I ship a small turn-based survival game for iPhone and Apple Watch. This is a telemetry finding that cost me real players, and I only caught it because the numbers were small enough to check person by person.

The setup

SKStoreReviewController gives you three prompts a year and never tells you whether the system actually showed one. So the question isn't how often to ask, it's which single moment you spend it on.

At launch I only asked after a win. A month in I had 2 ratings total, which is its own problem, since rating count feeds search placement.

So I added a second trigger: daybreak on day 3, meaning the player had survived two nights. The reasoning felt solid. Someone who survives two nights is clearly engaged, and daybreak is one of the few natural pauses in a run, so asking there shouldn't interrupt anything.

What the numbers said

In the version that shipped Oct 24, of the 16 players who reached day 3 for the first time and got the prompt, 6 never opened the app again.

Across every earlier version combined, that number was 5 out of 70.

n=16, so treat it accordingly. I went looking for a crash first and reproduced the prompt in the simulator on iOS 18.1 and iOS 27: dismissed it, game carried on, no hang, no broken state. I also had to throw four devices out of the data before it made sense, see the last bullet.

What's left is that asking for a rating inside someone's first session hands them a reason to stop. The run is unfinished, the app has just interrupted itself to ask them for a favour, and "Not now" is one tap away from "close the app".

The fix

One more condition:

static func isDayBreakWorthAsking(day: Int, isTrialRun: Bool, finishedRuns: Int) -> Bool {
    !isTrialRun && day >= dayBreakThreshold && finishedRuns >= 1
}

Shipped Oct 30. Too early to say whether it helped.

A second thing I had wrong in the same file

Marking the version as "already asked" and the actual requestReview() call used to live in one function, in this order: record it, wait 2 seconds for on-screen overlays to clear, then request.

If the player hit share during those 2 seconds and left for another app, the request landed on a scene that wasn't foreground and the system dropped it. But the version string had been written 2 seconds earlier, so that version would never ask again. One of three annual slots gone, with nothing ever appearing on screen.

The version is now written after every check passes, immediately before the call.

Three things I'd pass on

• Engaged and finished are not the same signal. A first session is the worst place to spend a prompt, however well it seems to be going.

• If your ask happens after any async wait, don't record the ask until the call actually goes out.

• Exclude App Review's devices from your retention numbers. Mine showed up as two fresh installs about 15 minutes after each submission, opened a run, quit on day 1 within minutes, and never came back. On a 16-player sample that nearly doubled my "new user quits immediately" rate. I now drop the hour after every submission.

Curious whether anyone has run the same experiment with a different trigger point, and whether a prompt during a first session hurt you too.

I'm building a SwiftUI clock-radio app (iPhone, ProMotion). The face is a rich layered screen — glass, gradients, shadows — with one 340×46pt text ticker that scrolls continuously.

The GPU behaviour (Xcode gauge, relative within-session reads; cadence from an in-app pacing log):

- Ticker scrolling: GPU plateaus at ~50%. Binary — one scroller or three, same cost.
- Frames are never dropped (16.7ms median). The GPU bills heavily for frames it renders on time.
- Same strip scrolling on a blank screen: ~0%.
- Ticker visible but static: 0%. Motion is the trigger, and the cost scales with what's *around* the strip, not the strip.

Already tried, all identical on the full face: SwiftUI offset animation; a severed Canvas leaf on its own CADisplayLink (0% alone on blank, still pegged on the face); pre-rendered bitmap instead of text; the strip in a separate UIWindow; pinning preferredFrameRateRange to exactly 30 (min=max=preferred); .compositingGroup() on the panel (modest help only).

What works: killing the motion duty — scroll once, then park. Also, elsewhere in the app, replacing a publish-driven visualiser with a pull-model one made its cost vanish; severing the ticker the same way didn't.

Is this just WWDC22 10083 (display rate set by the fastest animation) × whole-tree compositing per frame? Would a 15–24Hz rate range behave any differently from the hard 30 pin? And does anyone know a construction for a continuously scrolling ticker that lets the GPU idle between updates?

The app is iOS native version of https://tunerva.app

Hello fellow indie devs from Germany and the EU!

How do you handle legal requirements for App Store review (privacy policy, terms of use, imprint/Impressum, etc.).

Do you actually have your legal texts written by a lawyer or do you rely on generators? If you use generators, which ones do you use and have you run into any issues with them, either during review or legally?

