AppMagic Shortcuts: 3 Ways to Spot Trending App & Game Niches Early
A practical guide to spotting emerging trends for mobile app and game developers, featuring real-world examples from the AppMagic analytics team.
— Diana Levintova
A good few of us dream of waking up with original million-dollar concepts. But creating a hit doesn’t always mean inventing something completely new. Sometimes, it’s about spotting a trend early enough to ride it.
Another studio may have already had the aha moment and proven that the concept works with real audience data, giving you a short window to jump on the trend, put your own spin on it, and potentially turn it into a hit of your own. With this approach, though, timing is everything.
In this article, we’ll explore 3 ways to spot emerging trends before your competitors catch on: - Ranking skimming + keyword search - Niche analysis + app comparison - Downloads growth comparison
And there’s a bonus section waiting for you… no spoilers, though! Get ready to discover the shortcuts to riding the hype before it reaches its peak, with real-world examples from our analytics team.
Ranking Skimming + Keyword Search: Find the Next Hybridcasual Puzzle Trend
This is one of our frequently used approaches to trend-spotting and, generally, a great way to stay updated on market dynamics. Let us walk you through it using the example of a growing Hybridcasual Puzzle trend kickstarted by Smash Fest! and its core mechanic of shooting at towering stacks of items—cans, stones, or paint jars.
Every Monday, we do one simple thing: go to Top Apps and check for notable ranking changes over the past week, for both games and apps. Then, we filter by the Week period and choose the dates and tags we need (in this case, the tag is Games).
That’s how we spotted Smash Fest! continuing its conquest of the top 100 games by weekly downloads (July 6–12) worldwide as it climbed to the chart’s #59 that week, 31 positions higher than the week before.
Smash Fest! in the Top Apps ranking (July 6–12, 2026)")
For Hyper- and Hybridcasual studios, this is an early sign of a potential new trend and a good time to start working on a quick prototype around the concept. Some ideas may burn out here and never make it to the top, but if you wait too long, the trend may already become too commonplace. In fact, the following week, the very same game was already #4 in the top 100 games by downloads, climbing another 55 positions.
Smash Fest! in the Top Apps ranking (July 13–19, 2026)")
By the way, you can simplify this insight-hunting even further by automating it. To do so, go to Notifications for New Apps and configure alerts to ping you via email or Slack whenever an app with the “Games” tag meets certain criteria of your interest.
At this point, the mechanic was clearly gaining traction. To see whether other developers were picking up on it, we went to Advanced Search, indicated “smash” as the keyword, and filtered by the Games tag and the release period of July 2026.
Games released since June 29, 2026, with keyword “smash” in the title
We could already see several games trying to replicate the mechanic, suggesting that other studios had spotted the idea early as well. The following week, another player, Royal Smash! - Physics Puzzle, entered the top 100, climbing 89 positions to #27. The week after, it had already surpassed the original game in weekly installs.
Royal Smash! - Physics Puzzle in the Top Apps ranking (July 20–26, 2026)")
By the first week of August, another look at Advanced Search gave us enough evidence to confidently state that a wave of clones was forming, with 27 other new releases exploiting the same mechanic.
Then major studios joined the trend, further confirming its potential—and narrowing the window for new entrants somewhat more. Supercent now has two such projects in testing—Smash Down: Blast It Away! and Target Smash - Physics Puzzle—and so does Tripledot with Angry Smash and Stack Smash - Block 3D Puzzle. Thus, smaller studios that spotted the trend early had a valuable head start. We broke the trend down in more detail in this piece of research, by the way.
Thus, combining weekly Top Apps skimming with keyword filtering in Advanced Search can help you spot promising ideas early and prototype around them before the trend becomes a given and major competitors jump in.
Niche Analysis + App Comparison: Discover an Emerging Subgenre in the AI Chatbots Market
Another great practice our team frequently uses to spot industry trends (and you might join us soon!) is analyzing spikes in niches of interest. We usually keep a few growing niches on our radar and regularly check them for notable changes.
On the dashboard below, we’re tracking the dynamics of AI Chatbot, Short Drama, and Calorie & Weight Tracker segments, keeping an eye on trends such as the growing popularity of ChatGPT, Claude, Google One, Grok, and others; the continuous rise of TikTok-like formats for shows; and the impact of newly introduced obesity treatments (such as oral alternatives to injections) on new app releases in the weight management and health tracking space.
