XPost: misc.phone.mobile.iphone, comp.sys.mac.advocacy

What modern filtered user-centric iOS app search engines do you know of?

Since it's a universal need of intelligent people to be able to search for
apps using a variety of modern filters, I looked for iOS app store engines.
<https://www.macworld.com/article/671296/best-way-to-find-apps-on-the-apple-app-store.html>
a. Use Google (which is how I found the helpful links you see below)
b. Ask in discussions (which is what I'm doing now)
c. Use Vionza (the link provided seems to only be for the Mac)
d. Use Fnd <https://fnd.io/>

I'm doing (in steps a & b) exactly what they recommended to find iOS apps
that have features I care about (e.g., free and ad free and with a certain rating and certain number of downloads and targeted to a certain API or
phone make & model and (of course) the ability to save the installer
APK/IPA onto the phones's storage for automatic backup, etc.)
all of which the Aurora Store skin to the Google Play Store repo does.

Even better, the aforementioned App Finder skin for the Google Play Store
repo can search by category by country, by rating, by number of ratings, by release date, by being free and ad free or whether it accepts Play Pass,
and whether or not it has in-app purchases, by the number of downloads, by
a price range, by the in-app price range, by the last date updated, by the content rating, by the required Android API level, by the target API, etc.

There must be similar apps for iOS since the mothership will never provide
them so I searched Google and I'm asking here if you know of good engines.

My search did find SerpApi's Apple App Store Scraper API which uses JSON.
<https://serpapi.com/apple-app-store>

And, of course, the question I ask was asked on StackExchange 6 years ago.
<https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/301584/how-can-i-browse-or-search-the-ios-app-store-from-my-desktop>

Which, helpfully, suggested this browser-based search URI to find iOS apps.
<https://www.apple.com/us/search?src=serp>

In summary, following the suggested steps to find a non-primitive modern
search engine for iOS apps, I googled (see results above) and now I'm
asking the user community to add value to this important-to-answer query.

What's a modern filtered user-centric (hopefully PC-based) search engine
for finding iOS apps that you know of (which isn't yet listed above)?
--
I use iOS & Android every day where I strive to learn as much as I can
about each system, and to be able to do the same things on both devices.

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XPost: misc.phone.mobile.iphone, comp.sys.mac.advocacy

Similar to the google play scraper https://github.com/facundoolano/google-play-scraper

The iOS/Mac scraper facundoolano might be of use to you https://github.com/facundoolano/app-store-scraper

Node.js module to scrape application data from the iTunes/Mac App Store.
The goal is to provide an interface as close as possible to the google-play-scraper module.

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XPost: misc.phone.mobile.iphone, comp.sys.mac.system

Patrick <patrick@oleary.com> wrote

Similar to the google play scraper https://github.com/facundoolano/google-play-scraper

The iOS/Mac scraper facundoolano might be of use to you https://github.com/facundoolano/app-store-scraper

Node.js module to scrape application data from the iTunes/Mac App Store.
The goal is to provide an interface as close as possible to the google-play-scraper module.

The good news about that iOS scraper is that within a year or two, even iOS
can have an excellent app search engine that is almost as good as Android.

For reference, please see this PSA I posted just now to the Android ng.

===< begin PSA for Android/iOS app search engines >===

Because I am on this ng to learn from others and to add value,
I would like to let everyone know about this *fantastic* new app!

*Skyica App Finder is the best Google Play Store search engine*
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=scadica.aq>

*The search engine works on Mac/Linux/Windows too!*
<https://skyica.com/>

This new free, ad free & gsffree Google Play Store skin does almost
everything you'd ever want an app-search engine to do, including writing
the results to an editable Excel file after running one of the best search algorithms on the planet with filters for user ratings, no ads, no cost,
play pass, no in-app purchases, number of ratings, number of downloads,
price range, in-app price range, date last updated, date originally
released, content rating, required Android API, target Android API, etc.

Skyica App Finder uses the FOSS Google Play Store repository scraper
<https://github.com/facundoolano/google-play-scraper>
and works in very many languages (and is actively developed & supported).

Once you've searched for & chosen an app, the Skyica App Finder will
gracefully pass you to your favorite installation method, whether that be
the Google Play Store skin itself, or a web browser interface to the Google Play Store repository - or even one of the third-party skins to the Google
Play Store repository (such as Aurora Store, Yalp or whatever), where these tools have huge advantages over the typical Google Play Store installation method (such as automatically *not deleting* the APK after installing it!).

I know that this new Skyica App Finder works gracefully with privacy-based third-party installers because the Skyica App Finder developer recently supported me on the XDA site to ensure that people like I am (who have no accounts whatsoever on our phones) can still use the Skyica App Finder seamlessly with the Aurora Store Google Play Store skin to search for apps
and then to gracefully automatically *not delete* those APKs found, and
then to install those APKs on our phone (prior to automatic APK archival).
<https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-6-0-app-finder-the-most-advanced-search-engine-for-android-apps.4578809/>

BTW, Skyica's newly written Mac/Linux/Windows web site is also the best on
the planet for searching apps on the Google Play Store repository (IMHO),
(but it's not yet phone friendly).

The developer is constantly improving the new Skyica App Finder app and his associated Skyica App Finder web search engine, where he says he will be
adding more repositories such as F-Droid, Amazon, Galaxy, and even the iOS
app repos in the near future if the app takes off & becomes commonly used.
--
I sincerely enjoy helping people learn more & I love to learn from others
which is why I wrote this public service announcement - to inform others.

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XPost: misc.phone.mobile.iphone, comp.sys.mac.advocacy

The Google Play Store app search engine is just as atrociously primitive as
is the Apple App Store app search engine - but at least alternatives exist.

App Finder by Skyica LLC (free, adfree, gsfree)
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=scadica.aq>

Aurora OSS based on Sergei Yeriomin's Yalp (free, adfree, gsfree)
<https://www.auroraoss.com/>

Both those *modern app search engines* accurately search the official
Google Play Store repository using a huge variety of rather modern
extremely useful customer-centric functional filters (which the greedy money-making Apple/Google motherships will _never_ provide to users!).
<https://developer.apple.com/app-store/search/>

True to form for motherships, the search engine provided by Google sucks.
Google Play Store atrociously primitive search engine
<https://play.google.com/store/search?q=&c=apps>

As does the primitive browser-based search engine provided by Apple.
<https://www.apple.com/ios/app-store/>
(Use the magnifying glass in the top right to search the apps.)
<https://www.edureka.co/community/205554/is-there-a-way-to-search-the-ios-app-store-online>

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