday wear). That’s three totally different intents, yet Skims serves one generic product page.

→ Lesson: with CPPs mapped to competitor terms, Skims could align creatives to intent, showing sportswear against Lululemon, lingerie against Victoria’s Secret, everyday styling against Zara. Right now, they’re leaving efficiency (and conversions) on the table.

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3 Community-Driven Apps, 3 Lessons

Each of these apps shows the power and the limits of community as a launchpad:

• FocusFriend → smart launch built on name recognition, but without ASO it can’t scale beyond Hank’s fanbase.

• Starcrossed → viral installs and strong keyword ranking, but weak product drags retention. Growth needs better execution.

• Skims → a retention engine for loyal shoppers, but Apple Ads are underused. No CPPs, no geo expansion, plenty of ASA upside left.

Community is the spark. ASO and Paid Ads are the scale.

Lessons for Developers Without a Community

Not everyone starts with millions of fans. But that doesn’t mean you’re locked out.

If you don’t have an audience:

• Start building one now. TikTok and YouTube Shorts are free distribution engines where you can showcase your product, share stories, and pull people into your orbit.

• If you don’t want to be the face, you can always lean on Faceless Marketing. From meme pages, to daily motivation or relatable reels, any content that get shared in DMs.

• Borrow community until you’ve built your own with influencer partnerships or UGC creators that can seed installs, reviews, and social proof, the signals that matter in the App Store.

• Don’t sleep on ASO. Follow best practices, experiment with metadata and screenshots, and keep iterating. It’s the layer that makes your app discoverable far beyond any community you’ve borrowed or built.

Takeaway

Community is no longer optional. It’s the fastest way to get an app off the ground.

But the spark isn’t enough.

• FocusFriend shows the ASO gap.

• Starcrossed shows the product gap.

• Skims shows the ASA gap.

If you have an audience, don’t stop at launch. If you don’t, start building one, or borrow one, while you set up your App Store growth engine.

The apps that last will close those gaps, connecting community-driven launchpads with scalable ASO and ASA. 🚀

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Today’s issue comes from a recent Appfigures Chat where I sat down to talk about a problem every app team faces: conversions.

You can pump budget into ads, optimize keywords, or launch a flashy new feature… but if your store page doesn’t convert, it all leaks out.

🔍 Quick Breakdown

Here’s what actually moves the needle :

• Storytelling > Features → Don’t just show what the app does. Show why it matters to the user’s life.

• ASO Gets Personal → iOS 26 unlocks Custom Product Pages in organic search. Use them to match keywords with the exact value prop users are looking for.

• Keyword Themes → Build screenshots and messaging that directly reflect your most valuable keyword clusters, making your page more relevant and boosting conversion.

• Granular Insights → Filter by geo, device, or audience segment to see where installs (and conversions) really come from, double down on what works and optimize what doesn’t.

• A/B Testing → Test metadata and visuals like you test ad creatives. Use Product Page Optimization feature to do so. Small +5% wins add up fast.

• Full-Funnel Mindset → Stop treating ads and the App Store as silos. Your funnel starts at the ad impression and ends deep into onboarding.

🎯 Takeaway

Most apps don’t have a conversion problem; they have a relevance problem.

They fail because every step of the funnel feels disconnected.

The ad promises one thing, the store page shows another, and the screenshots don’t match what the user typed.

That gap is where conversions die.

The fix isn’t more spend. It’s relevance.

👉 Watch the full chat to see how.

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It came from building like a product company.

In Q1 2025 alone, The Times added 250,000 new digital-only subscribers, bringing the total to 11.66 million. Out of those:

• 110K came from Games (!!!)

• 81K came from News

• 59K came from other products and bundles

The shift is clear: the NYT’s growth isn’t coming from just being read.

It’s coming from being used.

The Times isn’t a newspaper anymore.

It’s an app bundle.

A Platform Built for Habit

The Times now runs an app ecosystem built for daily use. Open the bundle on the App Store and you’ll see four apps with distinct use cases: news, games, cooking, and audio. Every one of them supports the core subscription funnel, from onboarding to re-engagement.

These aren’t just products. They’re rituals.

• Wordle & Spelling Bee are morning games ritual.

• “The Daily” is a walking companion.

• The News app pushes personalized feed.

• The Athletic is perfect for commute.

• Even Cooking is the “added bonus”, quietly building a strong community.

“We have a large portfolio of products, and we’ve brought all of them into the app—especially games. What we see is a beautiful, symbiotic relationship with news,” said Emily Withrow, VP of Product and Head of Subscriber Experiences at The New York Times.

When they integrated Games into the main app, they ran a simple test: would users who came for crosswords stick around for headlines?

The answer was yes. Games bring people in. News keeps them there. And vice versa.