Let’s have a look at our niche comparison using the Market Segment Dashboard.
AI Chatbot, Short Drama, and Calorie & Weight Tracker segment dynamics by revenue
We can see that AI Chatbots were essentially skyrocketing in terms of revenue. We might assume, “Probably, it’s ChatGPT and Claude again,” but it’s always worth checking what’s exactly behind the spike.
AI Chatbots Market Segment Dashboard by revenue
To investigate further, we go to Market Segment, filter by the AI Chatbot tag, and look at the first eight months of 2026. As expected, ChatGPT and Claude continue along their growth trajectory. But if we hide them, another curious pattern becomes clear.
In July 2026, zeta: AI Chat, Story, Play overtook Perplexity in monthly revenue, and in the first eight months of 2026, it became #5 in the AI Chatbot segment by cumulative revenue. It was quite unexpected to see such rapid growth from an app that wasn’t nearly as much on the radar as ChatGPT or Claude.
So, we went to *zeta*’s App Page to see what makes it different from the familiar ChatGPT-like apps.
zeta: AI Chat, Story, Play’s app page
From the description and the screenshots, it appears to be a character chat and story app with a built-in library of personas users can interact with, spanning genres from romance to drama.
Now, using Advanced Search, let’s find relevant competitors by entering keywords such as “AI story,” “AI characters,” and “AI friends.” We can then add the relevant apps to the same dashboard to compare their dynamics. Eventually, we have more than 20 apps on the dashboard.
zeta AI’s competitor dashboard
While Zeta AI is clearly driving this emerging AI Story category, we can also see that its competitors—CHAI: Social AI Platform- Chat, PolyBuzz: Chat with AI Friends, and Character AI: Chat, Talk, Text—had their best-grossing month in June 2026.
Looking at these apps side by side puts zeta’s growth into context: it’s not growing in isolation, but as part of an emerging AI Story subcategory gaining momentum as a whole.
Let’s wrap it up! By analyzing and breaking down niches with Market Segment Dashboards, you can spot apps forming new trends within the categories you’re interested in. The App Page can then help you understand how these apps differ from established category leaders. Using Advanced Search, you can find apps built around similar concepts, while the App Comparison Dashboard can show whether an emerging market is driven by a single app or several players.
Downloads Growth Comparison: Pin Down New AI Mechanics in Astrology Apps
One convenient way to spot high-level changes in supergenres is to use the Period Comparison tool. Let’s see which categories grew the most in terms of downloads over July 2026.
To do so, go to Tag Sets, scroll down to Apps, and on the right, select Add all content as sets and hit Apply. Then, set the period to July 2026 and select Downloads growth % in the Show Top Apps By block.
Supergenre downloads dynamics in July 2026
This reveals that Lifestyle apps grew 2.13% MoM—a solid recovery after the previous month’s 2.17% decline. We can then break down the supergenre using the same approach to find out which category is driving the growth.
Lifestyle’s subgenre downloads dynamics
Here, we can quickly spot that the Horoscope & Astrology niche grew 18% MoM. So, next we want to find out which apps are behind the spike.
To do so, go to the Market Segment Dashboard, choose the corresponding tag, and select Downloads in both the Show Top Apps By and Metrics blocks.
Leading apps in the Horoscope & Astrology category by downloads
From the dashboard, we can see the market being dominated by two AI astrology apps: Astrotalk with 129M lifetime installs and AstroSage Kundli with 100M downloads.
Interestingly, monthly downloads for both apps started increasing over the past couple of months, driven largely by users from India. On top of that, since May 2026, we have another notable player: Tarot99. In just two months, it came close to AstroSage Kundli’s monthly install volume, trailing behind by only 23%.
The app focuses more on tarot readings powered by AI rather than conversations with AI astrologers, as offered by the two leading competitors. However, like the other two apps, Tarot99 gets most of its audience from India.
This spike may be related to Shravan (Sawan), one of the most spiritually significant periods in the Hindu calendar, which ran from July 30 to August 28 this year. The period is associated with religious and spiritual practices, which may increase interest in astrology and tarot readings.
