Aligned with the global trend of smartness, China has invested heavily in over 700 smart city projects across over 500 cities. Hundreds of smart city apps, initiated by local authorities, have so emerged in the daily lives of Chinese citizens, but anecdotal evidence showed that these official apps have many problems and deficiencies. This study captures a snapshot of current development and problems of official smart city apps in China. A total of 333 such apps, together with 15754 comments, were collected, reviewed and analyzed. The results showed that China’s smart city apps fall into three application areas, i.e. smart transportation, smart healthcare, and smart livelihood, of which each provides some promising features and services. However, a range of functional, interface, design, usage and service-related problems were found in these apps. This paper concluded that further to the very efforts on infrastructure and hardware, local authorities in China and worldwide need to pay more attention to smart apps, in order to maximize potential return of their smart city investments.