An Argentine kid didn't get the Among Us theme: a desktop-customization app did 810k installs in a week, via paid ads and swapping disguises

An Android desktop-customization app called Theme Widgets: Icons & Themes went from 450k to 1.26M installs between Oct 29 and Nov 6, and topped the Personalization free chart in the Netherlands, Sweden, Thailand and France at #1. The product itself is no different from the veteran apps with hundreds of millions of installs in its category. Its rating is 2.1, and most of the one-star reviews complain about ads and apps that can't be uninstalled. It got this far because of a factory that churns out apps by number: pick a category that's already proven, relist it under a new name, push hard with paid ads, then earn the money back with high-density ads. Below is how it works and whether you should take the same route.

A one-star review written entirely in caps

On Oct 28, a user in Argentina gave it one star in all caps: "NO ME DANEL COSO DE AMONG US SOY FAN DE ZEYDAX Y NO ME LO DAAAAAAA" (roughly: "They didn't give me the Among Us thing, I'm a fan of Zeydax and they just won't give it to me!") (Google Play review, 10-28)

Zeydax is a YouTube creator who makes Among Us content, with 304k subscribers and single videos that routinely pull over a million views. The person who wrote that review was most likely a primary-school kid. They installed the app after seeing an ad for an Among Us theme, and then found nothing like it inside.

The day before, another one-star review in the same store said it more bluntly: "no aparece lo q dice el anuncio" (what the ad promises doesn't show up) (10-27). The day before that: "cuando la vi me parecía buena" (I thought it looked good when I saw it), but after downloading it there were ads everywhere, the phone slowed down, the home screen was messed up, and "I almost couldn't delete it, I had to go find it in the Play Store to uninstall it" (10-26).

These three reviews pretty much sum up the app: users come in from ads, they're kids, and once installed they get bombarded with ads.

What it is

An Android desktop-customization tool that bundles wallpapers, icon packs and widgets (photos, clocks, calendars, weather, battery, quotes) into "themes" you apply with one tap. The store page lists styles like minimalist, anime, cyberpunk, K-Pop and neon, with "thousands of widgets and icons, 4K wallpapers updated daily" and "no launcher setup required." The store marks it as containing ads, with in-app purchases from $0.99 to $19.99. The developer is listed as Menly.

Android already has several apps like this at massive scale: Themepack 123M installs, iControl 44M, ThemeKit 62M (Google Play install counts, 11-06). Its store description is almost the same template as these.

How it grew

Start with the numbers (the cumulative installs and rating counts Google Play publishes):

Between Oct 31 and Nov 3 it jumped by 200–300k every day or two. After Nov 3 it added only 70k in three days, clearly slowing down.

The store lists the first release as Oct 23, but it isn't two weeks old. Its privacy policy page says "Effective date: August 14, 2026" and is signed "MenlyGame." The Play developer page used to be called "Apps para Android de MenlyGame" and was later renamed Menly. Changing the developer info resets the store's first-release date. Third-party estimates of its history start in Aug 31: about 100k at the end of September, up 110k in a single day around Oct 8, and about 450k around Oct 28 (AppstoreSpy estimate). So the real story: launched in mid-August, spent two months climbing to 450k, then scaled up paid acquisition in late October and nearly tripled in a week.

Three reasons to believe the installs were bought:

• Users say they came from ads. The reviews above all say so.
• Step-function spikes. Organic word of mouth doesn't add 430k in two days and then suddenly stop.
• Abnormally few ratings. 623 ratings for 1.26M installs, roughly 0.05%. Themepack is at 1.1%, Themie at 1.1%, and even iControl, which also buys heavy user acquisition, is at 0.28% (Google Play, 11-06). That suggests most installers are one-time users: they install, see a few ads, and uninstall. How many came from rewarded videos or accidental taps isn't visible from outside (inferred).

I couldn't trace which ad network the installs came from. Meta's Ad Library has no results for it. Several similar Themepack pages collectively run 200–300 ads, and iControl has 130 ads. Google and TikTok's ad libraries don't show it either (TikTok only shows European campaigns). Given that the reviews come from Spanish-speaking kids who are fans of Among Us YouTubers, the most likely source is rewarded and interstitial ads inside casual games, through networks like Unity, AppLovin or Mintegral, where kids are abundant and CPMs are low (inferred, not verified).

There's no off-store buzz at all. Searching TikTok for "theme widgets app", none of the first 20 results are this app; they're all iScreen, Themie and Themebox. On X there were 30 posts in 0 days, and no media outlet has written about it.

The rest of its traffic comes from the charts. Personalization is an easy category to top in small countries. It has charted in 28 stores' Personalization free charts, reaching #1 in the Netherlands, Sweden, Thailand, Singapore, France, Poland, Taiwan and Argentina, but it has never made the overall free or top-grossing chart in any store (Google Play charts, 10-29 to 11-06). Stacking the words Theme, Widgets, Icons and Themes in the name is also a way to game store search.

Where the money comes back

The privacy policy lists Google AdMob (with mediation), Meta Audience Network and Unity Ads as ad SDKs. It has never made a top-grossing chart, so in-app purchases are probably small and nearly all the money comes from ads.