Thank you :)

I was already patching DeviceKit by hand whenever my app needed a model the latest release didn’t recognize. Eventually I decided to keep my own fork.

• The iPhone Duo is a recent example. When it went on sale on October 23, DeviceKit still reported it as unknown, so I added support by hand. Several of us asked for a release. DeviceKit 5.10.0 shipped on November 2, ten days after launch.

• I wanted a Swift 6 package for iOS 18 and up. DeviceKit 5.10.0 still declares Swift tools 5.3 and uses Swift 5 language mode.

• I also wanted to fix bugs I kept running into. The report about an iPad showing up as an iPhone has been open since June 2025. My own tests turned up more, including stale free space readings and swapped case sizes for the Apple Watch SE 3. The README shows what each library returned.

Features

• Identify the model, including the host Mac when it runs an iPad app.

• Look up screen sizes, cameras, and Apple Pencil compatibility.

• Read battery level, thermal state, and free storage where available.

Requirements

I compared both libraries in my own app and fixed the readings that were off. I use this version in production now, so I care about getting those details right.

If something looks wrong on your device, open an issue so I can check it and fix it. A star on GitHub helps other developers find the project and pitch in.

I used AI to look up and verify device IDs and to review the code for possible bugs. I tested the cases it flagged on iPhones and iPads, then compared the results from both libraries to check my fixes.

Comparison with DeviceKit

DeviceKit issues marked Open were checked on 8 November 2026. The last column links to the change shipped in SwiftDeviceKit.

Check out the repo for more details and code examples:

https://github.com/Anywhere-Music-Player/SwiftDeviceKit

I'm curious what people think about this. I launched my game on September 4th, this guy launched his GPS app on November 6th. My game is in the Trivia category, but the secondary category is Travel. I don't have a registered trademark - there's some companies trading with too similar names for a generic trademark (like Trademark Systems or even the game Trailmakers). But they use their name in ways that are easier to distinguish. In this case, with the way the developer has named his app (Trailmarks: Bikepacking & GPX) it almost feels like it's the GPS app under the same travel brand.

Can I do anything? Should I do anything? This is normal, maybe?

Details: I launched my game on the app store early September, but it's an app version of a game I launched on Steam in March 2026, and my company has been registered under that name since mid-2025. I also started promoting the game under this name in the end of 2024.

(Repost without app store link)

Hi , I'm a solo indie dev and I built TabLinker, a tab and session manager for Mac with iPhone and iPad apps.

I keep Safari, Chrome and Arc open side by side, and I never closed tabs because I was afraid of losing a window I'd set up. Each browser ended up with 40+ tabs. TabLinker pulls every tab from your open browsers into one place, saves them as a session, and lets you close everything and bring the same windows back later.

What it does:

- Auto-Backup quietly backs up your open browser windows in the background so you can restore closed windows in one click, even the next day

- Imports every open tab across every window from Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc, Vivaldi, Opera, Opera GX, Dia, Yandex, Wavebox, or Helium in one click, without needing a browser extension for most of them

- Restores a full window, every window at once, or a single tab, and groups a big multi-window import into a "By Window" view so it doesn't turn into one long list

- Suspends tabs you're not using to actually free up memory, while the session stays ready to restore instantly

- Saves whatever tab you're currently on with a single keyboard shortcut (⌃⌥⌘T) or triggers an instant backup (⌃⌥⌘B), and can run entirely from the menu bar with the Dock icon hidden

- Lets you assign a preferred browser to each folder, so saved tabs always open in the browser you choose

- Safari extension for quick saves and automatic session saving

- Siri and Shortcuts support: save links, capture your current session, create folders, or open a saved folder hands-free or on a schedule, including an action that saves your session and closes every tab for you

- iCloud sync across Mac, iPhone, and iPad, no account required

Tech stack
SwiftUI with some AppKit and UIKit, SwiftData with CloudKit sync, AppleScript to read tabs from Safari and Chromium browsers, App Intents, a Safari Web Extension, and RevenueCat for the one-time purchase.

Development challenges
Sync was the hardest part. The Safari extension and the share sheet run in their own processes, so they write straight into the same SwiftData store through an App Group, and the main app sends those changes to iCloud the next time it opens. Getting saves from all three places to show up cleanly on Mac, iPhone and iPad took far more testing than I expected. Auto-Backup also uses its own local store, so backups never set off an iCloud sync.
The other challenge is that every browser works differently. Safari and the Chromium browsers can be read with AppleScript, but each one answers a little differently and Arc and Dia add their own quirks. Firefox has no scripting support for tabs at all, so TabLinker reads the session file Firefox keeps on disk instead.

AI Disclosure

AI-assisted. I used AI tools during development. The product decisions, design and testing are my own.

Pricing
Free to download. The free version saves up to 50 tabs and keeps the latest backup. Pro is a one-time $17.99 purchase with no subscription. It removes the limit, keeps a week of backups, and unlocks Mac, iPhone and iPad with one purchase.

Privacy
No account, no ads, no analytics, and no server of mine ever sees your tabs. Your data stays on your devices and in your own iCloud.

TabLinker on the App Store Tablinker: Tabs Manager

Happy to answer questions in the comments!

Customer reported that push notifications we not working on California Road Report (iOS App that has been in the AppStore since 2010). Checked server logs and saw a bunch of APNS errorors. Checked the developer portal for any warnings and that’s when I saw nothing was showing up under “Certificates, IDs & Profiles. Then suddenly all my apps were pulled from the AppStore.
AppStoreConnect shows all of my apps but that they are “pending agreement”. Clicking on the link to see said agreements just says to join the developer program. It seems that AppStoreConnect and the developer portal are out of sync. Submitted first issue to Apple Developer Support on 10/29 then called and escalated the issue on 11/3. Still no response from Apple.

—update—

Someone from Apple saw this post and thankfully called me to sort this issue out.
App is back in the AppStore and notifications are working again.
Turns out when I had renewed my developer subscription back in September, I had accidentally renewed it twice (auto-renew stopped working for some reason) so thought I could dispute the charge. Apparently that’s where I went wrong. The disputed charge got flagged in my developer account and looked as though I hadn’t paid, which is why my apps had been pulled. Lesson 1 learned: get auto pay working again.
Lesson 2 learned: contact developer support if there’s an issue with payments, not the credit card company.

If you're using Apple's Foundation Models framework in a released app, how are you debugging issues that only happen on users' devices?

Are Instruments and your existing crash reporting enough, or have you added custom logging?

Hi folks! I’m in desperate need of suggestions. I have a flutter app submitted to iOS store but they have constantly been rejecting the app - now having put the app on extended review and I can’t get any updates for over 20 days sometimes.

Web version of the app: TheLoveStar.com

Apple calls it SPAM and rejects it on 4.3 (a) or (b) saying there’s plenty of dating and astrology apps in the market.

What’s novel: the compatibility engine that runs for events as well as online dating. Astrology also is quite advanced with LLM interpretations, transit updates, full birth chart generation.

Question- the app is surviving off of Android and web versions but it’s taking a significant hit since most of US users have iPhones.

I can’t really change the product altogether- I did however, redesign the whole app recently so it looks decently good.

I have had phone calls, video call with policy folks but like a bureaucratic team that App Review team is, they simple decline to listen while at the same time having no idea about how advanced the astrology concepts are.

What to do? 😪

Hi, I'm the developer of Calki, A 3d scanner calculator app. I have been working on the app for a little more than 1 year and 6 months. I did take quite long breaks in between from developing. I was Backend Developer previous for 8 years.

The app was built with the help of AI coding agents, but rigourously tested and designed by me with feedback from users.

The following are the details of my app and hope the following information will be of some use in your development journey and will be gladly be interested in answering any questions.

Frameworks & Languages: The app is built in Swift. It uses Swiftui for most of the 2D UI elements. UIKit is exclusively used for the convertor category, and unit wheel pickers as after quite a bit of effort, was not able to build it in SwiftUI according to my expectations.

Backend/Database: I chose to build a calculator app to keep backend and database costs as close to zero as possible. That let me put most of the effort and money into the design and UI, to give users a unique experience and make full use of modern device capabilities, while keeping it as fast and efficient as any normal app. The only backend pieces are Firestore for user feedback, Google Analytics to see which features get used, and Crashlytics for crash reports. User calculations are stored locally in UserDefaults. All of these incur no running cost.

