Meta pushes Muse hard and the app surges

Muse crossed 3.4 million downloads as of Thursday, according to Sensor Tower, a jump of nearly one million installs in a matter of days. The September 8 launch delivered 2.8 million downloads in its first two weeks, an average daily growth rate of 55% — double what ChatGPT posted in its early days — while Claude and Grok both saw downloads decline during their comparable launch windows.

Estimates vary. Apptopia puts total downloads at 4.3 million, with 2.6 million on iOS alone. Appfigures sees roughly 2.3 million installs, split almost evenly between iOS and Android. The gaps stem from different measurement methodologies, and all figures are limited to the United States and Canada, the only markets where the app is currently available.

The more telling signal came from Sensor Tower: daily active users jumped 27% on Wednesday, immediately after Meta Connect wrapped. At the conference Meta unveiled a slate of upcoming features — video chat with the Muse avatar, support for Mac computer use, a dedicated email address, additional connectors and partners, and planned integration with smart glasses. The full effect of those announcements has yet to show up in download numbers, which lag by several days in practice.

Muse hit number one in the U.S. App Store on September 18 and on Google Play a day later, and has held the top spot since. A substantial share of the growth is organic, but Meta is running the same cross-promotion engine that propelled Threads to 500 million monthly users. Connor Hayes, head of Threads, told Business Insider the approach differs: Threads leaned on user-generated content for promotion, whereas Muse aims to surface a concrete action the agent can perform for the user, based on what Meta knows about their preferences.

Home-screen ads began running on September 9, the day after launch. Within ten days Muse had claimed the bulk of Meta's internal promotion inventory, edging out Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. In parallel the company started advertising on Reddit, TikTok and YouTube. By September 22 Muse ranked among the top ten brands by ad spend, per Sensor Tower. Yet those ads accounted for only 6% of total impressions through September 19, evidence that organic reach still carries the bulk of the weight.