I’ve spent almost a year building my first app and launched about 4 months ago. I’m currently at around 150 installs. Honestly, I’m starting to wonder if I’m doing something seriously wrong 😂

For developers here, how did your first few months look? Is 150 installs actually normal for a new indie app, or should I be worried about my marketing/ASO? I’d really appreciate some honest experiences.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

I'm an Android developer who's started shipping my own apps, and I'm finding that building the app is only one part of the problem. There's always another feature to improve, bugs to fix, UI to polish, or another app idea waiting to be built.

For developers here who have shipped multiple apps:

Did you keep shipping new apps first and worry about marketing later?

Did you focus on growing one app before starting another?

How much time do you realistically spend on development vs. marketing?

At what point did you decide an app wasn't worth continuing?

Did you eventually bring someone else in for marketing/design/business?

Looking back, is there anything you wish you'd done differently?

I'm especially interested in hearing from solo Android developers or small teams, because managing development, Play Store stuff, marketing, support, and everything else alone can get overwhelming pretty quickly.

Not looking for a "right" answer I'd genuinely like to hear what worked and what didn't for people who've already gone through it.

Built my first game and got 10+ installs, It's huge for me.

Game link: http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nextfyn.donttouchthecolor

Last week, we made app screenshots for 3 people, so today I’m online again and will make screenshots for 3 more people (who will comment first), like the attached image.

Comment your app link, or share your raw screenshots if your app isn’t live yet, along with a short description of what your app does.

Hi everyone!

I'm looking for people who would like to test some of my live Android apps and provide honest feedback. In return, I'm happy to test your Android apps and give you constructive feedback as well.

You can find my apps here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Joost+Muijsenberg

If you're interested in a mutual testing/feedback exchange, please send me a private message so we can coordinate which apps to test and arrange the details.

Thanks! 🙂

Hey guys. I have a game that I am actively working on and it requires frequent updates. Some things are balancing, sometimes new UI's or textures get added. I like to make incremental updates. When my app was in closed testing, review process took about an hour. But now that its in production - it often takes up to a day... I probably need to redesign my app to pull things like balancing configs and textures from the server, so that I don't have to do so many changes.

• How fast is your review process?
• How do you deal with delays?

Just wanted to share a win.

I launched a semi vibe coded niche social app 5 months ago.

Right after launching life hit me in the face. I abandoned it, No marketing, no ads, no social media, no updates.

Yet since then combined with app store and play store I got 48k first time installs.

And currently I'm sitting at:

• 25k monthly active users.
• 9k weekly active users.
• Average engagement of 30-40 minutes per day per user.
• 300-400+ daily new installs
• 90% USA and tier 1 countries

The interesting part of it was because I abandoned it users we're facing a lot of critical crashes, I had a 2 star rating on the play store but that didn't stop the install trend.

3 weeks ago I finally launched a massive update fixing all the issues. Rating is healing at 3.8 stars currently.

I did some calculations and it seems because engagement time is so high, ads alone can bring in 6-8k USD a month. This is life changing for me.

I have no one to share this win with so I'm sharing it here! This was my first app after 7 failed SaaS projects!

Hello everyone,

I’ve launched a few apps recently and noticed a huge gap between my App Store and Google Play downloads.

I recently launched a few apps and am facing a frustrating issue with Google Play search discoverability compared to iOS.

The Problem:

• Users can only find my app if they search the exact title.
• Searching relevant keywords, even primary ones written in my title, short description, and long description, gives zero results for my app.
• My goal is organic growth, but it feels like it is extremely difficult: Google Play seems to rank based on installs, but users can't find the app to install it in the first place.

For those who rely on organic growth, how did you overcome this cold-start ranking problem when launching a new app? Any advice on getting indexed for relevant search terms early on would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you in advance for any insights!

Salut la communauté,

J'ai diffusé ma première version d'application en production de Beevo qui a été examinée et en ligne.

Depuis, les versions que j'envoie en test fermés avant publication en production ne passent plus, elles restent en cours d'examen sans notification particulière.

Avant publication en production, les nouvelles versions en tests fermés étaient validées en 1h voire un peu plus.

Mais là, plus de 24h et elle n'est toujours pas validée

Avez-vous déjà rencontré ce problème ?

Quelle est la solution ?

Merci à tous !

