Looking for advice on growing a free Connect IQ app

9236848 12 days ago

I'm an independent developer from Thailand and recently released my first Connect IQ app, Burnout Detector.

The app is completely free and combines Garmin wellness data into a simple daily score with trends, personal baseline comparison, and insights. The first users have started leaving positive feedback, but I'm still trying to understand how people usually discover new Connect IQ apps.

I'd really appreciate advice from experienced Connect IQ developers.

Some questions:

1. Where do most of your users come from? (Connect IQ Store, Reddit, Garmin Forums, Facebook, YouTube, etc.)
2. Have screenshots or app descriptions made a noticeable difference to downloads?
3. Is it worth creating a website for a Connect IQ app, or is the Store page usually enough?
4. How long did it take before your app started getting consistent downloads?
5. Are there any common mistakes new Connect IQ developers should avoid?

I'm not trying to promote the app here—I genuinely want to learn from developers who have already been through this process.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

jim_m_58 12 days ago

With only 1 app, it's hard to get noticed when there are thousands of apps, but with multiple, it gets a bit easier. Let's say you do a data field or watch face that gets noticed Users find that one, like it, and then look at your other apps. Right now I got about 50 apps in the store. Some were duds - with few downloads, while others are 10k+, 50k+, 100k+ and one that's 500k+

if you click on my forum icon, you'll see a link to all my apps in the store.

I think a key is to make sure your apps are stable and well tested. And maybe unique in some way.

Posting in the showcase thread also seems to help.