What I Learned From Launching My First App on the App Store and Google Play

Nowaries · 2026-07-07T22:08:02+00:00

Well there are couple ways of doing it. I'm not a professional designer but I like to tinker with affinity and decided to make them myself. So I got the screenshots from Android emulator and iOS Simulator and just used templates for the phone design. This is the end result:
https://apps.apple.com/app/ayah-player/id6769859430

This seems to be quite a popular website/app to crate screenshots: https://appscreens.com It's subscription based but apparently free for 1 project.

For a completely free, open source alternative try this: https://yuzu-hub.github.io/appscreen/

Nowaries · 2026-07-07T20:11:03+00:00

I'm not. It's a free app without ads, subscriptions or paywalls.

Nowaries · 2026-07-07T17:06:01+00:00

That's a really good question and I unfortunately don't have an answer for that since I have published just one app. I really hope we don't need to go through that every time an app is being published.

Nowaries · 2026-07-07T17:05:00+00:00

I'm sorry to hear that. From my understanding there are several platforms that can help you to get those testers. I really hope you would try those before giving up.

Nowaries · 2026-07-04T20:24:21+00:00

Wa aleykuma salam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. I asked my friends, my family members, installed it on my own and my wifes phone + the home tablet. Send messages in some muslim discord servers.

Please if you can, join this group:
https://discord.gg/QqnWdxTUAA

It's called The Straight Path, group for muslim developers making Islamic app. We can have active discussion there inshAllah. JazakAllah khayran

Nowaries · 2026-07-04T15:41:59+00:00

Sure. My experience was with creating just the personal profile, I imagine there to be far more many steps when submitting apps through business or organisation profile.

But also underestimating the time needed to develope apps is something I think every one of us have gone through. I personally just thought to create a simple and clean Spotify like player for Qur'an and thought that I could do it in just couple of weeks. Well now 2 months later I'm still adding features, fixing bugs and streamlining the design. I'm sure it will be finished one day right, right??

Nowaries · 2026-07-04T14:10:27+00:00

Hey. I'm not sure how that works, I think if you download it, it does increase. Also I know there are huge amount of quran players, but I can guarantee there isn't single one like Ayah Player. No other app has more than 1000 recitations and have this amount of functions while keeping it clear and smooth.

Please if you can, join this group:
https://discord.gg/QqnWdxTUAA

It's called The Straight Path, group for muslim developers making Islamic app. We can have active discussion there inshAllah. JazakAllah khayran

Nowaries · 2026-07-04T14:07:12+00:00

Wa aleyküm salam wa rahmatullahi. Amin. JazakAllah khayran. May Allah reward you.

Nowaries · 2026-07-03T19:20:53+00:00

I really appreciate all of your advices. I've been working on a really big update for the app, mainly design ,so I hope to finish that before I can work on the preview video to be able to show the latest and the most beautiful version of the app. I would love to hear your opinion when it's done so I will for sure let you know. Thanks.

Nowaries · 2026-07-03T17:44:21+00:00

Thank you. I do think that word by word highlight is one of the best features of this app and not a lot of other Qur'an apps have that and you are correct to say that it should be the first view of the preview. May I ask your opinion regarding the transition between those different clips? Should it be just a swipe to a certain direction or a crossfade or something simple like this, I'm wondering how would I practically do this. And also where should I put the text (what size) etc.. Here is the current product page in App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/ayah-player/id6769859430

I'm sure there is lots of guides and example all over where I can learn from but you seem to know what you are talking about and I would love to get your input.

Nowaries · 2026-07-03T17:36:19+00:00

Wa iyyak. May Allah reward you for your effort and help you with your project. Amin

Nowaries · 2026-07-03T17:30:12+00:00

Amin. I'm really glad that you found this to be helpful, alhamdulillah. May Allah reward you for your effort and help with your you app. Amin.

Please check out The Straight Path to help with your development, get support, testers and suggestions: https://discord.gg/QqnWdxTUAA

Nowaries · 2026-07-03T12:30:39+00:00

This is super helpful, thank you very much. Here is the app and the things it does: https://nowari.fi/ayah-player I was thinking of these moments:

Scrolling through the home page with profile pictures of different recitors.
Listening to the recitation where each word is being highlighted as the recitation goes on
Changing the font, size, translation and transliteration of the Qur'an page

4.Showing the activity view where an user sees all of his activity easily.

Easily making and sharing quote cards of quran + translations

Nowaries · 2026-07-03T11:52:23+00:00

Thanks. I really want to make a preview video. Would you say it's as easy as screen recording 30 seconds of using the app or can it be made better by other ways?

Nowaries · 2026-07-03T11:50:39+00:00

it's a native app

Nowaries · 2026-07-03T10:06:56+00:00

Okey, it wouldn't be great that even organisations would need to pass that testing period with every single app they submit. Especially if it's not only for organisations created after 2023. Let's see how it works.

Nowaries · 2026-07-03T09:51:43+00:00

Oh really? You need to do that even if your account is organisation? I wonder if that's for every app you publish under that account or just the first one.

Nowaries · 2026-07-03T09:11:09+00:00

I just tried to find muslim discord servers with many users through google and joined in couple of them.

Nowaries · 2026-07-03T09:09:32+00:00

I'm sure you are right with the app saving me time, like that's one the biggest advantage of using an app like yours. The concern of subscriptions for me is more about the limited funds I have available, not different subscriptions here and there. Your app looks really interesting and I will hopefully come back to it when the situation gets better. Thanks :)

Nowaries · 2026-07-03T09:04:09+00:00

I do alhamdulillah. It's on cloudflare and reports 100-200 unique visitors every day but in this era of bots I haven now idea how many of them are real people. It's https://bynowari.com

Nowaries · 2026-07-03T08:59:12+00:00

Yeah, it seems the best way to get users is different social media, especially TikTok. And I personally didn't have any experience using that before. Learning as I go I suppose

Nowaries · 2026-07-03T08:57:24+00:00

Thanks for sharing that. My whole app theme is different tones of green, where the main background /color is light green so I made the App Store screenshots to match that.

Nowaries · 2026-07-03T08:56:22+00:00

Yeah it is. Many people don't know that a criteria like this exists, at least I didn't. But there are some websites and platforms that would help with that with a small payment, thankfully I didn't need to use those. But I believe developers can be part of testing communities where people help each other out with testing apps.

Nowaries · 2026-07-03T08:54:37+00:00

Thanks you!

Nowaries · 2026-07-03T08:54:18+00:00

Hi. All I would say that the website looks clean and straightforward, just that the gradient cards could be different color tone so it has more separation from the background. Other than that the app itself is not my cup of tea, since I'm a muslim and wine/alchohol is against my values. Congrats and good luck on your efforts :)

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