Jeff Johnson:

Despite my history of uncovering App Store frauds, I rarely go looking for these things intentionally! They’re just so pervasive and obvious, they jump out at me. In this case, I was looking at the list of top paid Safari extensions in the Mac App Store, because two of my own extensions are currently on the list, when I noticed the TabControl Extension.

[…]

The Mac App Store “screenshot” for the app is not actually a screenshot at all. If you look closely, that’s not the real Safari: the toolbar elements are wrong. I suspect that the image was AI-generated.

[…]

Another thing you should note in the fake screenshot is the “4.9 out of 5” stars, giving the impression that this is the App Store user rating of the app.

[…]

These purported reviews, all but one of which is 5 stars, are all in English. Yet none of them is in the US App Store. […] If you’ve ever looked through App Store user reviews, it’s unusual to find this naming format. […] the dates on the reviews, such as “Mar 12,” predate the release of TabControl Extension in the App Store!

John Gruber:

God only knows what this obvious AI slop scam is doing with the data from users’ Safari tabs. It’s currently the 12th or 13th most popular Safari extension in the App Store.

Jeff Johnson:

Coincidentally, on the same day well-known developer Marco Arment complained on social media that his new, unreleased Mac App Store app had been waiting 12 days for review by Apple.

Arment ended up waiting on hold—listening to an odd choice of music—to talk to App Review, which I didn’t realize was an option. His Unforgetful app is now approved.

Johnson continued browsing Safari extensions in the store:

The apps’s privacy policy is again on Google Drive, but the developer website link goes to https://aee5e5015.app-ads-txt.com, a suspicious URL. This website is barren and simply redirects back to the App Store[…] Did App Store review ever bother to click the developer website link?

[…]

In addition to the 41 apps, each of which required at least one submission to App Store review, I count across those 41 apps at least 327 updates, almost all of which have the same generic description for what’s new in the update: "Bug fixes and performance improvements." So that’s at least 368 submissions to App Store review, most within the past 12 months, from a single developer. In other words, the developer is averaging almost one submission per day. We can count only approved submissions; we have no idea how many submissions by the developer were privately rejected by App Store review.

I get the impression that Apple is asleep at the wheel. Is anyone at Apple counting submissions per developer? How many is too many? How many resources is one developer allowed to consume?

[…]

You may view it as a noble, democratic ideal to treat every app developer the same, but in reality this is the path to the crApp Store, full of scams and slop.

John Voorhees:

There’s no doubt that there is spam on the App Store, but the way to remove it is to target the spammers, not new developers, students, and hobbyists looking to build their ideas. I know that being an indie developer isn’t an easy way to make a living, but erecting barriers to submitting apps is the surest way to starve Apple platforms of fresh, innovative ideas.

John Voorhees:

I’d like to see App Store spam cleaned up as much as anyone, but the way to do it isn’t preferring well-known developers and those who can afford to pay more for special treatment.

Marc Palmer:

I don’t agree with paid tiers either. However it feels like there should be a natural brake applied to new developers and new apps. It’s no big deal if your first app takes a week or two to review (often did 10y ago), and as it matures & receives meaningful updates in the store, turnaround increases as trust and “value” (active users?) builds up. Like “tarpitting” new accounts. I think limiting the # of new apps you can add per month to say 1 or 2 would also help…

Jeff Johnson:

I was a new App Store developer myself ten years ago. My previous article didn’t propose any new barriers for those groups. To be clear, I did imply that no developer, whether new or not, should have more than 40 apps and average a new App Store submission every day of the year. I’m not aware of any prominent developer who has that many. Apparently, checking just now, Microsoft by my count has 38 App Store apps between iOS and Mac, which is a lot but still less than the 41 apps of the developer I discussed in my previous article who is definitely not one of the largest software developers in the world along with Microsoft. I do think it’s reasonable for Microsoft to pay a significantly higher developer fee to have those 38 apps reviewed than a smaller developer pays to have one app reviewed by Apple.

[…]

My contention is that Apple is actually wasting its own resources treating every developer like a potential spammer or scammer, even the developers who are known to be trustworthy, and this wasting of resources makes it harder on everyone, including new developers, students, and hobbyists. App review is grossly inefficient, and it’s clearly failing to scale to the increase in App Store submissions. What I propose is not raising the gates but rather lowering the gates for developers who have already proven trustworthy, so that Apple can focus its review efforts where they’re most needed.

I’m not sure that paying more would help anything. If scams are profitable, surely it would be worth them paying more, and then we’re back to square one. And I don’t want to create another situation like App Store Search Ads where providing poor service makes the revenue numbers go up. But I like the general idea of considering the account’s history, e.g. the way the Discourse forum gradually increases trust over time. It should count for something if you have a long history of following the rules and submitting updates to a small number of apps on a reasonable schedule vs. frequent spamming of submissions that don’t even have real release notes. It would not be fair for Microsoft to be able to cut in line, but giving spammers equal access to the review queue means they’ll use more than their share of Apple’s resources. That also seems unfair. The current system encourages frequent submissions, which also increases the overall load on the reviewers. I think the incentives need to be changed somehow. Maybe each account should get a certain number of “fast” submissions per month or year, after which you can still submit but it goes into a lower priority queue.

William Gallagher:

Even among more legitimate-seeming apps, though, Apple is ignoring clear problems. In AppleInsider research, for instance, we found that many price tiers listed for the “Simply Piano” app bore no relation to what the developer actually charges.

[…]

You shouldn’t have to be the one to investigate apps you want to try. That is the future of third-party App Stores, and that is a future to be fought.

But that future is here with the first-party App Store we already have. And this inability to trust an App Store is here, right now, because Apple will not do what it keeps saying it is doing and what it is charging developers to do.

Previously:

• Dark Hours Rejected From the App Store
• Chrome Browser Default at the Top of the Mac App Store
• Hidden Gambling Apps in Brazilian App Store
• San Francisco Demands Removal of Nudify Apps
• Small Ways the App Store Could Be Improved for Developers
• Mac App Store Review Times Increasing
• Deluge of Fake Mac App Store Reviews

Update (2026-08-20): Eric deRuiter:

I wonder if there is already a separate queue, not for Marco or other established indies, but for the huge companies: Facebook, Spotify, Google, etc.

Jeff Johnson:

Apparently the App Store developer in question saw my article in the news, because the fake App Store reviews posted on the developer’s website were quickly removed, as reported by AppleInsider and confirmed by me. Until yesterday, the misleading “4.9 out of 5 stars” claim remained in the App Store. However, the developer released an update only hours ago with new screenshots that no longer include the misleading claim, thereby erasing all evidence of the previous fraud. Apple approved the developer’s update and, needless to say, did not remove the app from the App Store.

[…]

There are 59 reviews [of Authenticator ℠], 54 of which are 1 star, and 3 of which are 2 stars. Two of the reviews are 5 stars; of those, one is titled “space jam” and goes on to say, “i believe i can fly and touch the sky.” Anyway, the question is, how did the app manage ratings of 4.1 out of 5 when the reviews average 1.2 out of 5? (That’s a rhetorical question. I think we all know the answer.)

TickerNotch transforms your MacBook’s notch or external display into a live dashboard for market data, news, and alerts. Find out how it performed during weeks of real-world testing.

I spend a lot of my day in front of my Mac, whether I’m writing, editing photos, responding to emails, or researching products for reviews. Like many people, I also like to keep an eye on what’s happening in the news and financial markets every so often. The problem is that doing so usually means leaving a browser tab open, checking a trading platform throughout the day, or constantly switching between apps. While none of those things are difficult, they do interrupt my workflow. That’s what caught my attention about TickerNotch. Rather than requiring another window or taking up valuable desktop space, it displays market information in an area that’s normally unused.

What is TickerNotch?

TickerNotch is a native macOS application designed to keep financial market information visible while you work by turning the otherwise unused space around your MacBook’s display notch into a live information hub. On Macs without a notch or when using an external display, the app can create a simulated island that provides the same experience. Rather than relying on a browser tab, menu bar utility, or a dedicated trading platform that consumes valuable desktop space, TickerNotch keeps your watchlist, portfolio performance, news headlines, and alerts in constant view so you can stay informed without interrupting your workflow.

Built by a Trader, for Traders

The app was created by an independent developer whose background is in materials engineering and advanced informatics. After spending nearly a decade trading the financial markets, they found themselves constantly monitoring charts, news feeds, and market data throughout the day. What began as small personal software projects to solve their own workflow challenges eventually led to the development of TickerNotch. Before creating the app, they built HyperBot, a private automated trading system used to manage their own investment accounts. While HyperBot has never been released publicly, the experience of developing software responsible for trading real money around the clock shaped the reliability and production mindset that carried over into TickerNotch.

The concept behind TickerNotch was inspired by both software and hardware. The developer cites boring.notch and the TickrMeter desktop ticker among their biggest influences, along with Apple’s philosophy of transforming hardware limitations into useful features, much like the Dynamic Island on the iPhone. Instead of treating the MacBook’s notch as wasted space, TickerNotch turns the surrounding black areas into a persistent source of useful information. The developer is also expanding this concept beyond the Mac with an upcoming companion iPhone app.

Designed to Keep Market Information in View

TickerNotch is designed primarily for anyone who follows the financial markets while working on a Mac, whether that’s active traders, long-term investors, or users who simply want financial headlines and market information available at a glance. Its centerpiece is the customizable live ticker, which can display a watchlist, portfolio profit and loss, and continuously scrolling RSS news feeds simultaneously. Users can configure native macOS price alerts, and selecting a ticker opens an interactive candlestick chart complete with technical indicators such as RSI, MACD, and Bollinger Bands. Multiple chart windows can remain open at the same time, and nearly every aspect of the interface, including fonts, colors, scrolling behavior, and animated shader backgrounds, can be customized.

Unlike many competing market applications that either occupy the menu bar or require users to switch into a full trading platform, TickerNotch focuses on keeping information permanently visible while remaining unobtrusive. It uses screen space that would otherwise go unused, allowing users to monitor multiple symbols at once without sacrificing valuable workspace.

Native Performance with a Privacy-First Approach

TickerNotch is built exclusively for macOS 14 Sonoma or later and is written entirely in Swift, SwiftUI, and AppKit without relying on Electron or web-based interfaces. Charts are rendered using SwiftUI Canvas, while market data is delivered through WebSocket connections for cryptocurrency, HTTP polling for stock quotes, and RSS feeds for news. Automatic updates are handled through Sparkle, and despite its capabilities, the entire application is only about 6.5 MB in size.

Privacy is another area where the developer intentionally keeps things simple. TickerNotch does not require an account or collect personal data. The app includes optional anonymous usage statistics, which can be disabled in the Settings menu. According to the developer, these statistics only report high-level feature usage, such as how many ticker slots or weather widgets are enabled, without collecting the contents of that information or any personally identifiable data. Watchlists, settings, and other app data remain stored locally on the user’s Mac, and the application only requests notification permissions for price alerts and internet access to retrieve market data. It does not require screen recording, accessibility, location, or file system permissions. The app is Developer ID signed, notarized, and uses cryptographically signed updates to help ensure a secure installation and update process.

Pricing, Support, and What’s Next

The app is available with a seven-day free trial that doesn’t require a credit card. After the trial, users can continue using a permanent free version that supports one ticker, one news channel, and one alert. Those who need additional functionality can upgrade to Pro, which unlocks unlimited watchlists, chart windows, portfolio tracking, and alerts through monthly or lifetime licensing options. One license can be transferred between Macs, although it may only be active on one machine at a time.

TickerNotch Pro is available for $5 per month or a $40 lifetime license. With a permanent free tier, flexible upgrade options, and a lifetime purchase option, TickerNotch provides users with multiple ways to access the features that best fit their workflow.

As a solo developer, they handle every aspect of the project, from development and testing to customer support and marketing. They also embrace the use of AI coding assistants during development, describing them as collaborative programming tools that accelerate implementation while emphasizing that the architecture, design decisions, testing, and final review of every shipped line of code remain their responsibility.

Looking ahead, the roadmap includes a Focus Mode that expands a single ticker across the entire strip for improved concentration during earnings or other important events, smarter percentage-based alerts that trigger over rolling time windows, support for additional market data providers and broker integrations, a future Mac App Store release, and the launch of TickerNotch for iOS, which brings the same concept to the iPhone.

Main Features

• Live Tickers
• Weather Slots
• Social Counters
• System Metrics
• News, one side or both
• Menu bar pins
• Candlestick charts
• One search box
• No account required
• Privacy-focused design
• Optional anonymous usage statistics (can be disabled)

User Experience

I’ve been using TickerNotch throughout my workday for the past couple of weeks, and it has become one of those utilities that quietly does its job without demanding attention. Despite displaying a constant stream of information, the interface never felt cluttered or distracting. Instead, it strikes a nice balance between keeping important market data, computer specs, and news visible and staying out of the way while I’m writing, editing, or working on other projects.

One of the first things that stood out to me was just how clean the interface is. Everything is easy to read, and I really like that I can decide exactly what information is displayed. Whether it’s stocks, cryptocurrency, weather, news, or other data, it’s simple to tailor the ticker to match my workflow. Even better, any changes I made in the settings were reflected immediately in the ticker, so I could experiment with different layouts without waiting for the app to refresh or restarting it.

Getting started was equally straightforward. Installation only took a few moments, and once the app was up and running, the hardest part was deciding what information I wanted to include in the ticker. The settings are well organized, making it easy to customize the experience without feeling overwhelmed.

Since I spend much of my day working on an external monitor, I was especially happy to see support for the simulated notch on displays without a physical notch. After enabling the feature, TickerNotch worked well on my LG UltraGear monitor, allowing me to keep using the app even when my MacBook Pro was connected to an external display. I also experimented with different display resolutions and found that the simulated notch scaled properly every time, which was reassuring since display scaling can sometimes create unexpected issues.

Over the course of my testing, TickerNotch proved to be reliable. I left it running all day, every day, for a couple of weeks and never experienced a crash or found myself needing to restart the application. It also had no noticeable impact on my Mac’s performance. CPU and memory usage remained low enough that I often forgot the app was running in the background until I glanced up at the ticker for an update.

Overall, I think TickerNotch succeeds because it focuses on doing one job well. It makes excellent use of screen space that would otherwise go unused and provides a convenient way to keep market information and news within view without interrupting my workflow. For anyone who spends long hours at their Mac, especially those who regularly follow the financial markets, it’s a thoughtful utility that quickly becomes part of your daily routine.

I also want to note that this is a fairly new app and the developer has been very responsive to feedback. We suggested a few things that would make the app more useful and he rolled out those features quickly. If you decide to give it a try, and think of something that would make it better, don’t hesitate to reach out as he’s very responsive and open to suggestions.

Conclusion

TickerNotch is one of those utilities that solves a problem you may not have realized you had until you start using it. By transforming the unused space around your MacBook’s notch, or creating a simulated notch on external displays, it keeps market data, news, and other information readily available without cluttering your desktop or interrupting your workflow.

While the app is clearly geared toward investors and traders, anyone who wants glanceable information available throughout the day may find it useful. Combined with a generous free tier and reasonably priced Pro options, TickerNotch delivers an experience that feels polished and genuinely useful. If you spend most of your day working on a Mac and regularly monitor the financial markets, TickerNotch is an easy recommendation.

For more information, visit bitvibelabs.com/tickernotch

Marcus Mendes:

Last April, Brazilian officials notified Apple and Google over an alleged lack of age controls in betting apps on their respective app stores.

