Apple’s 2025 App of The Year

At the start of each year, pre-map the year's product work, holidays and Apple campaigns into a tagged calendar (nomination / in-app event / push). Keep at least 1-2 in-app events live every month; they need no new content: tie them to seasons and moments (Valentine's Day 'plan some love time', Ramadan focus timer, back to school, International Women's Day because of women founders). Submit a featuring nomination every time you adopt an Apple technology (AlarmKit, HealthKit, widgets, Live Activities, Liquid Glass) and before seasonal moments, explaining why you fit. Respect long lead times: for Apple's Global Accessibility Awareness Day in May, submit mid-March to early April. Keep going even when most submissions get no reply; eventually the editorial team gets in touch and requests promotional artwork, which builds the relationship.

Every year the team watches WWDC together and asks which new Apple technologies fit user needs. Use June-September to build them (for iOS 26: Liquid Glass, which matched Tiimo's plan to simplify its UI). When the OS ships, fire the in-app event and nomination toolbox ('we're planning to have this ready for iOS 26') and hope for a September feature. Treat Apple as a partner that wants to promote developers using its tech, not just a distribution channel.

For a daily planner, a user who doesn't return on day 1 is a failure. Tiimo found that the number of tasks a user completes on day 0 correlates with returning on day 1, and D1 return predicts how long users stay. Every roadmap and feature decision must tie back to raising day-0 task completion; when choosing between features, pick the one most likely to move it (based on user research or conviction). Funnel metrics are still watched daily, but this metric disciplines product choices.

Onboarding includes a step where users pick tasks they already do every day (having breakfast, brushing teeth, studying). Because they will do these tomorrow anyway, they are likely to tick them off on day 1, which raises tasks created and completed.

A push-notification onboarding flow references the tasks the user chose in onboarding, e.g. 'you said you would study today, don't forget to do your studies'.

Made task completion more visible and 'pop' (completion animations, confetti) and recently added streaks, so users see how much they have done instead of ticking and forgetting.

In 2024 Tiimo added Tiimo Learn, an extra subscription tier with body doubling sessions, courses with experts and a content library, based on user research, and raised the price about 3x with the new plan.

The legacy Android app lagged the iOS-first product and carried technical debt, draining team resources. Tiimo took it away, focused on iOS, and later rebuilt Android from scratch (relaunched May 2026).

The Routine feature was loved by a very small share of super-users but was technically hard to maintain and incompatible with how the app was being rebuilt. After going back and forth, Tiimo shut it down and tried to build something as close as possible to replace it.

Model in the budget the blended CAC above which the company burns money (about $10-10.50 for Tiimo). Review blended CAC weekly/monthly; while it stays under the ceiling, keep growing; when the trend rises, change something. Use it to decide which activities to fund, cutting brand-type spend (e.g. influencer marketing) that doesn't drive revenue. App of the Year inbound traffic doesn't change the finite budget.

During the post-funding experimentation phase Tiimo spent a lot on influencer marketing and similar branding activities.

Two core personas: the 'juggling multitasker' (neurotypical, busy with family/work/social life) and the neurodivergent user struggling with executive function (time blindness, task initiation, prioritization). Meta is the volume driver and takes the majority of spend: the broadest pool, with sub-variants (parent, office worker) per ad set. Apple Search Ads (~30% of spend) is the efficiency driver for high-intent keywords like 'ADHD planner' and 'ADHD app', reaching the neurodivergent persona, who converts 3x better. ADHD messaging is also tested on Meta.

Moved from a US-only campaign plus one pooled tier-1 campaign (Canada, UK, Australia...) to separate campaigns per market for cost control. Optimize for trial starts, then judge each campaign by blended CAC at month end. Inside a campaign: broad targeting (all genders, age range), with ad sets split by creative type/persona angle (one testing ad set, evergreen ad sets). Run with an agency for about a year. Also starting to test web-to-app.

Their long-running winner was a 'Do laundry' ad. To learn why it worked, they made two variants: one keeping the laundry message with a new look, one keeping the same sleek, Apple-like layout with a different message. The layout variant won, so the next ads reuse the look. In-house designers' clean, 'Apple-ish' designs beat trend formats like Notes-app style ads.

Use the App of the Year 2025 badge as social proof everywhere (ads, store screenshots, profile banners) for as long as possible. Steve notes Calm still shows its 2017 App of the Year badge as its first screenshot.

Original flow: onboarding -> sign-up -> hard paywall; 60% dropped at sign-up so only 40% saw the paywall. Swapped to onboarding -> hard paywall -> sign-up only for those who paid. Steve's rule: maximize paywall views since they correlate with revenue; always paywall before sign-up.

A/B tested the sign-in button copy 'Sign up with [Apple/Google]' vs 'Continue with [Apple/Google]'.

For immersive/storytelling/sound apps (sleep, meditation), add the app's sounds to onboarding so users get a taste of the experience before the paywall. Steve cites BetterSleep as doing this.