Pulse
Concrete pains from app reviews — and how strong they are
- Food delivery apps
Cancel an order right in the app
Pain 6 out of 10, noticeable. 135 reviews, in 51 of 94 apps. - Calendars and tasks
A widget showing today’s plan
Pain 6 out of 10, noticeable. 155 reviews, in 47 of 100 apps. - Dating
Feed full of dead profiles
Pain 6 out of 10, noticeable. 156 reviews, in 50 of 100 apps. - Cosmetic Ingredient Scanner
Check ingredients without a barcode
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 27 reviews, in 7 of 19 apps. - Teleprompter and captions
Scripts won't import from files
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 66 reviews, in 9 of 41 apps. - Cosmetic Ingredient Scanner
Same product, different scores
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 26 reviews, in 8 of 19 apps. - QR & barcode scanners
The QR code I made doesn't open my link
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 36 reviews, in 8 of 31 apps. - Sobriety & quitting
The counter loses days I’ve earned
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 42 reviews, in 11 of 29 apps. - Water & hydration
Can’t set my own goal or weight
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 40 reviews, in 10 of 33 apps. - Resume builders
More control over formatting
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 27 reviews, in 11 of 26 apps. - Tarot & Oracle Card Reading
Psychics’ predictions never come true
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 59 reviews, in 6 of 40 apps. - Pet care
GPS gets my pet's location wrong
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 40 reviews, in 5 of 27 apps. - Pet care
I can't see my pet's medical records
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 40 reviews, in 9 of 27 apps. - AI Photo Restore & Unblur
The scratches are still there
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 45 reviews, in 10 of 28 apps. - Blood pressure
Blood pressure readings are way off
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 75 reviews, in 16 of 54 apps. - Cosmetic Ingredient Scanner
The skin scan gets it wrong
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 23 reviews, in 7 of 19 apps. - Recording and transcribing speech
Call recording doesn't work in my country
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 72 reviews, in 8 of 30 apps. - QR & barcode scanners
It scans, but won't take me to the site
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 32 reviews, in 14 of 31 apps. - Water & hydration
Add drinks after the fact
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 36 reviews, in 18 of 33 apps. - Cosmetic Ingredient Scanner
Ingredients don’t match the label
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 22 reviews, in 8 of 19 apps. - Resume builders
Put my jobs in the right order
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 24 reviews, in 10 of 26 apps. - Pet care
I can't book a vet visit in the app
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 36 reviews, in 8 of 27 apps. - Blood pressure
The cuff won’t send readings to the app
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 69 reviews, in 13 of 54 apps. - Driving test prep
The same questions keep repeating
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 52 reviews, in 20 of 44 apps.
How we count
The sample is up to 500 recent App Store reviews for each of about 100 popular apps per category. We look for each need across all of the category’s reviews and check a random sample of matches by hand: at least 80% are correct.
“Pain” is a rough score from 1 to 10: half comes from the share of the category’s reviews that mention it, 30% from how many such reviews there are in total, 20% from the share of apps where it comes up. It is not search demand and not market size.
In words: 1–3 mild · 4–6 noticeable · 7–8 strong · 9–10 acute.