The reviews show how dense the ads are: "I breathe and it throws up 67 ads" (10-30, one star, though this reviewer also says "the rest is fine"); "I touch anything and an ad pops up" (10-29, four stars). Worse, from Oct 26 to 31, more than a dozen of the 32 text reviews from Argentina describe the same things:

• "It won't let me uninstall" · "It changed my whole home screen without asking"
• "Notifications keep coming even when I turn them off; I only got rid of it with antivirus software"
• "It shows fake system alerts saying your phone has a virus and pushes you to install cleaner apps, and those apps are in on it too" (10-26)

This is no longer just "too many ads." They're using the desktop, notifications, and even uninstall flows as ad slots. The play is clear: make ad revenue per install exceed the paid acquisition cost, and pocket the difference. The price is a rating of 2.1, with almost all sub-five-star reviews being one-star (1 stars: 403, 5 stars: 164, 4 stars: 0), and the developer account could be reported and pulled at any time.

The same factory, with IDs up to t039

Its privacy policy is hosted on a Firebase-hosted URL: t025---themewidgets.web.app. Following the "tNNN" prefix turns up a set of sibling apps with different developer names and random Gmail contact addresses:

(Google Play,11-06)

Third-party records for these apps start in mid-September, but their store launch dates all cluster between Oct 19 and 26, as if they were modified together in one batch. That means one company is running several developer accounts, with IDs up to 39, cloning categories that are proven on Android one by one and buying traffic for each. The ones that run get more budget, the ones that don't get dropped (inferred; the prefix and timing line up, but who's behind it is unknown). Theme Widgets is just one of the ones that's doing relatively well. The one that's doing even better is the control-center app.

Who it's competing with

On top of that, phone makers ship their own: Google's wallpapers and styles, Samsung's Theme Store and Good Lock, and the theme stores from Xiaomi and OPPO all come pre-installed. On iOS, iScreen and Widgetsmith live off organic traffic from "home screen makeover" tutorials on TikTok, which is a different path from this one.

In short: this street already has a pile of veteran shops with hundreds of millions or tens of millions of installs. This one is the newest storefront. It sells the same goods, but with denser ads and creative that leans harder on kids and game IP.

If it were you

The verdict: You can learn a playbook of "factory cloning + paid acquisition + ad arbitrage" from it, but it doesn't pay off with this particular app. Theme packs are a red ocean, and its spread comes from harassment-style ads and hard-to-uninstall design. If you copy that, you'll be swapping disguises forever.

Who it suits: Teams that already have Android paid-acquisition and ad-monetization experience, plus several developer accounts and a creative pipeline, who want to treat it as a sample of whether this category still pays back today.

Who it doesn't suit: Solo indie developers; people without a paid-acquisition budget who want to grow through word of mouth or content (on Android this category's organic content traffic is nearly nonexistent, so everything is bought; the organic content is on iOS); anyone unwilling to touch uninstall-proof apps or fake virus alerts. These break Play policy, and getting caught can get your whole account banned.

How to do it: If you must enter, don't build another identical theme pack. The worthwhile gap is what it leaves undone. First, do real content: almost nobody on Android makes "desktop makeover" tutorials, and the iOS players survive on exactly that. Second, make themes for a niche audience, like the official-feel theme packs for a specific anime, K-Pop group or gaming community, with better creative than the factories and ratings above 4. Use ASO and chart placement to catch the long tail. Watch IP licensing, since that's the fastest route to a takedown.

How to get users: For speed, use in-game rewarded and interstitial ads, and first test in countries where the Personalization bar is low (the Netherlands, Sweden, Thailand, Singapore). A few hundred thousand installs can get you into the #1 spot. For something steadier, make local-language "Android desktop makeover" videos on TikTok and YouTube Shorts. Spanish, Portuguese and Indonesian content is nearly empty right now.

When to wait: There's no rush. The category has been stable for several years. It isn't about to close, and no new window is about to open.

What would mean you misread it: (1) It and its sibling apps get taken down within 30 days, which means Play is cleaning up this pattern and the cost of the factory playbook needs recalculating. (2) Its slowdown after Nov 3 was only a pause, and it's back to 100k+ a day in December, which means the ad arbitrage margin is thicker than it looks and the category still pays back on paid acquisition. (3) A new theme pack reaches a million installs on Android within three months with a rating of 4 or higher on content rather than paid acquisition, which means the "do it properly" route is open and worth entering earlier.

Data and sources

• Installs, rating count, star distribution and chart positions: public Google Play data, 2026-10-29 to 11-06. The history from August to October is AppstoreSpy estimates.
• Store page: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.themewidgets.icons.themes (11-06 read: 1M+ downloads, 2.1 rating, 655 reviews, contains ads and in-app purchases, 11-02 update).
• Privacy policy: t025---themewidgets.web.app (effective 2026-08-14, signed MenlyGame, lists AdMob, Meta Audience Network, Unity Ads).
• User reviews: Google Play Argentina store, 10-26 to 10-31.
• Zeydax channel: youtube.com/@z3ydax (304k subscribers, 11-06).
• Ad spend: Meta, Google, TikTok (Europe only) ad libraries, checked 11-06, no records; not finding it doesn't mean they didn't spend.
• TikTok search, X search: 11-06.
• Where it says 推断 or 估, it's inference or estimate. For the ad network, single-install cost, and who runs the factory, there's no direct evidence.