How to check your App Store downloads on iPhone

1. Connect your App Store Connect team

Install AppScout on an iPhone running iOS 26 or later. You can explore sample data before connecting. To load your own metrics, you need a Team API key with access to Sales and Reports, its Key ID and Issuer ID, and your Vendor Number. AppScout connects one team at a time.

1. Open the API Keys area in App Store Connect. Create or choose a Team API key with the required report access. If you cannot access this area, ask your account holder or administrator to help.
2. Import the downloaded .p8 private key file into AppScout. Check the Key ID and enter the Issuer ID from App Store Connect.
3. Enter your Vendor Number from Payments and Financial Reports. Complete setup and let AppScout load your reports.

You do this setup before your daily checks. AppScout does not ask for your Apple Account password or require a separate AppScout login. There is no SDK to add to your published apps.

2. Choose the download metric you need

Select an app, a group of apps, or all visible apps in your connected team. The dashboard gives you a one-month overview. Open a metric for its chart and daily history.

• Downloads: first-time downloads and redownloads combined.
• First-Time: new download units reported by Apple.
• Redownloads: reported redownload and restore activity.
• Updates: update units, shown separately from downloads.

These are download measures, not a count of active users. If you want to follow new acquisition, start with First-Time. For money, Revenue uses customer-price amounts and Proceeds uses developer-proceeds amounts. Read all 12 metric definitions.

3. Check daily changes after a release

Open your app’s Downloads, First-Time, Revenue, or Proceeds chart. Use the 1M view to inspect recent report dates, then switch to 3M or 1Y for context. Touch the chart to inspect a point and explore breakdowns by app, country, device, or product type.

Compare the report dates around your release. A change after a release can be worth investigating, but the chart alone does not establish its cause. AppScout does not automatically attribute download spikes to a release or campaign.

4. Put downloads on your Home Screen or Lock Screen

After your reports have loaded, add an AppScout widget using your iPhone’s widget picker. Edit the widget to choose its metric, period, and apps. Leave the app selection empty to include all non-hidden apps.

AppScout offers small and medium Home Screen widgets and a rectangular Lock Screen widget. You can keep Downloads in one widget and Revenue or MRR in another. Each widget has its own settings and can show a one-month, three-month, or one-year period.

Widgets show the latest data saved by AppScout. Open the app or pull to refresh to check for new reports; iOS controls when the widget itself redraws.

When do new downloads appear?

AppScout uses Apple’s daily Sales and Subscription Summary reports, normally available the following day. Reports can arrive later. Refreshing checks for published reports; it cannot show a report Apple has not made available yet.

In Settings, optional New Data Alerts can notify you about newly available report data or qualifying positive changes. Allow notifications and Background App Refresh to use them. iOS decides when background checks run, so alerts are not guaranteed every day or at a fixed time. They are not instant notifications for individual downloads or sales.

Does checking metrics expose my private key?

AppScout stores the imported private key in your iPhone’s Keychain and uses it locally to sign requests directly to Apple. Importing the file does not upload the private key or your App Store Connect reports to AppScout’s developer. The downloaded file you imported remains wherever you saved it; AppScout does not manage that original copy.

Read the Security & Privacy explanation for storage, network requests, and disconnecting. If you are choosing between apps, see the AppScout and App Store Connect comparison.