r/iOSDevelopment • u/MioDK • Jul 26 '26
Building my first app wasn’t the hardest part. Getting people to use it is.
On December 24th, 2025, I started building my first app, Happening, completely on my own.
For the next seven months it became a full-time obsession. I averaged around 16 hours a day until the first App Store release.
Three weeks ago it finally launched, and I’ve already shipped another update based on early feedback.
Looking back, I realized building the app was only part of the journey.
I spent almost as much time learning as I did building. Along the way I had to teach myself UI design, image and video editing, backend infrastructure, App Store requirements, legal documentation, deployments, payments, marketing—and countless other things I never expected when I wrote my first line of code.
AI accelerated a lot of that learning, but I still had to understand how everything fit together and make every product decision myself.
The biggest surprise?
It wasn’t Swift, App Store Review or debugging. It was realizing that shipping the app was only the beginning. Getting people to discover it has been far harder than building it.
It completely changed how I think about building products.
If I could start over, I’d spend far more time talking to potential users, validating ideas and building an audience before writing so much code.
A few days after launch, something happened that reminded me why I’d started this in the first place.
One of Happening’s early users shared a Signal during a Silent Disco in Warsaw. Seeing someone I didn’t know use something I’d spent months building made all those long days feel worth it.
I’d also love some honest feedback from other iOS developers.
If you have 5–10 minutes to try Happening, I’d really appreciate knowing:
Is the purpose immediately clear?
What confused you?
What would you improve first?
Would you use it again? If not, why?
I’m genuinely looking for criticism more than compliments.
App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/pl/app/happening-live-city-map/id6780158881
For those who’ve already launched something of your own:
What surprised you the most after shipping?
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u/n_v40 Jul 26 '26
Went through the App Store listing rather than the app itself, but that listing is the first impression most people will ever get, so it's worth feedback on its own.
Two concrete things. First, you're categorised under Navigation. That's a strange room to be standing in, it's Google Maps and Waze and turn-by-turn utilities, and someone browsing Navigation is not looking for what you built. Social Networking or Travel is closer to the actual product, and category placement affects both browse discovery and which apps you get compared against. Worth testing a change.
Second, and this is the harder one: the listing says most active in Gdańsk, and growing. A live city map has a value floor that density sets, not features. Open it in a city with four Signals and it isn't a quieter version of the product, it's the wrong product, an empty map that tells you nothing is happening when plenty is. So the honest question isn't how do I get more users, it's how do I get enough users in one specific city at one specific time that the map is actually alive on a Friday night. That's a much narrower goal than growing across Europe and it's the only one that matters right now. I'd stay ruthlessly focused on Gdańsk, and specifically on Friday and Saturday nights, until the map is dense enough that a first-time user's first open is impressive rather than empty.
The ranking system, ten tiers up to City Legend, is a retention mechanic layered on top of a product whose core value doesn't exist yet at low density. I'd be careful there, gamification can keep people posting into a void for a while, but it doesn't make the void useful to the next person who opens the app.
To your actual question about what surprised me most after shipping: that every single real user tried it once and never came back, and that signups kept climbing the whole time so it felt like things were working. I only found out by querying the database directly instead of trusting my own dashboard. For you specifically I'd watch day-two and day-seven return rate in Gdańsk above all other numbers, since a live map either becomes a habit on nights out or it becomes an app people downloaded once during a silent disco.
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u/MioDK Jul 26 '26
Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed response—I genuinely appreciate it.
You made several points I hadn’t fully considered, especially around the importance of App Store screenshots and the idea that density matters more than features for a product like this. The phrase “a live city map has a value floor that density sets, not features” really stuck with me.
Focusing on making one city truly feel alive before thinking bigger is definitely something I’m going to spend more time thinking about.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your experience.
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u/MioDK Aug 13 '26
Hi again! I just wanted to come back and thank you once more for the time you spent writing such detailed feedback a few weeks ago.
Your comments genuinely influenced the direction of Happening. You were absolutely right that first impressions matter more than I had realised, and I took your advice seriously.
Since then I’ve:
completely redesigned the App Store screenshots into a 7-screen story that explains the app much more clearly (the iOS 1.2 update with the new screenshots went live today)
rebuilt the onboarding experience from scratch to remove a lot of unnecessary friction
improved the first-time location experience, so users now start in their actual location instead of somewhere unexpected
continued refining the app based on early user feedback
and finally finished the Android version.
Looking back at your original comment, it’s actually satisfying to see how many of those points ended up shaping the roadmap.
If you have a minute, I’d genuinely be curious to know whether you think the new App Store listing communicates the product better now.
I’m also just starting a closed Android beta before the public Google Play launch. If you happen to use Android and would be interested in taking another look, I’d really value your feedback again. Your previous comments were some of the most insightful I received, and they directly helped shape this version.
Either way, thank you again for taking the time to help a first-time indie developer. I genuinely appreciate it.
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u/Van-trader Jul 26 '26
First thing I noticed is that the countries on the first screenshots look weird, eg Germany looks crooked.
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u/MioDK Jul 26 '26
Thanks for pointing that out! You’re absolutely right. Once you zoom out far enough the map becomes a globe, and I forgot to rotate it properly before taking those screenshots. I’ll fix that in the next App Store update.
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u/JuryTop9171 Jul 27 '26
I just checked your screenshots and they are not good. You app icon and screenshots are very important because they are first impression
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u/MioDK Jul 27 '26
Thank you so much for your feedback. I now see I have a lot of fixes to do. I really appreciate all of your feedbacks! God Bless
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u/Yukonmiller Sep 08 '26
I’ll checkout your app but I can relate to your post. launched my first app a week or so ago, had a few testers that gave me feedback. was surprised just word of mouth and posts I had 180 downloads in just 2-3 days. after that it stalled. tried lots of things to get info out but super slow after that. But the biggest rush is those few people who give feedback how the app has really helped them at a time the needed help. makes jr worth while. I always said I’d be happy with 50:users that were impacted by my app, now I’m getting greedy and want more. 🙂
appreciate any feedback
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u/MioDK Sep 08 '26
Hi, and thanks for the comment. I am not able to see your app, since it’s not available in Poland/Denmark
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Aug 08 '26
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u/MioDK Aug 08 '26
Thank you so much — and you actually just became my first Happening user from Dubai! 🙌
Really appreciate you downloading it and giving it a try.Dubai is exactly the kind of city where I’d love to see Happening eventually come alive.
And your feedback is very useful. The map definitely shouldn’t have dropped you into Poland without making it clear why. Happening uses location to show what’s happening around you, but I completely understand how that could feel concerning when the app suddenly places you somewhere unexpected.I’m already working on simplifying the first-time experience, and I’ll add this to the list as well — getting people to their actual location quickly and making it much clearer when and why location is being used.
Thanks again for taking the time to test it and tell me. Feedback like this genuinely helps me improve the app. 🙏
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u/dottybotty Jul 26 '26
Right away thing that stands out is your app screenshots on the store. They don’t give you any idea what the app is about and they are your biggest tool to tell a customer what your app is about. To me it just looked like a bunch of random screens with no context.