Memo Launched the Same Year as a Rival With 904,000 Installs. In the US, Germany, France, and Italy, It's Invisible for Almost Every Memory and Brain Keyword Tested.

Memo - Memory & Brain Training

Siarhei Keller

★ 5.0 (3 reviews) View on the App Store →

Memo - Memory & Brain Training shipped in 2024, is translated into eight languages — English, French, German, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Ukrainian, and Belarusian — and shipped a version update as recently as October 3, 2026. It has 3 reviews and roughly 100 estimated lifetime installs. BrainGain - IQ Brain Training, a near-identical pitch (adaptive brain games, 5-minute daily sessions, memory and focus training) that also launched in 2024, has 22,139 reviews and an estimated 904,000 installs. Both apps sit in the same App Store category. Checking why the gap is this wide turns up a search-visibility problem, not a product one.

What Memo actually does

Memo is a quick daily brain-workout app: math challenges, memory sequence tests, a color-matching reaction game, and a focus exercise, each designed to take under 5 minutes. It tracks streaks, adapts difficulty to performance, and supports multiple profiles so a family can share one install. The pitch is explicitly "quality over quantity" — fewer menus and modes than the bigger brain-training apps, built for a commute or a coffee break. Nothing about the feature set looks unfinished; the app is 63 MB, requires iOS 16.4+, and the release notes mention account syncing and profile customization shipped recently. This is an actively maintained app with almost no audience, which is the more useful signal than "small app, few reviews" on its own.

Chart position: not where this niche gets found

Memo doesn't appear in the Education top-free chart's top 100 in any of the four markets checked:

That's not unusual for this niche — Education's top-free chart is dominated by language-learning apps (Duolingo, Babbel, Praktika), AI tutors, and kids' content. Out of the US Education top 100, only two brain-training apps crack it at all: Elevate - Brain Training Games at #28 (544K reviews) and Impulse - Brain Training at #29 (850K reviews). Both got there on scale built over years, not category browsing. For a brain-training app with 3 reviews, chart rank was never going to be the way in. Search is where this niche actually gets discovered, and that's where the real gap shows up.

Search visibility: the main problem

Search Rank is binary before it's a number. Apple's index either matches your app to a term or it doesn't — a null result means "not indexed," not "ranked low." Here's where Memo lands on the obvious English terms for its own category, across five countries:

Two things stand out. First, Germany returns a null result on every single keyword tested, including local-language terms (below) — despite Memo's listing being translated into German. Second, Memo isn't indexed for its own name, "memo," in four of the five markets. "Memo" is a generic English word that collides with dozens of note-taking and voice-memo apps, so this may be a crowded-term problem rather than a metadata bug — but it still means typing the app's own name into search in the US, Germany, Italy, or the UK won't surface it.

Italy is the simplest case: Memo was never localized into Italian, so a null result across the board there is expected, not a gap. Germany and France are the real issue — both are supported languages, and both come back almost empty.

The German and French gap isn't just English keywords — it's the local words too

It's possible Memo is indexed for the right terms in German and French, just not the English ones tested above. Checking the actual local-language words closes that door:

Those aren't dead terms with no demand behind them. Pulling real App Store autocomplete for "Gedächtnistraining" in Germany returns "gedächtnistraining kostenlos," "gedächtnisspiele, gedächtnistraining spiele," and "gehirn- und gedächtnistraining" — ten live suggestions, meaning people type this word into App Store search regularly enough for Apple to autocomplete it. The French seed "jeux de mémoire" returns "jeux de mémoire pour adultes gratuit," "jeux de mémoire enfants," and "jeux de mémoire pour seniors" — same signal. The demand is there in both languages. Memo's listing — translated UI, untranslated App Store metadata — just isn't matching it. That's the classic gap: the app got localized, the App Store listing's title, subtitle, and keyword field didn't.

Head-to-head: BrainGain, same launch year

BrainGain - IQ Brain Training launched in 2024 too, pitches an almost identical feature set (adaptive games, memory and focus training, 5-minute sessions), and is localized into 20 languages including German, French, and Italian. Checking the same keywords for both apps in the US and Germany:

Is the demand even there to chase?

Google Trends for "brain training" and "memory games" in the US both run the same shape over the last six months: a peak in late May/early June (57 and 95 out of 100), then a steady slide down to 13–27 by early October. The top related query is "training the brain" and "what is brain training" — generic, informational searches, not app-store-ready buying intent — and the rising queries skew toward "best brain training apps 2022/2023" roundup searches rather than anything Memo-specific. None of this rules out building here, but it's worth knowing the US search interest in the category is trending down, not up, right now. That raises the bar for how sharp the keyword targeting needs to be — there's less rising tide to be carried by.

What this means for Memo, and for anyone localizing an app into new EU markets

• Translate the App Store listing, not just the app. Memo's UI is in German and French; its title, subtitle, and keyword field read like they're still in English-only mode. That's the single highest-leverage fix here, and it doesn't touch the product at all.
• Use the actual local words, not translated English phrasing. "Gedächtnistraining" and "jeux de mémoire" both have confirmed App Store autocomplete demand. Checking autocomplete before writing metadata beats guessing at a direct translation.
• Don't localize into a market you haven't set up to be found in. Italy returning null everywhere is expected — Memo was never translated there. If Italy isn't a priority market, that's fine; if it is, it needs its own listing, not a gap.
• Treat Germany as a from-scratch indexing problem, not a ranking problem. Zero out of nine keywords tested — English and German — means Apple's search index hasn't matched this app to the category yet. That's a metadata-and-time fix, not a one-word tweak.
• Watch the declining Trends line before committing more ASO effort to the biggest, most generic terms. "Memory test" and "cognitive training" (where BrainGain already sits at reachable ranks) may be a better near-term target than the flatter, more crowded "brain training."

Data pulled from live App Store chart and search results, plus Google Trends, via Pumf.it on October 4, 2026. Google Trends values are a rolling window and can shift as more recent weeks are added. This is a read of public App Store data, not a critique of Memo as a product — it's a functional, actively updated app. The gap described here is a listing-localization and search-indexing issue, not a feature or quality problem.