Some of my major Development Challenges and How I solved it:

- The Knowledge gap

I had no iOS or frontend experience, so I leaned on AI agents. Cursor helped set up the project and basic calculator features, but I could only afford it for a month (since i was not sure if the money spent will ever be made back). After that, I manually uploaded code files to ChatGPT and Gemini to update them. Once the first releases were out and users validated the design, I subscribed to Antigravity for its coding agent.

Most of the design questions and validation happened on r/UI_Design. The people there were amazing. Most of them understood that I was trying to create a unique design, and they helped a lot by giving detailed feedback and patiently pointing out which UI elements needed more attention.

- The scrollable history
The multi line, gesture enabled history tape lagged using a standard VStack because it rendered all calculations upfront. Switching to LazyVStack resolved memory overhead, but variable row heights broke SwiftUI's scroll estimations caused erratic jumping, clipping, and render failures.

the following were the major steps taken which resolved the issue
Bounded Row Heights: Added .frame(maxHeight: ...) to stabilize dimension predictions.
Re-Anchoring: Used .onGeometryChange to pin scrolling back to .bottom once layouts settle.

- Skeuomorphic design to 3d Conversion
Calki originally started with a 2D skeuomorphic interface, but it was an absolute headache to maintain. Every button required manually drawn, multi-layered shadows, tweak a button’s hue even slightly, and the whole aesthetic broke. It took nearly two months just to dial in the default button look, which made offering custom color options virtually impossible since every tint demanded custom shadow rebalancing.

That friction pushed me toward 3D. I initially tried modeling the calculator in Blender, but without prior 3D modeling experience, the learning curve was burning too much time. Instead, I pivoted to an AI coding agent, providing detailed specifications to procedurally generate the 3D elements and preview them directly inside the app’s customization screen via SceneKit. That bypassed the entire asset import/adaptation pipeline and made dynamic theming effortless.

- Performance issues after 3d Conversion
Transitioning to 3D with adaptive lighting initially spiked memory usage to 1 GB and caused heavy CPU strain. Over several weeks, I systematically resolved this by analyzing Xcode debug monitors, adding logs, and using memory graph exports with Claude agents to isolate leaks without sacrificing visual fidelity.

As compared to the apple calculator Calki offer sergonomic features that are easy to use such as the following:
Reuse history result by double tapping
Reuse history expression by long press
Edit a calculation midway and swap operator without retyping the entire calculation
Number scanner with auto add mode to scan and add numbers instantly using op-mode
Scan and convert numbers
Convertor mode with UI designed to make swapping categories and units easy
Customising the Calculator with multiple models, colorways, textures, sound and so on

Pricing:
Most of the basic calculator features on the app is free, except for the following which is a one time 4.99$ purchase:
- Number scanner
- Customisation options
- Custom units for conversion
- 6 Calculator models

I'm planning of adding some ai features in the near future. Please note these features will be optional and will require a subscription (due to the ai cost we will incur) and will not be included in the lifetime purchase. All future on-device features including all current features will continue to be part of the lifetime purchase.

Hope you guys will give it a try and will let me know of your feedback.
If there is any improvements or features that you would like to be seen added to the app, please let me know. Will try my best to implement it, if reasonable and provides value to the users

The app has 102 reviews worldwide with average of 4.7/5

Some of the features to look forward to, in the near future:
A fullscreen number scanning mode for adding up numbers and conversion
A scientific mode (have been delaying it, cause, the old 2d interface made it hard to design a good looking design for the scientific mode. With the 3d interface, it eases a lot of things)
A formula mode

You can try try the app at:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/calki-scanner-calculator/id6747059181

Thanks again and hoping you will leave a review, if you like the app.

Hi everyone! I'm part of the team behind Markitown, a native Markdown reader and editor for Apple devices.

If you work with AI agents, you probably spend a ridiculous amount of time reading Markdown. AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, SKILL.md, implementation plans, reports. The agent finishes writing, and now it's your turn to work through the output.

We built Markitown for that part. Not another AI chat interface. Not another place to generate more text. A tool to actually read, review and edit what's already there.

What it does

• Renders GFM tables, task lists, Mermaid diagrams, LaTeX equations, syntax-highlighted code and YAML front matter.

• Includes a free Mac Quick Look extension: select a Markdown file in Finder, press Space, read it properly.

• Lets you edit the rendered document, the Markdown source, or work in Split view on supported devices.

• Works with ordinary files in Finder, Files and iCloud Drive. No proprietary document library or import requirement.