Thus, using Period Comparison, you can identify categories showing unusual growth. Then, using the Market Segment Dashboard, you can see whether the market is led by apps using a specific mechanic or driven by an audience from a particular region. This can help you identify opportunities for new entrants, even in categories with established players, by finding underserved concepts or alternative approaches.
AppMagic Reports & Newsletters: Leave Trend-Spotting to Us, Focus on Your App
One of the easiest ways to learn market trends and industry best practices is to read AppMagic’s reports and newsletters. (Shocker, we know.) Since our analytics team applies all the tools detailed above weekly (if not daily), there are always a few trends we’re particularly eager to dive into ourselves—and bring you the best possible intel for your future projects.
Not to overpromise and underdeliver, let’s look at a few examples of what you can find in our research.
There are a few staple reports well worth adding to your favorites, including the Mobile Market Landscape and Casual Games Report. These cover growing niches, regional trends, genre success rates that help you understand where opportunities still exist, promising new releases, innovative mechanics, and much more.
We explore the mobile gaming and app industry from multiple angles, experimenting with different report formats and topics to uncover insights that help teams make better decisions. Our research has covered areas ranging from monetization and LiveOps to regional market trends and in-depth analysis of individual games. Past examples include our Monetization and LiveOps reports, the Türkiye Mobile Gaming Landscape 2026, and our deep dive into Love and Deepspace pulling $1B User Spend on gacha events.
For those working across platforms, we also cover trends and best practices on Steam. One recent example is our breakdown of the Idle Game market on Steam in 2026.
As for our newsletter, it’s a great bi-weekly source of market news and insights for anyone who wants to stay ahead of the latest developments in the apps and games market.
Take the “arrow” trend. By July 1, our subscribers already knew about the rise of Arrow – Puzzle Escape, which quickly climbed into the global top 10 by downloads, followed by Amaze Go!. What’s more, we first flagged the signs of the trend in our November 2025 newsletter!
And it only kept growing: the number of Arrow Puzzle releases jumped from just 9 in 2024 to 86 in 2025 and a staggering 2,088 in 2026. Our August newsletter showed the trend was still going strong, with 520+ new Arrow Puzzle releases in June alone.
Dynamics of Arrow Puzzle releases (August 2024 to August 2026)")
Large studios like Miniclip, Lion Studios, and Learnings caught the trend early and rose to the top, while smaller teams still managed to generate meaningful install volumes of their own: from thousands to a few million.
We’ll leave the link here to subscribe to our newsletter for everyone who wants to follow the development of the “arrow” trend and discover many more—before everyone else!
Save This for Later: AppMagic Shortcuts for App & Game Trend-Spotting
Smash Puzzles, AI Story apps, AI Astrology apps, Arrow Puzzles—all these trends could be spotted ahead of the hype wave using a few combinations of AppMagic tools.
Forget about those mundane Excel shortcuts! Here’s your new, exciting go-to list of trend-spotting tools courtesy of AppMagic: - Top Apps (or Notifications) + Advanced Search: Identify a skyrocketing app or game and check for clones that followed after its release. - Market Segment Dashboard + App Page + Advanced Search + App Comparison Dashboard: Detect spikes in the categories you’re interested in, find the apps driving them, understand what makes their concepts different, and search for apps with similar concepts. Then, bring them into one dashboard to compare their performance and confirm whether a new subcategory is forming and growing. - Period Comparison + Market Segment Dashboard: Spot the categories that demonstrated the strongest growth over a chosen period, then drill down into the subgenres and apps driving it. This can help uncover new mechanics, new entrants in seemingly monopolized markets, regional dynamics, or external factors behind one-time or seasonal spikes. - AppMagic Blog, Research, and Newsletter: Add another pair of eyes to your analysis. We might be looking into niches that aren’t your priority right now but could inspire your next project. Plus, our analytics team spends its time digging into the data and interpreting what’s happening in the market—without having to ship an MVP ASAP. Think of it as a helping hand that saves you time and gives you clues from a different angle.
Now, the next time you see an app suddenly scaling the charts, you’ll know how to quickly validate whether or not a hype wave is forming—and get a chance to jump on it before anyone else.