I built an iOS snoring app solo. Just hit public beta with $0 marketing. Here's where I actually am.
Background: I'm a solo developer, building in spare time. I started SnoreScribe because I couldn't find an app that answered the actually useful question: is my snoring getting better or worse over time?
Every app I tried would record audio and show a waveform. Fine — but I already knew I snored. What I needed was a trend. Is the wine making it worse? Does sleeping on my side help? Am I actually improving?
So I built the thing I wanted.
What it does
- Records overnight, detects snoring automatically (saves only the snoring segments, not 8 hours of silence)
- Morning report with a timeline and short audio clips
- Trends view across nights — this is the part that didn't exist in anything I found
Everything runs on-device. No account, no uploads. Audio never leaves your phone.
Tech stack: SwiftUI + SwiftData, all native iOS, zero third-party SDKs.
Honest current state
- Core app is done and stable
- Public beta live on TestFlight
- Zero ad budget — distribution is 100% organic (Reddit, IH, X)
- Beta testers are trickling in slowly. I've been spending time in sleep/snoring communities giving real answers rather than dropping links. Slow, but feels more sustainable.
The positioning question I'm stuck on
This is what I keep coming back to. The app records snoring — that's the feature. But what people actually want is judgment: is my problem getting worse? Is what I'm
trying actually working? Should I see a doctor?
Framing it as a recorder undersells it. Framing it as a medical toold the right sentence yet.
Does "snoring trend tracker" land better than "snoring recorder" to
Looking for
- Beta testers (iPhone users who snore, or think they might)
- Anyone who's been down the sleep tracking rabbit hole — what did y
- Honest feedback on positioning — would love outside eyes on this
TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/dWaNkCPk
Happy to talk about the build, distribution strategy, or just snoring in general.
wow, this is nice...
One beta pattern I’d watch closely: separate acquisition copy from retention copy. Acquisition can be “see if your snoring is improving” because that matches the search pain, but the product has to drive one repeat loop fast: record tonight, check the morning report, compare against last night. If users do not hit that second session, better positioning will not save it.
The “0 marketing” part is where the wording matters most. For Kinetic Override, I’m seeing better signal when I stop describing it as a generic Android utility and instead use the exact job: record taps/swipes, replay a loop, no root, local profiles. For a snoring app, I’d test the same: what phrase does the person search right after a bad night?
Probably "did my snoring get worse" or "how bad is my snoring actually."
The trends piece is what the next build is focused on — right now it
shows you last night, next version starts answering "is this improving."
I've been leading with the privacy angle but you're right that's a trust
signal, not a discovery signal. Nobody's searching for "app that doesn't
upload my audio."
One thing I've learned from watching indie health apps:
Getting downloads is hard.
Getting someone to care enough to open the app every night is even harder.
I'd be obsessed with retention before marketing. If people naturally keep using it for 2-3 weeks, distribution becomes a much easier problem later.
Rooting for you. Shipping a public beta solo is no small achievement.
Yeah this one keeps me up (ironically). The app is only really useful
starting night 2 — that's when comparison kicks in and it starts feeling
like data instead of a novelty.
My bet for pulling people back is audio clips. Hearing yourself snore is
weirdly hard to ignore. But I genuinely don't know if that's enough.
Still figuring it out.
$0 marketing at beta is normal — the question is which channel matches snoring/sleep apps. Reddit can work (r/sleep, r/snoring, r/Biohackers) but only if you reply to people already complaining about snoring/partner issues, not launch posts. The time sink is scrolling for those threads daily. What's been your best channel so far — App Store search, or nothing yet?
Honest answer: nothing yet from App Store search — it's still TestFlight
only, so no organic discovery there.
So far this post + a few threads on X is it. Which is fine for beta, but
you're right that Reddit requires a different play than a launch post. I'm
doing exactly what you described — scrolling r/snoring and r/sleep daily,
replying to people already in pain. Slow at the start, but feels more
honest than cold-dropping a link.
r/Biohackers is a good call I hadn't prioritized. Adding it.
