How we select and test the apps we feature
Every app featured in Small Apps Worth Knowing is tested through real use, on real devices, before a word is published. Here is the entire process — including what money can and cannot buy.
What qualifies an app for consideration
The pilot focuses on useful consumer apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, made by individuals or very small teams — up to five people. Games are excluded from the initial pilot; they may become a separate editorial track later, with testing criteria that make sense for games.
An app does not need to be new, popular, or beautifully marketed. It needs to solve a real problem well. Many of the best small apps have no marketing at all — that is exactly the gap this publication exists to close.
During the pilot we exclude or defer apps we cannot evaluate responsibly within our testing model: apps whose value only shows up after weeks of longitudinal data, apps requiring specialized hardware we do not have, and apps whose evaluation would require costly subscriptions. The pilot is capped at five features in total, normally publishing one to two per week — a small shelf, honestly stocked.
How testing works
Every candidate starts with a focused qualification session of 60–90 minutes of hands-on use on the devices it targets. That session is designed to verify the app’s core claims, reliability, pricing, account and subscription requirements, and what the privacy policy actually says. Apps that are shortlisted, and whose behavior genuinely requires longer observation, get extended multi-day use before publication.
We may decline or defer an app after qualification — because it did not hold up, because it is out of scope for the pilot, or simply because our shelf is full. Submitting an app never guarantees coverage.
Screenshots and media in our features are our own, captured during testing. We do not republish App Store marketing assets as if they were our findings.
- Real devices, real hands-on use — enough time to verify what we publish
- A 60–90 minute qualification session for every candidate; extended multi-day use for shortlisted apps that need it
- Pricing and subscription terms verified on the App Store at publication time
- Privacy policy read in full, summarized honestly
- Limitations reported alongside strengths — every app has both
- A "last checked" date on every article, so readers know how fresh the facts are
What money cannot buy
Editorial consideration is free and coverage is never guaranteed or purchasable. Developers cannot pay to be featured, cannot pay to improve a verdict, and cannot pay to remove one. Paying for any other NovoBuild service — consulting or anything else — has no effect on editorial decisions.
If a sponsorship ever appears alongside this publication, it will be clearly labeled as a sponsorship and will never be disguised as an editorial recommendation.
Corrections and developer input
Developers are welcome to point out factual errors — a wrong price, a stale screenshot, a feature we misunderstood — and we will correct them promptly and note the correction. What developers cannot do is control the verdict. The judgment in each feature is ours, and it stays ours.