The Real Growth Engine: Bundles

52% of all digital subscribers are now on a multi-product bundle.

Yes, you read that correctly.

It’s not just upsell, it’s retention.

Because bundle users show:

• Higher ARPU of $12.38, compared to the single-product ARPU of $9.54

• Stronger retention across content types, which leads to more daily actives

• Lower CAC as users onboarded via lower-cost products like Games convert faster

This is the new blueprint: build a portfolio that works together. And make bundling the core of your lifecycle strategy. Because this strategy lets them cross-sell and reinforce the Brand.

NYT is Playing the App Store Game Too

The New York Times is actively optimizing its App Store presence, with solid fundamentals and room to grow.

• Runs Apple Search Ads on branded and high-intent terms like “crossword” and “news app.”, only in the US. An opportunity could be testing other English-speaking market like Canada.

• Uses Custom Product Pages for their Games app; but most traffic still lands on the default page. More CPP segmentation could improve results.

• Screenshots are optimized, highlighting awards, features and editorial strength.

• In-app events are active for all apps (e.g. seasonal events, challenges, updates..).

• Search Tab ads remain untapped, but could help with re-engagement and brand discovery.

They treat the App Store like a performance channel, not just a storefront.

And they’re doing it better than most modern app-first brands.

What other Media should be Copying

Look at the App Store today and you’ll still find legacy brands like Wired, Architectural Digest, or Bon Appétit with underdeveloped app strategies. Some don’t even have a native app; let alone a cross-platform bundle.

In 2025, that’s not just a missed opportunity - in my opinion, it’s an existential risk.

As AI floods the web with content and social traffic continues to decline, owning the full subscriber experience is no longer optional.

With its product-first strategy, the NYT built retention, habits, multi-entry funnels and strong monetization.

NYT in Q1 2025 is:

📲 11.66M digital-only subscribers

💰 $288.5 million in digital subscription revenue in Q1 2025 (see chart below)

📈 +14.4% YoY growth in digital sub revenue

🏆 35M+ lifetime downloads for the NYT News app

⭐ 30M+ lifetime downloads for the NYT Games app

Not only is the bundle growing, but the apps are scaling fast.

Takeaways

If you’re a Publisher, the real question in 2025 isn’t “should we launch an app?”. That was the question you should have asked in 2020.

Now, it’s about:

“How do we package our content into a product people use every day?”

If the answer is still “newsletters, YouTube, and ads,” you’re falling behind.

Instead, look at The Times:

• They acquired Wordle when it exploded during Covid, onboarding millions into Games

• They bundled it into the News app to raise engagement across the board

• They priced it like an app company

• And they optimized it for the App Store like a mobile-native product

• They take risks and test new products, even if it means failing

No algorithm. No platform reliance.

Just a portfolio of branded experiences you control, monetize, and grow.

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Their apps aren’t viral or complex; they’re simple, but delightful.

Think: Weather, Calculator, Habits, Timer… and now, Camera.

Latest Win: (Not Boring) Camera

Released in May 2025, already featured in:

🟦 “New App” spotlight

🟨 “Apps We Love” collection

Already pulling in $8.5K in revenue last month with 4,400 downloads. Highest ARPU across their entire portfolio as of yet.

The Bundle Strategy

All their apps are sold as bundles; often across themes like Health & Wellness (Habits, Vibes, Timer), Weather tools, Utility with style (Camera, Calculator..)

This lets them:

• Cross-sell with zero UA cost

• Turn low-volume apps (like Timer) into value drivers

• Reinforce the brand (same 3D/ambient aesthetic)

Numbers That Matter (Jan–June 2025)

📲 Downloads: +54,000 total

💰 Revenue: $76,000 total

🏆 Features by Apple: 339 (Weather), 360 (Habits), 48+ (Camera, in 2 months)

⭐ Avg Rating: All apps > 4.7 stars

📱 Top Device: Habits monetizes better on iPad (vs iPhone)

Why Apple Loves Them

(Not Boring) apps align perfectly with what Apple promotes: editorial-worthy design, delightful UI, and a tactile, premium feel.

They’ve mastered the art of making an app feel like an experience; with motion, sound, and design that feels human.

And smartly, they showcase awards directly in their screenshots, from the Apple Design Award to Editor’s Choice. That visual validation acts like a trust badge and likely boosts conversion.

But here’s what’s surprising: despite all this alignment, they rarely run in-app events. With their seasonal potential (Weather), habit loops (Habits), or even app launches (Camera), they’re missing an easy way to grab more featuring slots and boost re-engagement.

Great design gets you in the door; but consistent visibility needs calendar-driven content, too.

Takeaways

(Not Boring) Software shows that you don’t need a complex product to grow on iOS; just great design, smart packaging, and platform alignment.

