New App Store submissions nearly doubled in the first half of 2026 compared to all of 2025, driven almost entirely by the vibecoding boom, but downloads grew just 2%. The App Store added roughly 560,000 new apps in the first six months of 2026, compared to 600,000 for all of last year. Downloads reached 17.6 billion in the same period, up only 2%. Apple told WWDC attendees in June that the store is now receiving over 1,000 app submissions every hour. The term vibecoding was coined by OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy in February 2025 to describe using AI to generate code from natural language prompts. The New York Times profiles a software engineer in Chicago who built his first app, InfoDrizzle, which got 1,300 downloads and made about $500. His second app, Stampa, released in May 2026, has been downloaded 20,000 times and made around $3,000. Apple’s relationship with vibecoding tools has been contradictory since early 2026. In March, Apple blocked Replit and Vibecode from pushing updates, citing a rule that apps cannot change how they function after passing review. In April, Apple pulled Anything, an AI app-building app, after co-founder Dhruv Amin was told it violated Guideline 2.5.2; the app was eventually reinstated. Apple’s public position