I only star projects to remind myself to go back and consider them on a desktop later.

Open source was never about metrics or downloads. It was about pride in one’s work. Are you proud of your work? If so, then you have succeeded — no validation of stars, upvotes, likes, or forks is necessary.

Have you ever thought that the average Joe who downloads your app probably has no clue what GitHub is? If you want your stars to go up, you need to target developers, not users.