9to5Mac:

Brazilian users browsing the App Store rankings in categories such as Navigation, Travel, and Weather have noticed a growing number of poorly made games appearing among the top results, many of them featuring AI-generated illustrations of animals as their app icons. Many carry an AL age rating, making them available to users of all ages, including children.

As it turns out, these are so-called jacket apps, which are just a front for hidden betting and gambling apps.

[…]

The repository also includes explicit instructions intended to prevent the apps from being flagged as suspicious during App Store review. These include giving each app uniquely named startup and remote-configuration codes, making it harder for reviewers to identify them as part of the same group.

Ironically, the App Store’s own recommendation system appears to have little trouble grouping the apps together, as the “You Might Also Like” section on several of these apps points users toward other suspicious apps more frequently than they point to genuine apps.

John Gruber (Mastodon):

Obviously the main problem is that these apps disguise themselves Trojan Horse-style, and slip through App Store review undetected. I don’t think it’s reasonable to think App Store review could catch every attempt at this sort of thing though — if the horses are disguised well-enough, some of them are going to slip through. That’s actually fine.

I agree that it’s unreasonable to expect App Review to catch all those, but then Apple should not be pretending that it can. This was all obvious from day one. The public perception of App Review is completely at odds with what it actually can and does do.

But the first example 9to5Mac cites isn’t well disguised at all. What sense does it make that “PotatoPlot Puzzle” — a game featuring a rabbit potato farmer — is a weather app? How is that not a red flag right there?

[…]

I always mention that the point of such a squad shouldn’t be to make the App Store 100 percent scammer-free — which I believe is an impossible goal that would set the team up for failure. The point should be only to make the App Store free of successful scams. Focus on the most popular apps and the most lucrative apps.

The App Store is more than 18 years old. The idea of patrolling the top charts probably occurred to Apple before it even shipped. They just don’t want to do it.

Nick Lockwood:

Apple only took 24 hours to approve my iOS app update that crashed instantly on launch. Such a blessing to have that extra level of reliability and security that only a manual review process can provide 🙏

Incidentally, the crash was due to a missing dylib - something that could easily have been detected by the automated scan process, if only that scan were designed to protect users’ and developers’ interests instead of Apple’s.

Kyle Hughes:

There is simply no other way to maintain a modern, healthy software ecosystem without making sure that apps that have been around for 7 years and 20 major versions can’t get a build looked at within 48 hours. There’s no other way. Probably needs to be longer, honestly.

I had to file an Expedited Review Request because this update is a legitimate emergency. Four hours later, App Review rejected the build because they didn’t follow the first sentence of the testing instructions (which haven’t changed in 7 years). Back to Waiting for Review! There’s no other way.

Previously:

• Chrome Browser Default at the Top of the Mac App Store
• Sparrow Wallet Lawsuit
• Sirius Pomodoro
• The App Store Scammer Strikes Back
• Brazil: App Marketplaces and External Payments
• Scam Authenticator App Steals QR Codes
• Sketchy ChatGPT App Soars Up App Store Charts
• Gambling Ads on App Store Product Pages
• Schneier on Sideloading
• The App Store Isn’t Catching the Most Egregious Scams
• Scammy KeyWatch and Trezor Apps
• Widgetsmith and The Case of the Missing App Store Bunco Squad
• Big Fish Casino
• Apps Removed in Ban of Gambling-Related Apps

Update (2026-07-30): Kyle Hughes:

We got rejected in the Expedited Review again, this time for not having an account deletion feature. Except we do, and it’s one button press away from the screen that the reviewer was on. And it has always existed. Is this how the expedited review works? Malicious incompetence?

Update (2026-07-31): Kyle Hughes:

If you were wondering how long one of the “you can ask us to approve this build and can fix this issue in the next release” App Review errors takes to resolve when you’re in the Expedited Review Queue… me too! So far, 18 hours. (Ignoring the fact that we have the feature the rejection was for.)