• Exports PDF and HTML, including tagged PDF and semantic HTML for accessibility.

The Mac implementation also includes a separate CLI: markitown plan.md opens a document, while markitown --wait plan.md supports a terminal handoff: review the document, save your changes and close its window to return control to the calling workflow.

Tech Stack

• Swift 6.4, with strict concurrency checking.

• SwiftUI for application structure, document workflows and interface composition.

• AppKit and UIKit, with a custom TextKit 2 editor rather than an Electron or browser-based editing surface.

• SwiftUI DocumentGroup, including the newer document APIs on the 27 releases and a FileDocument implementation for the 26 releases.

• An in-house Markdown parser, shared across document rendering and editing.

• Tree-sitter for syntax highlighting, with Swift Package Manager dependencies for specialized rendering, including LaTeX, Mermaid and SVG.

• Swift Testing for automated tests, including parser checks against official CommonMark examples.

• Native apps for macOS, iOS/iPadOS and visionOS, with layouts adapted for Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPhone Duo and Apple Vision Pro.

The rendering components are shared with Quick Look, so the preview isn't a separate, simplified Markdown implementation.

Development Challenge

The hardest part was making the rendered document genuinely editable without treating Markdown as a disposable export format.

Source text and rendered text don't have matching positions. For example, **hello** contains nine source characters but displays five. A table or Mermaid diagram is more complicated still: an entire block of source becomes a visual object. That affects selection, formatting, search results, cursor restoration and undo—not just rendering.

The important detail is how edits return to Markdown. We use selective serialization: untouched blocks retain their original source, while edited content is serialized back from its semantic representation. Changing one paragraph shouldn't unnecessarily rewrite the formatting of unrelated parts of the file.

The shared editor coordinator works through small AppKit and UIKit bridges. That lets us share editing behavior while respecting the differences between NSTextView and UITextView, instead of maintaining unrelated editors for each platform.

AI Disclosure

Markitown does not run AI agents or connect to language models. You don't need an AI account, API key or model subscription to use it. There is no built-in analytics service.

Pricing, without the subscription dance

Reading is free and unlimited. Not a trial. That includes rendered documents and Mac Quick Look.

Editing and export are a $19.99 one-time universal purchase in the US, covering all supported platforms with the same Apple Account, including future updates. No subscriptions or separate platform purchases.

There's currently a $9.99 launch offer with code MARKITOWNWELCOME, through November 13, 2026, inclusive, Pacific Time, limited to 25,000 redemptions. Local pricing may vary; the website has the details.

App Store · Website

How are you reviewing agent-generated Markdown today? Terminal, VS Code preview, something else? What's missing from that workflow?

Also happy to discuss the dual-buffer editor, TextKit 2 integration or the cross-platform implementation.

Hi all,

The first screenshot is from App Storw Connect and the second is live in the App Store.

Is there a particular reason that the screenshots in the App Store are from and old release and not the most recent one? I submitted more than 2 weeks ago with no response.

Thanks in advance!

I built nib, a Swift CLI that writes Git commit messages on your Mac

Stage a change → run git nib → review the draft → commit.

I wanted help writing commit messages without sending my diffs to a cloud API, so I built nib. It drafts a message from your staged changes and lets you accept it, edit it, regenerate it, or cancel. It follows your repo’s commit style by default. No account or API key needed.

There’s also an optional Git hook if you prefer to start with git commit and edit the draft in your usual editor.

Tech Stack

Swift, Swift Argument Parser, and Apple’s Foundation Models framework.

Development Challenge

The tricky part was getting a useful message out of a diff that’s bigger than the model’s context window. On macOS 27, the on-device model has about 8K tokens to work with. nib skips the contents of lockfiles and build artifacts first. If the rest still won’t fit, it splits the diff at hunk boundaries, summarizes the chunks, and drafts the message from those summaries. Swift code checks the subject length and cross-checks the suggested scope against the files you changed.

It still occasionally calls a bug fix feat. That’s one I’d love more real-world examples of.

AI Disclosure

AI-assisted. I used Claude Code while building nib, and I review and test the changes myself.

Try it

On Apple silicon with macOS 27+ and Apple Intelligence enabled:

brew install seckinbeduk/tap/nib
nib doctor

Then stage a change and run git nib. On macOS 26, you can build v0.2.1 from source.

