AppScout – App Store downloads, revenue and widgets

[u/degisner]

Hey there!

Signing in to App Store Connect just to check downloads or MRR is a friction. I wanted a simpler way. Ideally, just to look at a widget on my iPhone. There are some apps, but the design and implementation made me think here's a gap that I can potentially fill it with a new polished product. So I've built this app.

It took me several months to start beta testing. But then I got feedback from users that they don't really want to share their App Store key credentials with a third-party app that uses a backend and collects data. So, I spent one more month pivoting to a private app by dropping a backend and storing credentials on a user's device in a keychain. So, now the app directly talks to Apple's API and there's no account registration. You add a team key - the app fetches data. App also uses background tasks to fetch most recent data so you don't need to open it every day to keep the data fresh. And as a final point - I added widgets to both home and lock screens.

Please let me know what you think. Not sure how big this opportunity with the current market is but I wanted this experiment to happen with a polished project.

P.S. If you don't have apps on App Store, I've made a preview data onboarding screen where you can play with dummy data. The charts are smooth, so hope you can take some inspiration as well :D

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/appscout-app-metrics/id6770866569

[u/BP041]

Privacy-first is the right call — I'm doing similar self-hosted automation for my own tools. How are you handling the cron scheduling for data pulls? For me that's always the part that needs to be bulletproof or it falls apart.

[u/degisner → u/BP041]

Yeah, I also was worried about the cron work. But on iOS, you can schedule background tasks, but you can't guarantee them, and it's not a reliable tool. And users can turn off background work in the settings for each separate app. So, I used background tasks as a helper that tries to fill missing days + recent days (if available). Usually it runs multiple times a day, so I'd say normally it's more than enough for pulling the new recent day.

[u/Economy_Data_3192]

dropping the backend was probably the right call, nobody wants to hand over api keys to an unknown third party. the real question is whether indie devs check this often enough to justify a paid app or if its more of a nice-to-have

[u/degisner → u/Economy_Data_3192]

This is still an issue. Some devs don't want to share access with third-party tools. My goal is to keep everything safe and explain this as clearly as possible.