Guide · July 2026
ASO on your Mac, not in a browser tab
A native Mac ASO tool can keep your keyword research, ranking history, and ad performance close to the work of building your app. Here is what to look for, where Veldo fits, and when another tool makes more sense.
What native actually buys you
- Your data stays yours. A native tracker can keep every rank snapshot, spend figure, and credential in a local database on your machine. Check each tool's privacy policy to understand what it stores locally and what it uploads.
- Updates through macOS notifications. Rank crossings, competitor moves, and new reviews can reach you while you work.
- It works while you work. Collection runs in the background on your machine and on your schedule: no tab to keep open, no daily login to remember.
- It composes with developer tools. A native app can ship a CLI and an MCP server, so your scripts (and your AI agents) can query your keyword data directly.
What to look for in a Mac ASO tool
Whatever you pick, the checklist for a serious native tracker in 2026 looks like this:
- Daily organic rank tracking, with enough storefronts to cover your real markets
- Apple Search Ads popularity data, since Apple offers no public API for it
- Reverse ASO: what keywords any app on the store ranks for
- Some answer to "what did this keyword cost, and what did it earn?"
- Alerts, so movement finds you instead of the other way around
- A privacy story you can verify, not just a promise
The honest landscape
Two options to compare are Astroand Veldo. Astro is a native rank tracker with wide Apple-platform coverage. Veldo combines iOS keyword tracking with Apple Ads spend and RevenueCat revenue estimates, then gives each keyword a verdict: bid, pause, or double down. We wrote an honestside-by-side comparison if you're choosing between them.
Why we built Veldo this way
Veldo exists because rank alone never answered the question that matters: which keywords deserve your budget. Everything else follows from making that answerable on your own machine: unlimited keywords in 60+ storefronts, spend and revenue attribution, competitor and rank alerts, on-device translation, a metadata editor with live keyword coverage, and a CLI + MCP server for automation. Your database never leaves your Mac.