Their use of app bundles keeps acquisition cost low and lifetime value high. And surprisingly, iPad users drive more revenue, a reminder that optimizing beyond iPhone can pay off too.

With the launch of Camera, they’ve refreshed interest across the whole suite, showing how a new app can lift the portfolio.

And yes, in 2025, Apple featuring still moves the needle, with over 700 total features in just six months.

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No feed. No scroll. Just one glance. Widgets feel native.

And it’s a growth lever, across the full funnel:

• Acquisition: A visual differentiator in both ASO and paid UA flows.

• Engagement: Glance → tap → repeat = habit loop.

• Retention: Keeps you top of mind, without pushy notifications.

  ---

Gen-Z Social Apps Doing It Right

From Locket Widget to Widgetable, we’re seeing more and more Social Apps for Gen-Z ranking in the top charts with one clear common point: they don’t live inside the app, they live on your Home Screen.

Locket Widget might be the breakout hit, but it’s far from the only one. Apps like LiveIn, NoteIt, Howbout, or Widgetable let users send selfies, notes, or messages directly to friends’ widgets, no app open required.

The result is clear: more intimacy, more engagement, more installs.

Widgets are a new form of social interaction.

The Apps A Bit Late to the Party

Let’s take BeReal. The app should be dominating the widget space. Their mission is all about authenticity, low effort, and minimal engagement. Their audience is young, engaged.

“We don’t want people to scroll endlessly. We want them to check in with their people and go live their best life.”

— Ben Moore, BeReal Managing Director (via Morning Brew)

So where’s the widget?

There’s a basic one: a “Time to BeReal” prompt. But it’s not surfaced in ASO. No screenshots. No mention in description. It’s a massive missed opportunity.

Same goes for Snapchat. They offer Snapcode and Memories widgets. However, they don’t make it a moment. It’s hidden & unoptimized. And definitely not promoted in their App Store presence.

Widgets beyond Social: Travel, Crypto, Fitness, Education

Widgets aren’t just for Gen Z social apps. Here are great examples of apps using them smartly:

🌌 Co–Star: Daily horoscope → delivered as a one-liner, every morning.

🧭 Citymapper: Small version “Get Me Home” → 1-tap route generation.

🟢 Duolingo: Shows your streak, reinforces habit, drives engagement with fun creatives.

🪙 Coinbase: live watchlist of crypto prices, top crypto available at a glance, no tap required.

🏃‍♂️ Nike Run Club: 7x widgets to chose from: last run stats, charts, level…

✅ Habit Tracker: Daily habit & customisable grid to visualize streaks instantly.

Growth Strategies around Widgets

Most of the time, you just need to make the best part of your app easier to see and to use. That’s where widgets shine.

• What’s the main ritual or habit in my app?

• Could that be simplified into a widget?

• Are competitors using one?

  • If not: launch.

  • If yes: make yours better.

Widgets are more than UI components. They’re entry points, growth triggers. And for some apps, they are the product. Widgets are now full-funnel growth lever.

Promote the Widget, even if it’s not the core product

Here’s how to think about them strategically.

App Store Acquisition:

• Tailor your screenshots and messaging to show the widget in action. Not just a mockup but also in context, on a real home screen.

• Mention it clearly in your description. Most apps don’t. That’s a miss.

• On Apple Ads, the keyword “widget” is high volume (US, UK, globally), and surprisingly low competition. It’s a massive opportunity.

• Run CPPs to highlight the widget experience.

  

  .

Beyond the store:

• Add a widget prompt in onboarding: Right after signup: “Want to keep [X] on your homescreen?” and show a quick tutorial on how-to do it! It’s optional. But it increases activation and surfaces utility on day one.

• Frame the widget as a free ‘lite’ version: In freemium apps, widgets are a great way to deliver ongoing value, without requiring login or premium. They might become the reason users stay.

• Show social proof: Drop screenshots of users using the widget in UGC, reviews, testimonials. Normalize it. “My favorite part of the app is the widget.”

You don’t need 10 new features. Sometimes you just need to make the best one… easier to use. And putting it on the Home Screen is one way to do that.

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the name, so I decided to dig a little deeper into why it’s blowing up now. and what it says about where trust and dating apps are going next.

It all started few years back, with Are We Dating the Same Guy?, a Facebook group that began in New York as a simple safety hack: share profiles, swap stories, talk about red flags. It spread fast, and reached over 200 groups, 3.5 million members by early 2024.

Two weeks ago, around the end of June 2025, Facebook pulled the plug. Moderation issues, policy conflicts… The community disappeared overnight.

But the demand didn’t. They went to the App Store, looking for an alternative.

And this alternative is called Tea Dating Advice, and it just climbed to the top of the US Lifestyle charts. Same idea: check if your date is also seeing other people, or if someone else has a story you should know.