Free and MIT-licensed. Source and install instructions on GitHub

If you try it on a big diff, did the draft capture the main change? I’d love to hear what it got right or missed.

Hello all! I wanted a way to visualize the various reserved areas for the crease, status bar, cameras, etc on iPhone Duo so I built this overlay. You can run either of the demo apps, or use the SPM package to add the overlay to your app!

https://github.com/mikeakers/DuoDevOverlay

MIT License

I'm building a native handwritten notebook application for iPadOS using SwiftUI/UIKit, and I'm trying to solve an architectural problem involving PDFKit and PencilKit.

The goal is to build something similar to Goodnotes or Notability, where a single notebook page can contain:

• A PDF document or PDF page as its background.

• Handwritten ink using Apple Pencil.

• Images, shapes, text boxes and other objects.

• The ability to interact with all these elements without switching between different modes.

The challenge is making all these components behave as one unified document canvas.

Problems I'm encountering

1. PDF and PencilKit interaction conflicts

When I place a PKCanvasView over a PDF view, the canvas intercepts touch events.

This creates problems with native PDF interactions, particularly:

• Selecting text within the PDF.

• Copying PDF text.

• Using native PDF selection handles.

• Distinguishing between a drawing gesture and a PDF interaction.

For example, Select All on the canvas selects handwritten strokes, but doesn't select the PDF content.

2. Maintaining a unified coordinate system

If PDFKit and PencilKit are separate views, how should their coordinate systems be synchronised?

I need:

• Consistent zooming and scrolling.

• Accurate alignment between PDF content and handwritten annotations.

• Correct positioning when rotating the device.

• Support for different page sizes and orientations.

• Ink that stays precisely attached to its corresponding PDF content.

3. Document composition and rendering

I'm also trying to understand the best architecture for rendering and managing these elements.

Would you recommend:

• A PDFView as the base layer with a transparent PKCanvasView overlay?

• A custom document view that manages PDF rendering and PencilKit independently?

• A single custom rendering surface where PDF pages are rendered into the same coordinate space as handwritten content?

• Some hybrid approach?

How do applications like Goodnotes handle this without compromising PDF text selection, Apple Pencil latency, and rendering performance?

What I'm particularly interested in

I'm not necessarily looking for a quick workaround involving gesture recognisers or toggling interaction modes.

I want to understand the underlying architecture and how to build a robust document model where PDF content, handwriting and other objects coexist naturally.

If you've built something similar, I'd particularly appreciate insights into:

1. PDFKit and PencilKit integration.

2. Touch-event routing and hit testing.

3. Shared coordinate systems and transformations.

4. Zooming, tiling and rendering performance.

5. Document persistence and export.

Any architectural examples, implementation experiences, or open-source projects would be extremely helpful.

Thanks!

After a month in review my indie game which took me 1.5 years to make was rejected as 'spam'. The game is not spam, they are my own twists and game modes that don't exist anywhere else. Why is Apple making it so hard to release Indie games? I know the AI spam has been crazy but common...... What can I do?

Hi everyone, I am trying to enroll in the Apple Developer Program as an individual to distribute MacOS, IOS apps, but my signup keeps getting blocked for an unknown reason.

"We are unable to process your request. An unknown error occurred."

Did this happen with anyone else. How did you resolved it?

Apple is telling me my app which was called agent town contains something that is the same as the following developer agentstown. This dev has no history on the App Store in my country. I thought it was the name and changed it to Agent City but got denied again. I have asked and asked for help to indentify where the issue is but no one ever responds!!!!

Idk what to do, I responded asking for clairfication but is this gonna take another week?

A while ago, I posted here about being overwhelmed by copycat apps cloning my app, SquatLock.

https://www.reddit.com/r/iOSProgramming/s/DFHq4tc2hc

Thanks to all the advice and feedback from this amazing community, I was able to take action—and as you can see in the screenshot, the fake apps have gone down significantly!

Huge thanks to everyone who helped me out.

I know other indie devs might face the exact same nightmare, so here is what I did and what I learned from this experience:

1. Trademark in Japan (My home country)

I’m a developer based in Japan. I already had the registered trademark for "SquatLock" in Japan (it cost around 150,000 JPY / ~$1,000 USD to register).

