Even great indie apps leave ASO on the table
I pointed ASOon at 10 iOS apps I genuinely admire — Forest, Streaks, Bear, Overcast, Halide, Timery, Drafts, PCalc, Copilot, and Gentler Streak — and pulled their real App Store data: live keyword ranks (true search order, not an estimate), their actual title and subtitle, and the themes in their last ~200 reviews.
The point isn't to dunk on great apps — it's the opposite. If apps this good still leave obvious ASO on the table, the rest of us definitely do. And almost every gap is fixable in a metadata update, no new features required.
Your subtitle is keyword real estate, not a tagline
The App Store ranks you for the words in your title and subtitle (plus a hidden 100-character keyword field). Over and over, these apps spent the subtitle on a brand line instead of the words people search:
- • Drafts — subtitle "Where text starts." Beautiful. Also: nowhere in the top results for "quick notes," #11 for "text editor," and those words aren't in its listing.
- • Bear — owns #1 for "markdown notes" (smart — that's its person) but #37 for "notes app," which never appears in its metadata.
- • Streaks — an Apple Design Award winner ranking #15 for "habit tracker." More below.
Some of these are the right call (Bear owning "markdown notes" instead of fighting Apple Notes for "notes app"). The problem is when a brand line costs you a term you could actually win — and nobody's watching the ranks to know the difference.
Teardown 1 — PCalc: the best calculator that doesn't rank for "calculator"
PCalc is a legend — a lovingly-built indie calculator that's been on iOS since day one. Its subtitle is, confidently, "The Best Calculator." What ASOon measured:
| Keyword | Live rank | In its title/subtitle? |
|---|---|---|
| calculator | not in top results | yes (subtitle) |
| scientific calculator | #43 | no |
| unit converter | not in top results | no |
Two lessons in one table. First, "calculator" is an unwinnable head term — Apple's own Calculator plus a wall of free apps own it, and even with the word in the subtitle, PCalc is nowhere. Second, the winnable terms describe features PCalc actually ships — and doesn't claim. It's a great scientific calculator (ranking #43 for a term it doesn't even use) and ships a full unit converter that appears nowhere in its listing.
The move isn't "add more keywords." It's stop paying for the head term you can't win, and claim the specific ones you can — a subtitle like "Scientific Calculator & Unit Converter." Same app, honest copy, materially more visible for searches PCalc can actually rank on.
Teardown 2 — Streaks: an Apple Design Award, ranking #15 for its own category
Streaks is one of the most-loved habit apps on iOS (it won an Apple Design Award). Its subtitle: "The habit-forming to-do list." What ASOon measured:
| Keyword | Live rank | #1 result |
|---|---|---|
| habit tracker | #15 | Habit Tracker |
| daily habits | #33 | Habit Tracker |
| routine tracker | not in top results | Habit Tracker |
Look at the last column: for all three searches, the top result is an app literally named "Habit Tracker." The better, award-winning app is on page two — because the phrase "habit tracker" is in neither its title ("Streaks") nor its subtitle. "Habit-forming" is close; the App Store doesn't match close, it matches the exact words shoppers type.
Classic indie trap: a brandable name and a poetic subtitle, with the actual category keyword left unclaimed. The fix is boring and effective — put the real term in the subtitle: "Habit & Routine Tracker · daily streaks." Keep the brand name up top, and finally rank for the thing people search.
Visibility vs. conversion — the other half
Ranks tell you if people can find you; reviews tell you if they stay. A couple of apps showed their signal in the review themes, not the ranks: Gentler Streak ranks respectably (#14–23) in a brutal fitness category, but its top review themes are "Apple Watch" (9) and "Apple Health" (6) — users telling you which integration to deepen. Halide's most common review word is "free trial" (13) — a pricing signal, not a keyword one.
If your issue is visibility, you fix metadata. If it's conversion, you fix screenshots, onboarding, or the feature reviews keep asking for. Guessing which — without the data — is how weeks disappear.
The takeaway
Ten great apps, and every one had at least one fixable ASO gap — usually a subtitle spending its keyword budget on a tagline, or an unwinnable head term crowding out the long-tail they could own. None needed a new feature. They needed someone to look at the ranks and reviews and say which 2–3 changes are worth making.
That's the whole idea behind ASOon: point it at your app, and instead of 40 charts you get the 2–3 highest-leverage moves this week — each with the rank, competitor, or review theme behind it, labeled honestly as measured vs. estimate.
Try it free — your first app, no cardRanks and review themes above were measured live from Apple's public App Store data on 9 July 2026 and drift over time — which is exactly why you track them.