Safety is a Dating Priority: from ASO to In-App Features

Tea didn’t invent the idea. It packaged what people were already doing and made it easier. That’s the entire game: trust, but with structure.

Look at Tea’s App Store page. It doesn’t waste time on flirty taglines and goes straight to the pitch: safe dating, verify matches, avoid red flags.

The metadata backs it up. The screenshots repeat it. And the reviews say it loud: Finally, I feel safer.

Meanwhile, the big dating names have noticed. Tinder, Bumble, Hinge have been rewriting their store pages to show they’re on top of trust. ASO strategy is on point, mentioning Safety as much as they can:

• Hinge mentions consent and profile checks right in the first lines of its description.

• Bumble pushes safety in screenshots and description, by showing profile verification feature.

• Tinder calls out verification and moderation in screenshots and descriptions.

  

It’s not just branding. In-app, these platforms are pushing ID checks, AI-powered photo verification, and reporting flows that actually get reviewed by humans.

Because if you’re not doing it, your users will be comparing notes somewhere else, or switching to apps that promise they’ll help.

Why this isn’t just Compliance

So why is everyone suddenly pushing safety like it’s the next growth hack? Because they don’t really have a choice.

I talked to Chloe Guardiola, who works as a Trust & Safety Consultant and was previously a Senior Operations Manager at TikTok. She put it clearly: this is exactly where tougher rules are pushing the industry, especially in Europe with the incoming Digital Services Act (DSA).

In short: if you run a platform that lets people connect and share content, you’re responsible for what happens. You can’t hide behind “we’re just the middleman.” You have to prove you’re doing your part to stop scams, harassment, defamation, repeat offenders, or regulators will come knocking.

And the bigger your platform is, the more you need to align. More users means more content, more risk, and more eyes watching how you handle it.

And users know it too. They’re more vocal, they talk, they share receipts on TikTok or Instagram. They expect real moderation and real tools, not just a “report” button that leads nowhere.

So we’re seeing a shift:

• Safety keywords moving up the priority list in ASO.

• ID verification and profile checks turning into core features.

• Dedicated Safety Hubs and landing pages, like Bumble’s Safety Center: visible, up to date, and impossible to miss.

And here’s the thing Chloe flagged too: this isn’t just about staying compliant. It’s good business. Because safety is growth. Trust brings downloads.

What Tea could Do Next

Tea Dating Advice hit #1 without much visible paid UA.. but they could’ve pushed this even further.

They could easily run Apple Search Ads on “Are We Dating the Same Guy” as a keyword, the phrase that built the original community.

Plus, they could own competitor keywords too (Tinder, Hinge) with smart Custom Product Pages (CPPs) that position Tea as the safety layer those big apps don’t cover.

Big moment, big opportunity. Let’s see if they double down.

Takeaway

Safety isn’t a nice-to-have anymore, it’s the product. Trust is now baked into how you grow, from your metadata to your moderation. If you don’t show it, your users, and regulators, will remind you why you should.

Tea proves it: take the same messy community, wrap it in clearer guardrails and dedicated platform, show users you’re doing the work, and acquire their Trust.

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Halfway through the date, Amelia Dimoldenberg casually drops: “Shall we check our Co–Star?”

They pull out the astrology app, compare their signs, laugh about it.

No obvious placement. No forced pitch. Just a product that makes sense in the moment. Dating + astrology + Gen Z = great recipe for success.

The right audience, the right moment

Co–Star has 30M registered users (2023), mostly young women 18-35. It mixes AI and astrology to deliver daily personalized insights. But above all, it’s also social. You add friends. You check compatibility. It’s built to be shown off.

Chicken Shop Date hits the exact same crowd: 18–34, cultural relevance, perfectly snackable format. So when Amelia pulls out Co–Star, the comments light up:

“OMG I USE CO-STAR TOO”

“What app are they using for astrology?”

“Lol they had great chemistry until costar told them they are not compatible”

Did it work?

Same day the episode dropped:

• Co–Star climbed the US top charts in Lifestyle 📈

• Visibility Score hit 90/100 (source: FoxData)

No performance budget. Just good cultural fit.

Why it landed

✅ Organic integration. It feels real.

✅ The product fits. Co–Star is a conversation starter.

✅ The show’s DNA. Chicken Shop Date lives off awkward intimacy so pulling out an astrology app mid-date is exactly the point.

This is the kind of moment most apps dream about but rarely nail: the product is the content.

Takeaway

Influencer marketing isn’t always about scripted brand deals and big ad spend. Sometimes the smartest move is to show up where your audience already is, with a product moment that feels true.

In this case: astrology app + YouTube date + the world’s biggest TikTok star = no-brainer.

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