Heffer-o-tron

For the last two years I’ve been working on Game Hub, and I’ve always made the foolish mistake of not marketing it. It’s a simple, yet stylish app to help you organise your gaming library, as well as rate and review your games. Think @letterboxd, but for gamers.

This app is a life saver when I’m outside!

@afterxleep I’ve attempted quality, then switched to quantity, and now I’m slowly pivoting back to quality again.

@Heffertron Focus on one problem you have. Solve it for everyone. Ship quality over quantity.

15 apps, mostly well polished, attempting to market on socials and no increased MRR. I’m tired with the grind, but still want the freedom of an indie life. How do you remain motivated at around $130 MRR for the past year? #SwiftLang #indiedev #iOSDev

@BenLumenDigital Sorry to hear it’s been a tough year too. It sometimes feels easier to give up, but I know if I did, I wouldn’t be able to make my peace with it and I’d just be thinking about it anyway! Fingers crossed its upwards for us both in 2026 🤞

@Heffertron It’s been a tough year, same boat as you. Not sure I’ve got many other levers to pull at this point 😕 We could try making some Android apps 🤪

@MrMcSwiftface ✅

Week one of Claude Code Max, anyone fancy doing a code review??

@bonjourmathou It’s the complete inconsistency I find frustrating. I did an update yesterday for one of my apps, and it was approved in about 4 hours, yet the one before that was around 3 days 🤷‍♂️

@Heffertron It’s quite unbelievable how long they take. Submitted on Friday, reviewed on Tuesday and needed to push a small fix. Now back to waiting for review. 🥲 It’s tempting to expedite, but what if you really need that joker card later? I feel like it won’t get any better soon

App Store review can be so erratic. I submitted two app updates Friday evening, and one on Saturday morning. All relatively minor. The one on Saturday was approved by Saturday evening, the two on Friday still waiting for review 🤷‍♂️ #SwiftLang #iOSDev #SwiftUI #indiedev

@anumness Mine just got approved. Hopefully yours do soon too!

@anumness It just feels like whoever was reviewing it was mid-review and has just forgotten! It’s very frustrating.

It has been in review for over 24 hours now. I'm worried.

@AShredder29720 Nope, although someone highlighted the dates are a day off, so that could be why!

@Heffertron Did you find the answer to this question?

Does anyone know why proceeds in the weekly email from Apple doesn’t align with proceeds in App Store Connect? #SwiftUI #IndieDev #iOSDev #SwiftLang

@J_Coe13 Hmm, could be the answer! I’ll double check. Thanks 🙏

@Heffertron The email is Feb 2-8 and the app shows Feb 3-9

@0xWDG @FloWritesCode This 👆I definitely don’t remember turning this on and I’m glad you remembered how to do it!

@FloWritesCode @Heffertron also dont forget to save, the button is top-right. you might need to scroll up.

@taiomi This looks great!

I just turned wisdom into a globe 🌍 One Thing Everyone now has a 3D interactive map showing where insights are coming from around the world. ❓- Same question. 🌍 - Different countries. 👀 - Unexpected patterns. 🗺️ - Explore it: taiomi.com/onethingeveryo…

Looks like free trial toggles on our paywalls are a no-no by App Review now. My last three updates to different apps have all been rejected for the same reason of including a free trial toggle. #SwiftUI #indiedev #iOSDev

@anumness What are you using to make your ads?

App Marketing Update I'm going through the video ads of competitors on Meta Ads library. This is a goldmine. Here is my process for deciding on what sort of video ad to create: 1. Find competitor apps in the library using your keyword. 2. Open the filters option where you can see the whole list of advertisers (notice the app names) 3. Check the revenue of these apps (on sensortower) and jot down the names of the apps making money. 4. Now search for the app name the meta ad library to find all of their ads. 5. If they have been advertising for a while thats a good sign. That probably means they have done the trial and error. 6. Now make similar ads for your app 🙂

@matthewmorek Yeah, that’s a fair point. I think it highlights to the user a little more prominently that there is a free trial, which does have a trade off visually. I think I’ll remove it anyway rather than push back and see if it results in more or less trails.

In this case, I think they’re doing you a service: you already show with the selection of “premium weekly” that it includes free trial and will charge £2.99 after that. The toggle is confusing because it duplicates something you’ve already stated and should IMO reinforce instead of adding a toggle. Besides everyone wants a free trial so they toggle is redundant and likely adds more complexity to the plan selection logic. Just my two cents.

Just had an app review rejection for a free trial toggle. I’ve used this in 10 of my other apps with no problem before and the button clearly states the payment following the trial. Could we be seeing the end of the “free trial toggle”?

I’m actively looking for a new role or contract right now. Senior product engineer / design systems specialist. iOS, web, AI-powered products, shipping real things end-to-end. If you’re building something thoughtful and need help fast, my DMs are open.