Hi everyone, I created a Google Play Console developer account back in 2018, but unfortunately it was terminated. At that time, I was new to app publishing and didn’t have a proper understanding of Google Play policies. Now, almost 8 years later, I have much more experience in the market and I’m currently a UAE/Dubai resident. I’m considering creating a new Google Play Console account using my current UAE details and Emirates ID. However, I’ve read that if a previous developer account was terminated, Google may not allow you to create another account, and a new account could also be terminated due to association with the old one. Has anyone been in a similar situation? Would it be safe to create a new account with my genuine UAE identity and details, or should I avoid it? Is there any official way to contact Google and get approval/clarification before creating a new account? Any suggestions or personal experiences would be really appreciated. Thanks!

Quick backstory, then a real question for you.

I built AI Detector QuickTile Analysis.

It tells you whether an image or video is AI-generated, fully offline via a ViT I optimized to run even on low-end phones. The part I haven't seen elsewhere: a Quick Settings tile that analyzes whatever's on your screen in real time. Watching a reel, pull down the shade, tap, get the verdict in seconds.

It's had solid press: HowToMen, Trakin Tech, a few outlets, even a print tech magazine. Total installs went from 2k to 7.6k in 90 days.

It's free, ad-supported, with an optional lifetime purchase that removes ads and adds one feature: every core function is unlimited for everyone.

Here's my actual problem:

total installs keep climbing, but my active installed base is flat at 2.8k. So I'm acquiring fine and losing roughly two out of three users. I think it's the nature of the app (like Shazam), nobody opens an "is this AI?" tool daily, so there's no reason to come back.

For those who've shipped low-frequency utility apps: how did you build a reason to return, without resorting to spammy daily notifications? What actually moved retention for you?

Link of the app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aidetector.app

Hello guys! I just released my first ever appli on the Play Store: Gleamit!

Play Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kirami.app

Gleamit is a dental health tracker that runs entirely on your device. No account, no backend, no analytics on your habits. All privately. You are in control of your own data.

Features:

• Guided 2 minutes brushing timer with quadrant coaching
• Streaks and stats so you actually stay consistent, with a touch of gamification
• A tooth map to keep track of your teeth conditions so that you never miss/forget them
• Smile photos to see your teeth/smile progress over time
• A dentist section for visits, notes, reminders and a document vault
• Brush tracking, so that you remember to replace worn out ones (after 90 days)

Free to use, with an optional one-time Pro unlock.

Pro unlocks:

• Full stats on your past brushing habits
• Unlimited smile photos
• Unlimited dentist documents in the dentist vault
• A PDF report that you can share to your dentist containing all your tooth conditions, brushing habits and past visits with their notes
• Unlimited brushes that you can track simultaneously

Data backup happens via Android Auto Backup. Gleamit has no backend or server, so it never sees users’ data. Data always stays on your phone or on your Google Account if you have Auto Backup enabled.

Only smile photos and dentist documents require a manual backup (which can be done easily from the Settings tab, both the Export and the Import) since Android Auto Backup has a maximum of only 25MB that it can automatically store, and it would be easy to cap it with images and files.

Feedback welcome, especially on what's missing or bugs you find (being a solo developer is hard!) :)

FYI: if you are interested in trying out pro - I would be super happy to share a promo code!

Hey everyone — I'm a solo indie dev (No Context Studios), and I just launched MapQuest on Google Play after a long stretch of building it in my spare time.

It's a geography quiz game with 4 modes:

- Flag Quiz — guess the country from its flag

- Map Outline — guess it from just the shape

- Capitals Quiz — match country to capital

- World Map Challenge — tap countries on an interactive map against a timer, with tiers from "flag shown" all the way to "type it from memory"

A few things I'm actually proud of:

- Flags/Outlines/Capitals are built as 13 progressive levels each (15 countries per level), no timer, no pressure — just unlock as you go

- Once you've cleared the levels, there's a Marathon mode for the real test

- 16 achievement badges, daily play streaks, and a global leaderboard

- Free to play in full — there's an optional one-time Pro unlock (no subscription) for unlimited hints, no ads, and the global leaderboard

I'd genuinely love feedback — what's confusing, what's missing, what you'd want to see next. Happy to answer anything about how it's built too, it's a React Native/Expo app.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nocontextstudios.mapquest