Blog · October 21, 2026

Someone copied my app. What now?

Between October 17 and 21, four indie developers posted on X that their app had been cloned. Their stories are short and they repeat. Here's what they share, and what to keep before it happens to you.

Four clones in five days

• @upbeat_dev found a copy with the same features and UI, and their onboarding images lightly edited. The app's old name, a made-up word, was still in the copy's description.
• @All4nDev searched their own keywords and found a copy with the same colors and design, under the name that had got their own app banned from Google Play.
• @ImAndreyN says another developer launched a copy of Dishpin, then posted it as a success story.
• @anshrathodfr found their Mac app cloned whole, with a few features added on top, and resold.

It's only getting worse

Copying an app used to be a huge undertaking. With AI coding tools, it takes a weekend: hand over the screenshots and the store description, and ask for the same app. @anshrathodfr describes exactly this: low-effort clones of someone else's established work, sold until they reach a few thousand in revenue, then left without support.

The incentive is simple. The original developer did the hard part: designing the app, testing it with real users, finding what people will pay for, and marketing it until it took off. A copycat skips all of that. They watch for an app that's rising, clone it, and sell it under a new name, into a market that's already proven.

And the copy can tell your story. The developer who cloned @anshrathodfr's app was, at the same time, calling someone else out for copying his "original" idea. In the Dishpin case, each side says the other copied: @ImAndreyN says the other app's privacy policy listed his domain and support emails; the other developer says Andrey bought the domain on October 7, after seeing his app, then emailed asking him to rename it. From the outside, no one can tell who came first.

How to defend your work

You have more options than posting about it:

• Report it to the store. Apple's App Review Guidelines ban copycat apps (4.1), and Apple takes complaints through its content dispute form. Google Play takes them through legal removal requests.
• Send a takedown notice. Copied images, text or code on a website can be reported to its host, under the DMCA in the US or similar rules elsewhere.
• Register your name as a trademark. It's the clearest basis for a complaint about a copied name, and for disputing a domain.
• Have a lawyer write. A cease-and-desist letter is often enough for a low-effort copycat.

Every one of these comes down to the same question: what did you have, and when? Your own records are a weak answer. File dates, screenshots and even git history can be changed by whoever controls them, and the other side can say yours were. A strong answer is dated by someone else: a record you couldn't have edited after the fact.

Start your record today

Begin with the idea, not the launch. Keep each stage as it happens:

• The idea, written down: what it does, who it's for, and why now.
• Early sketches, wireframes and design files.
• The name, and any made-up words, before you announce them.
• Screenshots of every main screen, at each release.
• Onboarding images, icon and color palette, as the original files.
• Your listing text: name, subtitle, description, keywords.
• A build, or a short screen recording of the app in use.

Have each entry timestamped independently as you add it. An independent timestamp ties the exact bytes of a file to a point in time, and anyone can check it later without trusting you, or us.