
Hi IH ๐
I'm Roberto, a solo developer from Spain. I ship mobile apps and small indie games under La Terreta Games, and for a long time my morning routine looked like this:
Open Google Play Console โ check installs, crashes, ANRs
Open App Store Connect โ wait for it to load, check sessions and reviews
Open Steamworks โ check wishlists and sales
Open itch.io โ check views and purchases
Forget what I saw in step 1
Every store has its own dashboard, its own metrics, its own login and its own idea of what "a download" means. If you ship on more than one platform, you know the feeling.
So I built AppWatch โ one dashboard that pulls your metrics from Google Play, the App Store, Steam and itch.io, and warns you when something goes wrong.
Who it's for
Mobile developers with apps on Google Play and/or the App Store
Indie game developers shipping on Steam, itch.io or mobile
Anyone who ships the same product on several stores and wants to see it as one product
What it does
All your stores in one place
Installs, active devices, ratings, reviews, crash rate and ANR rate from Google Play. Sessions, impressions, downloads and crash rate from App Store Connect. Units sold, revenue, wishlists and concurrent players from Steam. Views, downloads, purchases and real pay-what-you-want earnings from itch.io. If your app lives on several stores, AppWatch groups it into a single card with a tab per store.
Alerts before your users complain
Set a threshold and get notified when your crash rate spikes, your rating drops or you hit a download milestone โ by email, Slack, Discord or native push notification on your phone.
ASO without a spreadsheet
Track where your app ranks for the keywords you care about on Google Play and the App Store, plus your daily position in your category's top chart. You can import the exact keywords you already configured in App Store Connect, or let AI suggest new ones from your store listing.
AI for your reviews
Get a sentiment score for your recent reviews, with the most repeated complaints and praises pulled out for you. For any single review, get three reply drafts (empathetic, concise, detailed), written in the reviewer's language.
For game devs specifically
Steam refund rate over time, review score trend, achievement unlock rates, and a full itch.io funnel (views โ downloads โ purchases) with top buyer countries and traffic sources.
Keep an eye on the competition
Add any public app from Google Play, the App Store, Steam or itch.io and track its ratings and downloads next to yours โ no API keys needed.
The small things
A weekly digest email every Monday, CSV export of your full history, a password-protected link to share your dashboard with a publisher or investor, and automatic detection of apps that were unpublished or suspended by the store (so they stop cluttering your view).
Now on your phone too
AppWatch has native apps, so you can check your numbers and get push alerts without opening a laptop:
๐ฑ iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/appwatch/id6781048838
๐ค Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.laterretagames.appwatch
Try it free
There's a free plan that tracks up to 3 apps, so you can connect your stores and see if it's useful before paying anything. If you need more apps or the advanced features (AI, keyword tracking, competitor tracking), there are Indie and Pro plans.
๐ appwatch.dev
What I'd love from you
I'm building this in public and I read every message. If you ship on more than one store:
Which metric do you check first every morning?
Which store console annoys you the most?
What would make you pay for a tool like this?
Drop a comment โ I'll answer all of them. Thanks for reading ๐
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Among free users, what behavior most clearly predicts willingness to payโchecking the unified dashboard, relying on alerts, or using the deeper ASO/review features?
Great question, and honestly the most useful one in this thread.
Short answer: it's still too early for me to give you real data. Paying users are still a handful, so any "predictor" I claimed today would just be noise.
What I'm betting on, and now instrumenting to verify:
Alerts over the dashboard. The unified dashboard is what gets people to sign up, but you only look at a dashboard when you remember to. An alert that fires when your crash rate spikes is value you feel without doing anything. My hypothesis is that someone who configures a threshold and then receives a real alert is much more likely to stay and pay.
The number of stores connected. Someone with a single app on a single store doesn't really need me โ the store console is enough. The pain starts at 2+ stores (e.g. Play + App Store, or Steam + itch.io). I suspect that's the strongest signal of all, even more than any single feature.
ASO and AI review features look like the reason to upgrade, not the reason to stay. They're what tips someone from free to paid once they already trust the numbers.
I'll share real numbers in a follow-up post once I have enough users to say something honest.
Curious, have you seen a similar pattern in your own product? Is "number of integrations connected" a good predictor for you too?
That 2+ integrations point is a useful one. Could be interesting to compare notes on it by email sometime, if youโre open to it.
Happy to compare notes, and one correction first: I wrote "a handful" of paying users, but the honest number is zero. I only launched recently and everyone is on the free plan so far. So the 2+ integrations point is a hypothesis I'm testing, not something I've measured.
That's exactly why I'd like to compare notes. I'm at info@appwatch.dev.
Thanks! Iโve just sent it over.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts whenever you have a chance.
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Nice work shipping it. What has been the biggest challenge since launch?
Great breakdown. What feedback have you had from early users?
Interesting take. Would you still recommend this approach to someone starting today?
Makes sense. Are you planning to charge for it, or keep it free for now?
Good point. Did you test that with users before committing to it?
Appreciate the honesty here, most people only share the wins.
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Really relatable. How much time do you put into this each week?
Appreciate the honesty here, most people only share the wins.
Interesting. How are you measuring whether it is working?
Nice progress. What is the next thing you are focusing on?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
Interesting take. Would you still recommend this approach to someone starting today?
Nice progress. What is the next thing you are focusing on?
Interesting take. Would you still recommend this approach to someone starting today?
What made you pick this stack over the alternatives?
Really solid approach โ I'm juggling something similar myself (building Xstream4K on the side), what's been the hardest part for you so far?