r/Ghost•
Ok-Win-4822

I'm building an unofficial iOS app for Ghost. Would anyone actually use it?

I run a Ghost publication and the only way to check my numbers from my phone is Ghost Admin in a mobile browser. So I started building a native iOS app. Before I go further, I'd like to know whether anyone else wants this.

It's read only for stats. It never touches your posts or your settings. The one exception is comment moderation (hide, restore, pin), because that's the one thing you actually want to do from a phone.

Screen by screen

  • Login. You sign in with your Ghost email and password and the app creates its own integration, so you don't have to go dig in Ghost Admin. Pasting an Admin API key by hand is the fallback path.
  • Dashboard. MRR, 7 and 30 day changes, paid and total members, growth curve, latest member events (signup, upgrade, cancellation) with acquisition source. Publications with no revenue get a different layout built around member growth instead of a giant "$0".
  • Sent newsletters. Open rate, recipients, click rate, sortable by performance.
  • Send detail. Open rate compared to your own previous comparable sends (both rates written out, never a ratio), clicks, signups and paid conversions attributed to that post, most clicked links, delivery failures.
  • Posts. What each published post brought in: signups, paid conversions, reader feedback (thumbs up / down), whether or not it was ever emailed.
  • Post detail with its comment thread, and moderation.
  • Members. Server side search, filters (paid, free, comped, gift), infinite list.
  • Member detail. Plan and amount, signup date, acquisition source, payment history, newsletter subscriptions, individual open rate, event feed.
  • Acquisition. Source ranking by signups and, more usefully, by paid conversions: a source that brings 200 free readers and zero payers is not worth one that brings 12 and converts 4. Mentions, recommendations, web traffic when your instance provides it.
  • Watch. Weekly report, detected deviations ("your unsubscribes tripled this week"), goals and progress, alerts. Computed on device.
  • Projections. Revenue range at 30 and 90 days, always a range, with the method written on screen. Deliberately quarantined: nothing from that screen ever appears anywhere else in the app.
  • Settings, notification consent screen, about.

The rule everything else follows from: a displayed number is never misleading.

  • Every number carries its last sync date, on screen, not behind a long press.
  • Offline, nothing disappears. Everything stays visible under a timestamped banner, with an absolute date ("July 29, 8:12"), not "2 days ago". A drift should be noticed, not computed.
  • A missing measurement is not a zero. "Open tracking disabled" is not "0%", and the two are not written the same way.
  • Multi currency revenue is never added up. Ghost returns one series per currency and summing them would mean inventing an exchange rate.
  • If half the screen comes from cache, the date shown is the oldest one.

Also: offline first, 14 languages, and the source is public so the privacy claims can be checked line by line instead of believed. It's unofficial and not affiliated with Ghost Foundation.

What I'd like to know

  1. Would you actually use this, or is the mobile browser fine for you?
  2. Which screen would you open most?
  3. What do you check every week that isn't in the list?
  4. If your publication is free with no paid members, does a members first dashboard sound right, or would you still want revenue front and center?

Posted Aug 4, 2026, 9:02 AM UTC

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