The answer to your positioning question is already in your own post — "is my snoring getting better or worse over time?" is the job people are hiring this for, not recording. "Snoring trend tracker" wins because it names the outcome, not the mechanism. I'd also lean harder into the on-device angle in your copy; for something that records overnight audio in your bedroom, "audio never leaves your phone" is a real reason to choose you over anything cloud-based, and it's barely visible right now. Curious whether beta testers are finding the trends view on their own or if you're having to point them to it — that'll tell you a lot about how much the positioning gap is actually costing you.
Thanks for this — "naming the outcome, not the mechanism" is the clearest version of what I've been circling around.
To your question: honestly, no. Beta testers mostly don't find the trends view on their own. They find the morning report, use it for a night or two, then ask "can I see this over time?" — which tells me the entry point is fine but the path to the actual value is buried. That's a UX problem and a positioning problem at the same time.
On the on-device angle: you're right that it's undersold. I mention it but I don't make it the reason to choose. Fixing that.
On the positioning question you are stuck on, there is a dimension hiding in it that makes the choice easier.
The line between snoring tracker and medical tool is also the line between unregulated and regulated, and you want to stay on the right side of it on purpose.
A trend tracker that helps you see whether your snoring is getting better or worse, and whether sleeping on your side or skipping the wine changes anything, is a general wellness product.
That lane is clear and you can market it confidently.
The moment the app starts answering is my problem serious or should I see a doctor as if it knows, or implies it can detect a condition like sleep apnea, it drifts toward a medical claim, and in the US that is the kind of thing the FDA looks at as software acting like a medical device. Apple review leans the same way on health claims.
The good news is you do not have to give up the useful part.
You can serve the should I see a doctor instinct without diagnosing, with a neutral line like if your snoring is loud or trending up it may be worth talking to a doctor, framed as general information rather than a verdict about that specific user.
So snoring trend tracker is not just the better marketing, it is also the safer position, and your fully on device, no upload setup already removes the other thing people would worry about.
Medical tool is the framing that pulls weight you do not want yet.
"The line between snoring tracker and medical tool is also the line between unregulated and regulated" — this is the most useful thing anyone has said to me about this decision.
It also makes future scope calls automatic. The moment I'm tempted to add something like "this pattern might indicate sleep apnea" — that's the moment I've crossed the line. Wellness side is clear, that's where SnoreScribe stays.
Really appreciate you naming this. It turns a recurring debate into a rule.
Glad it turned into a usable rule, that is exactly how it should feel.
One thing that will make the rule even more concrete: the line you are drawing has an actual document behind it.
The FDA's "General Wellness: Policy for Low Risk Devices" guidance is the one that says a product promoting general wellness (sleep quality, relaxation, snoring awareness) stays outside device regulation, as long as it does not claim to diagnose, treat, or mitigate a specific condition like sleep apnea.
Designing SnoreScribe to that guidance gives you a citable basis for every scope call, not just a gut feel.
The only nuance I would add: the line is not just about in-app features, it is about your words everywhere.
A claim like "may indicate apnea" in your App Store description or marketing copy crosses the same line as building the feature would, so keep the wellness framing consistent in the metadata too, not only in the product.
Didn't know that document existed — pulling it up now. Having something
citable is a lot more solid than "feels like it crosses a line."
The marketing copy point hadn't clicked. I was thinking about it as a
feature boundary, not a words boundary. Going to go through the App Store
description with this in mind before launch.
What stood out to me wasn't the snoring.
It was that the product seems to sit between several very different interpretations of the same problem.
The interesting question may not be which description is most accurate.
It may be which one people are actually hiring the product to help them decide.
That's a more useful question than the one I've been asking myself.
From what I can tell so far, there seem to be at least two distinct jobs people are hiring it for:
Those are different people at different stages. And I've been trying to write copy that speaks to both at once — which is probably exactly why the positioning feels like it's sitting between things rather than landing on one.
Interesting.
What's striking is that both of those interpretations can sound convincing at the same time.
I'd be curious to dig into that a bit more, but it's probably more than I'd try to unpack properly in a thread.
Happy to continue over email if useful.
Email makes sense for this. I'm at [email protected] — happy to
dig into which of the two you'd actually design the product around, not
just the copy.
Just sent it over.
I kept coming back to the difference between helping someone reach a conclusion and helping them monitor one.
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