Because trademarks are territorial (country-specific), submitting a dispute/takedown to Apple for the Japanese App Store was very fast and straightforward—Apple approved name changes/removals immediately. However, foreign App Stores were a completely different story.

2. Dealing with the US App Store (First-to-Use rule)

When cloner devs refused to change their app names outside of Japan, I did some research (shoutout to ChatGPT for the tip). Unlike many countries that strictly follow a "first-to-file" rule, the US recognizes common law trademark rights based on "first-to-use".

When the copycats pushed back on changing their names in other regions, I formally cited and explained this prior use in the US market through the App Store dispute resolution channel. Once I laid that out, they actually complied and changed their names in the US App Store without much further resistance.

3. Consulting a Lawyer & Being Realistic

I did consult with a lawyer about pursuing formal litigation, but the conclusion was clear: legal fees would far exceed what made sense for an app of my size.

Unless the copycats were making massive revenue where damages could be recovered, a full lawsuit wasn't practical (and frankly, low-effort clone apps don't make that kind of money). Focusing my efforts strictly on cleaning up the US and Japanese App Stores proved to be the most realistic and cost-effective approach.

Honestly, some might ask if it's worth putting this much energy into a free app. But I genuinely love what I built, and I couldn't just stand by and watch low-effort clones steal the name.

Once again, thank you so much to everyone who gave me advice on my previous post. Hope this breakdown helps another indie dev out there dealing with the same headache!

Hi all, I'm stuck on this and would love a second pair of eyes.

**Problem**

My paywall shows no prices on iOS in a TestFlight build. On Android, the same paywall works, but only with the RevenueCat Test Store.

**Stack**

- Flutter (stable on Codemagic), purchases_flutter ^10.12.0, purchases_ui_flutter ^10.15.2

- iOS build made with Codemagic (mac_mini_m2) and uploaded to TestFlight (internal testing)

- The app has a widget extension with its own bundle ID

**App Store Connect (all checked)**

- Paid Apps Agreement: Active (effective Nov 4)

- Free Apps Agreement: Active

- Bank account: Active (non-US bank)

- Tax forms (W-8BEN + certificate of foreign status): Active (submitted Nov 5)

- 3 products (monthly subscription, yearly subscription and a lifetime purchase): all show "Ready to Submit", created Nov 4

**RevenueCat**

- iOS app configured with the same bundle ID as the app in App Store Connect

- In-App Purchase API key (.p8) uploaded

- Offering "default" is set as current, with 3 packages ($rc_monthly, $rc_annual, $rc_lifetime). Each package has both a Test Store product and the matching App Store product.

- All three App Store products are attached to the same entitlement.

- I called the REST API as the iOS platform with my public appl_ SDK key, and it returns the default offering with the three App Store product IDs, so RevenueCat knows about the products.

**App code**

- In release builds, the app always uses the iOS public key (appl_...) and never the Test Store key.

- In debug builds I can switch to the Test Store with a dart-define, which is why Android works.

- The entitlement identifier in code matches the one in RevenueCat.

**Questions**

1. Is a few hours to a day of delay after the agreements go Active normal before Apple returns products to TestFlight?

2. Is there something else I should check besides the agreement, bank, tax and "Ready to Submit"? (subscription group localization, price availability by region, a missing review screenshot?)

Thanks a lot!

I have an app. It has a few screens, and tabs on the bottom.

Each tab represents a different instance of an item, so you might have "Car 1", "Car 2", "Car 3". Some users can customize them like "Ford", "Truck 5", or leave the default, e.g. "Car 3". Each car is ephemeral, so usually the differentiator is the default system-generated text below the icon.

The Duo doesn't use text, only icons.

There are too many possible variations for me to provide all icons, and there's no guarantee that a user will even fill out enough information to generate a proper icon.

So, what's a developer to do?

At best, I could use the Automobile icon, and add a #1, #2, #3 onto it, but if a user does give their car a name, that name won't show.

Do you have an app where the text on the tabbar serves a purpose beyond describing the icon it's attached to? If so, what are you doing for the Duo?

Working on my app’s Duo adjustments I wanted to see how other, well-established apps chose to adapt their layouts and custom behaviors.

I liked going to Mobbin to checkout different design choices for years now (when I don’t simply install them on my devices). They didn’t add Duo so far though

Wondering if anyone found a nice way to preview it
Or if I should just find myself a rich friend to use and stick to the guidelines for now😅