Table 2.

Major themes regarding app use for smoking cessation, with corresponding illustrative quotations.

Themes		Illustrative quotation
Suggested ways apps could support a quit attempt
	Providing ongoing motivation		“I think it’d be cool if you can be able to, like, challenge someone else who was trying to quit smoking, but like a buddy, right? But it’s through the app. And they could be thousands of miles away, but you got that one person...” [Group 5 Participant 2]
	Increasing awareness of smoking patterns		“Tracking when you smoke, the times you smoke, how much a day you smoke, what led you to smoke that much. Like, I feel like those are all helpful things to know” [Group 4 Participant 1]
	Providing distraction		“Yeah, ‘cause when you’re having a craving, you just look at it [the app] and maybe it’ll tell you, like, uh, go for an hour run, or you know, tell you some sort of structure to keep your mind off of you smoking. Something to keep you busy, keep your hands busy...” [Group 3 Participant 1]
App limitations in supporting a quit attempt
	Lack of external accountability		“...how is this going to know when I’m smoking a cigarette or not? I can just say I’m not...and then I’ll be sitting there smoking a cig, you know” [Group 2 Participant 4]
	Possible triggers		“You’d have to use, like a code word for cigarette so people don’t think it in their heads because once they think ‘cigarette,’ they’re more likely to smoke” [Group 2 Participant 3]