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Grokkris
Grokkris

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I sent my Android app to ~20 AI directories in a week. Almost none of it moved downloads.

#showdev #android #marketing #opensource

I'm a student and I build Kryzz AI on the side. It's a free, MIT-licensed Android app: you give an agent a task, it shows a checklist plan first, searches and reads pages, then hands you an actual DOCX, XLSX or PDF. Models go through your own OpenRouter key, everything else stays on the phone.

Last week I gave myself a goal: go from 141 to 200 total APK downloads on GitHub in about ten days. I'm at 166 right now, so not there yet, but the split was useful.

What I tried

  • Around 20 small "submit your AI tool" directories. Roughly one extra download a day across all of them. Most are still "in review", and a few wanted a backlink badge or a paid fast lane, which I skipped.
  • Show HN. 2 points, no comments.
  • Dev.to posts. Close to zero reactions so far (hi, if you're reading this one).
  • One XDA Forums thread. The first place where people asked real questions: how the cost cap works, how good the generated files are, whether voice mode handles interruptions. The day I answered them, downloads went from 155 to 166. Can't prove it was only that, but it's the biggest jump of the week.

What I think it means

Listings don't bring people, conversations do. Places where Android users already hang out beat places built for launching. A thread where someone can ask "does it actually do X" and get a straight answer seems worth more than twenty listings nobody browses.

Two things I'm still unsure about

  1. The APK is a debug build for now. Would that stop you installing from GitHub, or for a free app do you not care?
  2. Would you put a big "Download APK" link at the very top of the README, or does that look desperate?

Repo and APK if you want to poke at it: https://github.com/kriddss3/kryzz-ai/releases/tag/v1.1.2

Top comments (1)

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ahmedznouda profile image
Ahmed ZNOUDA •

On your first question, I'd fix the debug build before anything else, and not mainly for trust:

  • A debug APK is debuggable, so anyone with the phone and ADB can use run-as to read the app's private storage. For an app that keeps the user's OpenRouter key on the device, that can mean the key, unless it's wrapped with the Android Keystore.
  • It's signed with your debug keystore. If you switch to a release key later, existing users can't update over the top: they have to uninstall first and lose their local data. A release build signed with a key you back up somewhere safe fixes both, and the GitHub Action for it is short.

On the README: a download link near the top is normal for an app shipped as an APK, I wouldn't call it desperate. I'd put one line on what the app does and a screenshot right above it and point the link to the latest release so it never goes stale.

Your XDA result matches what we saw when we looked at AI directories for our own app: most of the well-known ones now come with a paid listing or fast lane. A thread where people can ask, "Does it actually do X" is a different thing.