I opened App Store Connect around 11 PM that night, intending to rewrite the app's description. The reason was simple: I'd recently received a review comment saying "I couldn't really tell what this app does." I thought, if that's the case, I should clean up the description. Thirty minutes should be enough. That's what I thought.
But the moment I started reading the current description, my hands froze. The words written there were certainly ones I had written myself. Yet somehow, it read like someone else had written it. A list of features, overly polite phrasing, sentences that read like declarations of intent like "we will realize ○○." Reading it made me feel somehow suffocated.
This essay is not about copywriting. It's about how, when I tried to rewrite the description, I suddenly realized who I had become. The description text became a mirror that reflected how I was gradually changing as a creator—I want to write about that night.
What I Was Afraid of Back Then
When I first released an app, I may have spent more energy on the description than on writing the code. I rewrote it many times, showed it to friends, was told "you should explain the features more," and revised it again. What resulted was a description that was basically just a feature list turned into prose.
"You can do ○○. It also supports △△. Plus, it comes with □□ features."
Reading it now makes me laugh, but back then I was dead serious. I was afraid. Afraid of being told "this isn't what I expected" after people tried it. So I tried to write everything. I listed all the things it could do, piling up excuses like "surely you can't complain now."
I Thought That If I Described the Features, the App Would Be Understood
Back then, Lily thought an app = a collection of features. So I thought the description just needed to accurately list the features without omission or excess. Things like design, atmosphere, or how it felt to use it—somewhere in my mind, I thought "that doesn't need to come across; as long as people download it, that's fine."
For a while after release, I thought that was fine. When download numbers were low, I told myself it was a marketing problem, not the description's fault.
A few months passed, and the app gradually changed. Listening to the voices of people using it, I fixed screens, removed features, changed words. Compared to the beginning, it's almost like a different app now.
That's when the review came in: "I couldn't tell what this app does." So I opened the description—ah, yeah, this really is unclear. The features are listed, but there's nothing about who it's for, what happens when you use it, nothing.
When I Tried to Delete Things, Nothing Remained
First, I tried to remove unnecessary sentences. The cluttered parts like "Plus, it comes with □□ features." When I deleted them, what remained was just a skeleton, and even that felt thin. I started to think, "Maybe there was never a core idea I wanted to convey in the first place."
Next, I asked myself: "If I had to describe this app in one sentence, what would I say?" I couldn't answer. The feature descriptions came out smoothly. But when asked "so what?" I got stuck. That gap felt really uncomfortable.
It Had Been a Long Time Since I Asked "Why I Made It"
While stuck, I dug up old notes. Notes from when I first started making this app. "○○ is annoying, so I'm making it for myself." "I want to use it in situations like this." Just personal complaints, really.
Reading that, I almost cried. Back then, I was making it because I wanted to solve something that was bothering me, not because I was thinking about whether it would resonate with someone. That honesty had completely disappeared from the current description.
When I started rewriting, the first sentence took two hours. I wasn't trying to come up with a clever catchphrase—I was thinking about "what words are honest," and that's what happened.
I tried thinking, "If I were to explain this app to someone verbally, what would I say?" and the words came out smoothly. Writing it as if I were talking to a friend, without pretense, and suddenly a paragraph came together.
Both the Release Version and Today's Me Were Right
I realized something. I think the feature-list description from release time was right for who I was back then. I was barely managing to "put it out there" before "communicating with others," and there was meaning in putting it out at all.
The description I can write now exists on top of months of failures, learning, and the real sense that "there are people using this." I'm writing about the same app, but the perspective is completely different. That's not because one was wrong and the other right—it's because I was updated.
When You Trim Words, Their Weight Changes
The rewritten description didn't get longer. It actually got shorter. The remaining words felt heavier for the words I'd deleted.
"With this app, you can start your day with a ○○ kind of feeling."
That's the kind of opening sentence the final description ended up with. I moved the feature talk to the second half and started with feelings instead. The Lily from release time could never have written that sentence.
The App Store description is written for users. That's true. But looking back, it's also a record of "how I see this app right now."
The description at release, the description three months later, the description now. When you line them up, my own changes look bigger than the app's changes. My attachment to features decreased, my imagination about the people using it increased. "I have to communicate" became "I want to communicate."
I Was Being Updated More Than the App Was Being Updated
I was properly updating the app's version. But the description—I barely touched it after release. There was my own negligence there, but more than that, I had been stuck in the belief that "once you write the description at the beginning, you don't need to change it again."
Apps change like living things. The people using them change, I change, the app changes. Each time, it's okay to update the description, and maybe it's natural that it gets updated. I realized that regularly reviewing your own words isn't just something to do alongside updates—it has meaning in itself.
When you're doing solo development, you get so focused on making things that you rarely get the chance to put "what you made" into words. You write code, you add features, but you rarely take time to ask yourself "why does this exist?"
Rewriting the description became a forced inventory check for that. It was frustrating not being able to write it well, but understanding why I couldn't write it was a much bigger gain.
You Don't Need to Overthink It
I now think you don't need to write a perfect description from the start. The awkward words from release time, in hindsight, were a necessary stage. What matters is having the habit of reviewing regularly. Even once every six months, try asking yourself "what would I write now?" and see what happens.
What Lily did for this inventory was open a notebook and the app screen, and try explaining the current app out loud as if to someone seeing it for the first time. When I wrote that down, the first sentence came. There was nothing difficult about it, but it was meaningful to take proper time doing it.
When I saved the rewritten description and closed App Store Connect, I felt strangely refreshed. The app's numbers didn't change, reviews didn't increase. It just felt like "I finally have words I can honestly say about this app right now."
When you're doing solo development, there are nights when you look at numbers and download counts and feel discouraged. Lily has spent many nights like that. But the night I rewrote the description was different. It was a different kind of sense of accomplishment. I think the sense of growth—whether you've actually grown—is taught more accurately by "I can now write something I couldn't write before" than by external evaluation.
Try reading the description of what you're making right now. If it hasn't changed a single character since release, you've definitely changed over these months. I think it's worth putting that change into words. Don't overthink it. Just start with one sentence: "If I were to tell a friend about this right now?" That's all you need.
Lily（@bokuwalily）― Solo developer. Making iOS apps and web services in tandem with AI.
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Lily（@bokuwalily）― Solo developer / AI adoption and business automation consultant. Making iOS apps and web services in tandem with AI while consulting on AI adoption and automation for companies.
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