Kyle Hughes:

Certainly it means “within a week,” right? “Within a month,” please? “In your lifetime,” I can only hope.

Matt Burgess (MacRumors, ArsTechnica):

On Thursday, San Francisco city attorney David Chiu sent legal notices to Apple and Google demanding that they remove from their app stores 13 face-swapping apps, which allow users to create AI-generated nonconsensual nude images. The letters say the Silicon Valley giants should stop “aiding and abetting” the sale of explicit deepfake images and “sever” business relationships with the app developers.

[…]

Researchers have repeatedly found and reported apps in Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store that allow people to generate sexual images using AI—including some apps being rated as suitable for use by children. While new laws and bans aim to tackle the scourge of explicit deepfakes online, technology and social media companies consistently direct millions of people toward the harmful tech.

Both Apple and Google have developer policies that prohibit pornography, abuse, and harassment on their platforms.

Burgess gives the impression, which is my base assumption, that these 13 apps were clear about what they do, so App Review has no excuse for missing them. But I’m sure it’s keeping us all safe in other regards.

Meanwhile, in a preprint research paper published in May, researchers from Cornell University and Georgetown University identified 420 apps offering general face-swapping capabilities on Google’s and Apple’s app stores. They tested 155 to see if they could be used to create face swaps with nude images; in 70 percent of cases, it was possible, with the apps not including safety measures to prevent this.

Previously:

• Sirius Pomodoro
• Apps for YouTube℠™®•!
• Sanctioned Entities Slip Through App Store Controls

Update (2026-07-21): Danny Bradbury:

Chiu isn’t arguing that hosting an app automatically makes a platform liable for what it does. Platform operators already won that battle with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That 30-year-old law says websites generally aren’t responsible for content posted by users, allowing platforms to host user-generated content without getting sued every time someone defames someone in a comment thread.

Courts have often extended those protections to cover app stores too. Apple and Google are treated as distributors of whatever a third-party developer uploads, rather than publishers.

Chiu is attempting to sidestep that argument by focusing on the companies’ payment systems, noting that Apple and Google collect a cut of every in-app purchase. According to the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), that means they profit from apps that generate revenue by creating non-consensual intimate imagery.

Ed Hardy:

Finding useful software in the App Store is about to get easier. Apple is apparently preparing to remove what it describes as “opportunistic” apps that provide little value to iPhone and iPad users.

It already had a policy of not approving applications that are “indistinguishable from what’s already widely available.” This week, it quietly warned developers that it will start removing low-value software that doesn’t attract attention from users.

App Review Guidelines (News):

4.3 (b) Don’t submit apps that are indistinguishable from what’s already widely available. Opportunistically creating variants of existing app categories or popular apps degrades App Store discovery, reduces overall app quality, and harms both users and developers. Certain kinds of apps, such as dating, flashlight, sound effects, wallpaper, simple timers, and fortune telling, are well established on the App Store and we will not accept new submissions unless they offer a meaningfully different or improved experience. We may remove these apps from the App Store going forward if they are not updated, improved, or do not attract customers. Other kinds of apps, such as drinking games, Kama Sutra, fart, and burp apps, are mediocre, low-quality, or low-effort and do not add value to the App Store. Repeated submissions of this kind may lead to removal from the Apple Developer Program.

Previously:

• Updates to Vibe Coding Apps Rejected From the App Store
• Apple’s Explanation for Removing Old Apps
• App Store Removing Old Apps That Still Work
• Wordle Clones
• App Store Competition
• How to Game the App Store
• Removing Abandoned Apps and Shorter App Names
• Removing Unmaintained Apps from the App Store

Update (2026-07-14): Aleksandar Vacić:

Waiting for Review enters day 3. I don’t recall when was the last time this happened for any of the apps I am working for.

[…]

I sent messages to App Review Board and received nothing in response (so far).

It seems that if Apple ever removed your app from App Store for reason of “not sending regular updates” that app is…gone. It’s not deleted but it seems to dwell in some sort of limbo.

Previously:

• Mac App Store Review Times Increasing