#app clone

At first I thought:

maybe they just don't need it anymore.

But then I started thinking...

Maybe they forgot how to find their hidden apps again.

It's kind of funny.A privacy app has a strange challenge.It needs to disappear from everyone's view.But users still need to remember it's there.

I spend almost as much time removing features as adding them.

Sometimes an idea looks great on paper.

Then I build it.

Use it for a few days.

And quietly delete it.

Not because it was broken.

Because it made the app feel heavier.

I'm starting to think a good app isn't the one with the most features.It's the one that gets out of your way.

Most of my users come from places like Indonesia and Türkiye.The strange thing is that they see the store page in their own language, download the app, and then open it to find everything still in English.

So I finally decided to add Indonesian and Turkish inside the app and see what happens.

Not expecting miracles.

Just curious whether people stay a little longer when the app speaks their language from start to finish.

App growth is weird.

Sometimes you spend weeks building a new feature.

Sometimes a few translated buttons might matter more.

My app downloads in Arabic-speaking regions suddenly grew by 40%+.

Egypt, Iraq, Algeria, Saudi Arabia…

Way more people than I expected started using Hide All.

What surprised me most:

the calculator disguise feature seems especially popular there.

Maybe privacy means different things in different places.

Still kind of surreal that a small side project is reaching people around the world now.

If you want to try it and give feedback:

Honestly, I expected maybe a small bump.Then Brazil suddenly grew by 30%.Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Iraq all started climbing too.

What surprised me most wasn’t the numbers though — it was realizing how different it feels when someone opens a store page and sees their own language.

It feels less distant.

Less “foreign app from somewhere else.”

Still funny to me that tiny changes like screenshots and translated sentences can quietly change the trajectory of an app.

Meanwhile I’m sitting here，staring at spreadsheets and wondering why Mexico dropped 7%.

Building apps is weird.

Most of the traffic came from people searching "how to hide apps from parents";Not "app locker" ,Not "privacy protection",Just... "hide apps from parents".

Makes sense I guess. Teenagers with TikTok and Instagram when mom said no social media. Or that one game you don't want your partner to know you still play.

Someone even searched "hide dating apps from wife"

Anyway, updated the blog intro. Less "digital privacy matters," more "we've all been there."

The ASO lesson: people search for their specific problem, not the fancy solution name.

The past two weeks have been a reality check.

100+ daily downloads. For a brand-new app with zero marketing budget and zero ASO experience, that number caught me off guard. But here's what really threw me off—opening the dashboard and seeing India and Bangladesh dominating the charts.

Awkward.

My app is English-only. Most of these users? English probably isn't their first language. What keywords are they typing into Google Play to find me? Do they even understand "Hide Apps" or "Calculator Disguise"? Can they figure out how to set a password and drag apps into hiding without getting lost?

I don't know. But I'm guessing a lot of them are dropping off somewhere in the flow.



So I'm going local.

Starting with Hindi and Bengali—the two obvious priorities.

But this isn't just about translating button labels. It's the Play Store description, the screenshot text, even the wording on the app icon itself. Every touchpoint needs to feel native, not like some Google Translate afterthought.

I'll keep posting updates here. If you're building something for global markets too—hit me up. Localization is way more complicated than I expected.

Try it: