We made it to Issue #145! Thank you to everyone who read last week’s issue

Today is a double special day! First off, I’m spotlighting a dear friend and amazing human being. And second…

I’m announcing a new product! Or service? And you all are the first to publicly hear about it 😊 This newsletter was never meant to be a channel for my own projects. I’ve mentioned a few times that it was meant to connect and inspire indie developers, and one of them is me. I’ve tried my hand at making consumer apps and while I’ve had fun making them, I could never really get any of them to stick with me. I had fun building them but then I didn’t really have a vision for them. I think I realized I was trying to push myself into the wrong indie path. I wouldn’t change any of it since I’ve learned so much, but it’s time to change it up to something that I truly love and something that I know well… and that’s developer tools 😏

I’ve made countless SDKs and CLIs over the years. The best known would be fastlane since 2015. I’ve also made my own Sentry Android back in the day and have even been contracted to work on their official iOS SDK. And for the last four years I’ve been working at RevenueCat on every one of their SDKs for StoreKit 2 integration, Google Billing Library integration, CI/CD, and remotely configurable paywalls. I keep gravitating towards developer tools. I always need to personally use the things I build and I think that’s why this happens. So now it felt natural to just create my own.

So it’s time to announce… Mostly Good Metrics!

It’s a simple analytics tool for indie apps where you drop in an SDK, track events, and see funnels and retention without turning analytics into a whole other project. I wanted an analytics platform where I don’t have to overthink what to track or spend time translating dashboards into meaning, and figured some of you might want the same thing.

Even though I spend most of my time in the mobile world and specifically iOS and Swift, I’m much more of a generalist developer with a lot of my years doing web. I’ve always enjoyed end-to-end work with frontends, APIs, and SDKs. I’ve also always enjoyed infrastructure. Mostly Good Metrics scratches the itches of an analytics tool that I want to use with all of the types of platforms that I enjoy connecting up.

So why am I announcing it here first? Because I’m excited! I started Indie Dev Monday back up to get inspired to build things again. I honestly thought it was going to be a mobile app. I was wrong. Getting back into the indie space drove me into the path of a SaaS?

There’s a free tier if you want to try it out, and I’m offering early beta pricing for the first 100 folks who want to lock in a lower rate. I’m still early in this journey so I’d love any feedback or ideas you have. And with that… It’s now time for the star of this issue!

Today’s issue features Adrian Eves!

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Today’s Spotlighted Indie Devs

📆 Today I’m featuring Adrian Eves.

👉 Please make sure to follow them or support them anyway you can! 😇 I’m excited to share their indie dev stories.

Indie Dev

Adrian Eves

@swifteves

@swifteves@mastodon.social

Mobile, Alabama

Creator of Pediapal and Auralog

Pediapal: Child Health Monitor

Auralog: Migraine Tracker

Adrian Eves

Q&A

1) What is your name? Where do you live (city or general area)?

My name is Adrian Eves, and I currently reside in Mobile, AL.

2) Introduce yourself. Education? Background? Main job? Interests outside of tech? Interests inside of tech?

For most of my childhood, I actually wanted to be a writer. Truth be told, I think I always felt a desire for creativity – be it writing music, drawing cartoons, or crafting puzzles for my friends. I initially went to study English at school but about a semester in, I knew it wasn’t for me. I then thought my purpose in life was veterinary medicine, which we all have a good laugh about now. My whole life, I’ve been drawn to computers and what you can do with them, and I loved Steve Jobs’s sentiment on the power of personal computing, so it never occurred to me that I could do something I love as a profession. I used to make builds every two weeks for a mod of Super Smash Bros Brawl, Project M, with requests from the folks in my residence hall. One night, while I was supposed to be studying for an exam, I was crunching the next update because I didn’t want to disappoint. My friend sat across from me and finally told me that I’m in the wrong field and Software Engineering is a major they offer. The very next morning, I switched my major and never looked back. Considering how much I loved the sentimentality of Steve Jobs about computing, it’s a no brainer that I became an iOS developer, but it was an uphill battle to finally get a paying job, including a role where I had to be an Android developer for a year and half!

3) When did you start considering yourself an indie developer? Was there a moment where it clicked that you wanted to build your own things under Aberfeldy Studios?

I’ve always wanted to be an Indie Developer. I have friends like Ryan Ashcraft, Jordan Morgan, Charlie Chapman, Christian Selig, Tyler Hillsman, Mustafa Yusuf, and Devin Davies to whom I’d always say things like, “I’m going to ship an app this year, I know it!”. Except it took me a couple years to find something that mattered to me personally, a puzzle to solve, which came in the form of Pediapal. (Thank you for indulging those years of inaction, folks!) As I started building the app, I knew I needed my own business, so I quickly picked a name, which ended up being Aberfeldy because of Ed Sheeran’s song, “The Hills of Aberfeldy”, and Studios, because I knew I wanted the freedom to make apps and anything else that came to mind (plus I love Marvel Studios). And then I drew a little mascot, an avocado named “Cado”. And it all felt like one perfect click moment.

4) Pediapal - As a parent of two kids, I totally get the need for something like this. What’s the story behind Pediapal? Where did the idea come from?

So I have three young children, and I work from home, so a lot of their medical care falls to me. And let me tell you, it can get overwhelming in the blink of an eye. So I basically made Pediapal to manage this for me. I had probably twenty notes on my phone with scattered weights and heights, dosing instructions, and everything else a pediatrician would need to tell me. It was a golden moment because I finally had a problem to solve. If you don’t know me, I’m extremely into puzzles. So once I had the much needed puzzle, I built it over the course of a few months, and I was finally able to have something in one place for my partner and me to use as a single source of truth. It’s really nice having all of my kids, their vitals, illnesses, and medications all in one spot, especially considering how proactive it aims to be. At the end of the day, it solved a problem for me and therefore gave me the stepping stones to an indie journey.

5) Pediapal - Building something that deals with health data, medicine reminders, and keeping multiple family members in sync sounds like a lot of moving pieces. What’s been the most challenging part of building Pediapal?

The hardest part of Pediapal was the CloudKit stuff 100%. For those of you who are skilled in CloudKit, I applaud you and respect you deeply. It’s been a hard thing for my mind to grasp, even now. The sharing feature might not have happened if it weren’t for Mustafa’s MYCloudKit, a framework that made syncing so easy. Mustafa was so patient with me and got on calls with me to help make sure things worked, and I couldn’t be more grateful. If you’re struggling with CloudKit, I highly recommend adding this to your project! Recently, the hardest part of Pediapal has been organising my time more intentionally, but that’s something I’m trying to improve by setting aside time to work on new features and applying more testing to catch tricky bugs.

6) Pediapal - I love that you can generate reports to hand to the pediatrician. That’s the kind of feature that makes me go “why doesn’t every health app do this?” 🙂 Are there any features you’re particularly proud of that users might not immediately notice?

So it’s funny you mention the report. My partner used to send me texts before I’d go into an appointment that detailed everything going on with our kids, but with a much-needed medical perspective. It made me think, “Hey, everyone should have a little pocket Mary” and that’s basically what that feature’s inspiration was. One thing that I’ve seen a lot more people gravitate towards are the Care Plans, which have been reworked to help families get in routines and even protect those routines when entrusting care to other folks like educators and extended family members. I really liked the redesign I did over the summer, but for reasons you might not think. I pushed hard to adopt Liquid Glass, and I somehow snowballed into this expectation that the design alone would start driving up users a lot more. It didn’t, and I was pretty crushed. But it got me looking at things realistically. These things take time and hard work, especially if you’ve never done it before. So that shifted my mentality into a more grounded vision of “build intentionally and be surprised”. My other app, Auralog, could not be what it is now without that much needed lesson.

7) Auralog - I try to pay pretty close attention to what folks are building and this one seemed to come out of nowhere! What’s the story behind Auralog? How quickly did this come together?

Truth be told, I built Auralog because I was a little mopey about my lack of overnight success with Pediapal, but the idea really solidified on a train ride. I have suffered from migraines for almost my entire life, and there are so many apps out there that make it an absolute chore to log your migraine data. I wanted a pretty, ADHD-friendly approach, so I built it around the idea of a user exerting the least amount of effort possible. I built Auralog in a little under a month, and I had a bet with a friend (if you’re reading this, you know who you are) to finish it in time or I’d have to pay for my own ice cream next time we hung out! This was another case of solving a personal problem, but this time I wanted to start it by doing just one thing exceptionally well. It was the antidote to that funk I was in, and I’m surprised at how well this one has been doing thus far.

8) Auralog - I love that you can just tap to log a migraine and fill in the details later when you’re feeling better. And then Apple Intelligence pulls out the triggers from your notes automatically? That’s such a thoughtful approach 🤯 How did you land on that design?

At the end of the day, I want to build things that are genuinely helpful towards others, so this is definitely an extension of that wish. Migraines are awful and come in many forms, so I want to be as accommodating as possible. Ultimately, I landed on this design for two reasons: the first being that, when you have a migraine, the condition varies from person to person, but a lot of the time, you’re in great pain or dysfunction. The last thing I wanted to do when adding a migraine to an app was subjecting myself to a bright screen that would just attack my eyes and intensify the pain. I wanted something you could just tap and pretty much throw your device in a corner until you felt well enough to care about the extra details. The second reason is that I have a hard time forming new habit loops, so I wanted the process to be as frictionless as possible so that way you’d get the things you need to know with a fraction of the effort.

9) Auralog - What’s the response been like so far? Any feedback from users that surprised you or changed how you’re thinking about the app?

The response has honestly been totally unexpected. I get people writing to me about it, and I have ranked in a few countries on the App Store, which is completely surprising to me because it’s the first time I chilled out enough to let myself ship something and grow it like a little flower. The app is doing well in several ways, but the way that matters most to me is when these users who write to me are able to easily identify the intentionality I put into development. I am so grateful that these users are trusting me with this problem, and it also makes me feel like I’m not alone with this condition. The future for Auralog is so bright, and I cannot wait to continue iterating on it. I do get quite gleeful when I see someone submitted feedback in the app for something they’d like to see.

10) You’re running Aberfeldy Studios as both an indie app label and a consultancy. How do you balance client work with building your own apps? Does one fuel the other?

I’d say I handle this in seasons. I tried doing just one of these things solely at a time, and it ended up being quite stressful, so I try to take a more balanced approach now. I’ll do work for other folks, but I’ll also save time for my own apps. I’m not at all perfect at this even now, but I’m getting better as I go. They both help each other go, though. The consultancy gives me the ability to afford to have time to work on my own apps, and at times, the apps give me the ability to not have to stress as much about finding clients between contracts. I would eventually like to focus exclusively on my own apps while allowing the consultancy aspect to be handled by junior developers to help them gain job experience that’s hard to come by these days.

11) I noticed Aberfeldy Studios mentions “apps, games, and perhaps everything in between” - so you’re into game development too! Are you working on any games or is that something you’re hoping to explore more? What draws you to the gaming side of things?

While I’m always passionate about helping people and communities with the apps I build, I am still working on games, but it’s been very slow at the moment. I’ve struggled with balance for projects over the years, and I think I’ve settled on something that works for me. I want to spend the next year or so really working on my apps so they generate enough income to where I can carve out plenty of time to dedicate to my own games, because I think game development is intrinsically a part of who I am. If I got to the end of my life without shipping a game, it would be a serious regret; however, you’ll be able to see some of my work sooner than you might expect if you know where to look!

12) What has been the hardest part of being an indie dev? What’s the most fun part?

To me, the hardest parts about being an indie developer are accurately forecasting times, managing hyperfocuses, and really maintaining self-discipline and organisation. These are all things that I struggle with as a part of my ADHD. I will be so honest and share that I’ve not yet truly triumphed over these things. Perhaps it’s not a one and done accomplishment sort of thing, but I know there’s still work to be done there. My favorite part about being an indie developer is the unbridled creativity that comes with it. I get to intentionally make every choice that I ship, and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired about that. And I cannot wait until I get to dedicate more time to my games because then I’ll get to express ideas that other people can muse upon as well. I’m a very community-driven person, so I hope I’m building community wherever I am.

13) What’s next for Pediapal, Auralog, or any other projects you’re working on? Anything you can share with us?

Auralog is an easy answer because I’m steadily working on feedback I’ve received from users to make it more useful to them, and I’ve got a nice amount to keep me busy until the Spring. For instance, users have requested the ability to add what medicines they feel work for them. Pediapal has some exciting things coming, as I’m going to make it even better for help with infants. It’s a really exciting time to be developing apps, and I’m just really happy to be able to do it. To create without restraint is such a rewarding experience.

14) Do you have any other indie devs that readers should follow / lookout for?

I have loads of folks who would be absolute delights to meet. If you haven’t talked with them already, I highly recommend Danijela Vrzan and Danny Behar. We’ve really worked hard over the course of the last year, and we try to challenge each other to grow as indies to the best of our abilities. I also think that Chris Lindsay and Paul Hudson are great folks to talk to because Paul has shipped his game, Hacktivate, which is nothing short of outstanding and creates some fantastic puzzles that will actually teach you things, and Chris has been doing incredible work with Nihongo, Nihongo Lessons, and recently Transcrybe. My core friend group is really made up of iOS Developers, so I could recommend for days on end, I’m sure. But Indie Dev Monday is already such a lovely thing, and you’re doing amazing work with it.

Thank you to everybody who made it to this footer! You either spent the time to read or took the effort to scroll 😊

Make sure to visit https://indiedevmonday.com/subscribe to get an email of future issues!

And go to Twitter and give @IndieDevMonday a follow… or multiple follows if you manage more than one Twitter account 😜

We made it to Issue #144! Thank you to everyone who read last week’s issue ❤️

Where Are They Now?

Today’s issue is a special “Where Are They Now?” issue where we catch up with a previous Indie Dev Monday guest! This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now but I never felt like I had enough indie developers or enough time has passed where it made sense. Well… it turns out that after 143 issues and like 5 years, that is the perfect amount of time for this kind of issue 😉

This first “Where Are They Now?” is a special one. I mean, every issue is special but this is someone that truly is special…

Back in Issue #3, we featured Mustafa Yusuf. I think I first got introduced to Mustafa from some random tweet and I thought his app, Tasks, looked really neat. And I just honestly needed someone that would say yes to being in a random new newsletter and Mustafa looked desperate enough to say yes. Wait, what?! Did I really say that? 🙊 I did but that is because I’m now very close with Mustafa where this is generally just how we interact with each other 😇 I was able to spend time with Mustafa in India this past September and he is one of the smartest, kindest, and most genuine people that I know. I had no idea that in Issue #3 that interview would end up in a friendship on the other side of the world where we now see each other a few times a year. But enough of the mushy gushy stuff…

Let’s see what they’ve been up to since then!

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Catching Up With…

📆 Today I’m catching up with Mustafa Yusuf.

👉 Please make sure to follow them or support them anyway you can! 😇

Indie Dev

Mustafa Yusuf

@mufasaYC

@mufasayc@mastodon.world@

Mumbai, India

Indie dev turned tiny indie studio. Building Tasks and Karo with a remote team of 3 in India.

Tasks: Todo Lists & Projects

Karo: Tasks & Todo List

MYCloudKit

Dragula

Mustafa Yusuf

Q&A

1) For readers who weren’t around in 2020, give us a quick intro. Who are you and what do you build?

Hi, I’m Mustafa. I’m 5 indie years old (turning 6 this June).

I build two apps: Tasks and Karo (both are task managers)!

Tasks is my main app (you might recognize it by its fun, lickable, rainbow-candy-esque logo). After watching how people actually used Tasks, I realized something: a lot of tasks involve other humans (who would have thought?).

So I built Karo, an app that lets you send tasks to anyone in your contacts. Karo then politely… or not-so-politely… reminds/nags them via WhatsApp or Messages and they can complete it right from there. They don’t even need the app! Cool, right?!

2) A lot can change in 4+ years. Walk us through what’s happened since we last talked.

I went from a solo indie dev to a tiny indie studio. We’re now a remote team of three, all based in India. I also added two more kids to my personal “portfolio” (clearly scaling in all directions).

On the indie side: I lost focus for a bit. Tasks was doing well, but I kept thinking, “What if I recreate Tasks’ success with a new app?” So I kept starting new apps instead of doubling down on the one that already worked! Now it’s just Tasks and Karo!

I’ve been working with Apple to visit universities across India, speaking to students about indie dev life. These universities have an iOS Development Center, and I try my best to inspire students to build and ship their own apps.

Oh I also shipped a conference - Swift Bharat in India which is in my eyes (and as per the event feedback survey) was a wild success!

3) You’re a dad now! How has that changed how you approach indie dev?

I was a dad then… I think? Maybe the kid was still in beta when we last spoke. Today I have a 5yo, 3yo, and 1mo!

Early parenthood is chaos. Later, it becomes… structured chaos? I’m incredibly grateful for the systems (aka family) around me that let me keep building.

The biggest shift: I’m way more intentional with my time. Now, before building something new, I ask:

• Does this make sense?
• Is there a market?
• Will I still want to maintain this in 5 years?

That said… I really want to build an education app for my kids. Is it a good business idea? Probably not. Is it an excuse to code while my kids wireframe designs? Absolutely. Peak parenting!

4) You were excited about Mac, Widgets, Watch, and Siri. How did that play out?

Wow, I shipped all of it, and honestly, nailed it!

• Mac app: Huge win. Paid off way more than I expected.
• Apple Watch app: Hardly anyone uses it… but if I may brag, it’s one of the most complete independent Watch apps out there. Almost all of the main app functionality, on your wrist.
• Siri support: Built it twice thanks to AppIntents. Character-building experience.

Fun surprise: Tasks gets featured more on the Mac App Store than iOS, and Mac users are far more likely to pay.

5) What’s the biggest thing you’d tell 2020 Mustafa?

Add analytics.

I had that idealistic indie mindset: “I track nothing. My privacy label is pristine.” That’s just building blind. I wish I’d added anonymous, reasonable analytics from day one. Not creepy stuff, just enough to understand how people actually use the app. I only added analytics recently, and wow. The number of users and the impact Tasks has was something I never fully grasped before. Those numbers now drive me every day.

6) Does your advice about product-market fit and listening to users still hold?

100%. No change. Listen to users. Always.

I still reply to emails promptly. I still ship improvements based on feedback. And those users? They stick around and bring people in! Some of the people I email/chat with today have been with Tasks since launch, over 5 years ago. That’s everything.

7) One feature you’d mass-delete (or time you wasted)?

Tasks on Vision Pro! (jk, it took 24 hours, and I’m low-key proud it was on the App Store on day one)

Honestly, I haven’t wasted much time on features inside Tasks or Karo. But I’ve wasted a lot of time on apps I never shipped. Now, every time I hit Xcode → New Project, I try to think it through. (emphasis on try :P)

8) What’s next? What are you excited about heading into 2026?

• Massive updates to Tasks (to become one of the finest task managers out there)!
• More open source - I’ve been extracting internal tools into packages to help me ship faster and break fewer things. Recently launched MYCloudKit and Dragula.
• ARCtic Conference (February) - I’ll be doing something with CloudKit, and yes, I’m extremely excited. Get your tickets if you haven’t?
• Deep Dish Swift 2026 - I’m planning to swing by!
• and Swift Bharat 2026 👀
• maybe a new app?!

2026 is shaping up nicely 🚀

This was a “Where Are They Now?” interview. Read Mustafa Yusuf’s original interview in Issue #3.

Thank you to everybody who made it to this footer! You either spent the time to read or took the effort to scroll 😊

Make sure to visit https://indiedevmonday.com/subscribe to get an email of future issues!

And go to Twitter and give @IndieDevMonday a follow… or multiple follows if you manage more than one Twitter account 😜

We made it to Issue #143! Thank you to everyone who read last week’s issue ❤️

Today is the day! This issue (if you are reading via email) is being sent by Substack… I really hope this made it to all of your inboxes 🤞

If you want to read in the Substack app or follow along there too, here’s the link:

👉 indiedevmonday.substack.com

But besides that, I want to say that it feels soooooo good to be bringing Indie Dev Monday back! A good amount of you have reached out to me to let me know the joy these issues have been bringing you 🥹 It’s also been bringing me joy as well! I look forward to Mondays and finding new indies to interview. It’s also reignited my spark for indie dev projects so… stay tuned for those 😉

Anyway… it’s time for this week’s indie and it’s another good one! 👇

Sponsored

Deep Dish Swift 2026 — Chicago's premier Swift developer conference, April 12-14, 2026. Join us for 1/2 day of indie development talks, 2 days of Swift and iOS talks, a live podcast recording of Launched, and more!

Today’s Spotlighted Indie Devs

📆 Today I’m featuring Engin Kurutepe.

👉 Please make sure to follow them or support them anyway you can! 😇 I’m excited to share their indie dev stories.

Indie Dev

Engin Kurutepe

@ekurutepe

@@ekurutepe@mastodon.social

Berlin, Germany

Creator of SolarWatch and XCBabel

SolarWatch

XCBabel

Engin Kurutepe

Q&A

1) What is your name? Where do you live (city or general area)?

My name is Engin (g like GIF). I was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey, and I’ve been living in Berlin for almost 20 years.

2) Introduce yourself. Education? Background? Main job? Interests outside of tech? Interests inside of tech?

I studied electrical engineering in Istanbul and came to Berlin for a PhD on multi-camera video compression and streaming. I was deep into MPEG and H.264/265. Then the iPhone happened. I couldn’t afford one as a broke PhD student, but when the App Store was announced I thought, I’m already writing code all day anyway, how hard can learning Objective-C be? Turns out there’s a big difference between breaking your own research code and breaking code for thousands of users.

Long story short, I never finished the PhD. I worked various iOS jobs, did a lot of contracting, co-founded a company, built a few apps of my own, and now I’m a product manager at RevenueCat. Outside tech, aviation is my thing. I’ve been flying gliders since 2013 and I’m working toward my single-engine license. My eventual goal is a commercial license so I can fly professionally on the side.

3) Have you ever considered yourself an indie developer?

Yes. Absolutely. I’m an indie dev by passion. Since my PhD days, that direct feedback loop from users, the good, the bad, the “why is this broken?”, has been addictive. Building something people enjoy and voluntarily pay for is a joy that never gets old.

4) What got you started/interested in creating your own applications outside of your “normal” job?

At the time I was building the Berlin office for Keepsafe. The CEO told me, “If I see you commit code on Github, you’re fired.” So I did the logical thing and wrote code on evenings and weekends instead. That’s how my indie projects were born.

5) How do you balance your time between friends/family, work, hobbies, and indie dev?

Poorly. The only strategy that works for me is being very clear about priorities and aggressively ignoring everything else.

6) SolarWatch - The golden hour is sacred to photographers. Is this what sparked your interest in creating SolarWatch? If so, do you have any pictures you’ve captured with the help of SolarWatch or do you have any that your users have captured?

SolarWatch wasn’t solving a problem so much as ambushing me. I was on the couch watching TV with my wife when the idea for the SolarWheel visualization hit me. I grabbed my laptop and started building immediately. The first version had a much more instrument-like aesthetic. I shared an early prototype on Twitter and the one and only Matt Davey came back with the color palette that defines the app today.

7) SolarWatch - SolarWatch has over 500,000 downloads. That’s a lot of people watching the sun! What do most people use SolarWatch for? What’s the most unexpected way you’ve heard someone using the app?

Everything from planning photo shoots to staying in sync with daylight to checking whether their future home gets enough sun. SolarWatch went from a tiny side project to a widely used app after Apple featured the SolarWatch Widgets during the iOS 14 release when the Widgets were introduced.

8) SolarWatch - Map mode and AR mode feels like magic when you’re scouting a location. But behind magic is usually some crazy technical challenges. Were these planned in your initial idea for SolarWatch? And was there a moment where you thought “this might be impossible” before you got it working?

Not planned at all. SolarWatch started in 2017 as a small utility and grew feature by feature. AR mode was particularly tough because ARKit wasn’t designed to render objects at infinite distance. It has a hard cutoff, so getting the sun projection to feel correct while pretending it’s infinitely far away required some creative math.

And even without AR, time, date, and time zones are notoriously unintuitive. I usually tinker at the edges and improve what’s already there, and every once in a while the suns align and I ship a bigger feature. I have plenty more ideas… and very little time.

9) SolarWatch - Sun tracking seems simple on the surface, but I imagine there’s wild complexity underneath (time zones, daylight saving, regions where the sun doesn’t rise or set for months). What are some of crazies edge cases you’ve had to cover? How do you test them and do you think you’ve covered them all?

The fun bugs come from “almost right” date and time logic. Someone from an edge-case location will email me a wonderfully specific bug report, and I love them for it. Recently, someone north of the Arctic Circle reported that during the winter when the sun never rises, the twilight labels were correct but the SolarWheel rendering froze on the first day without sunrise.

Luckily the iOS simulator lets me pretend to be anywhere on Earth.

For real-world testing, I once drove from Berlin to Tromsø, Norway in December to check if AR mode works at nearly 70 degrees north. It does:

10) XCBabel - So XCBabel is a developer tool for localizing Xcode projects using AI. This is super relevant right now with all the AI stuff happening. What made you want to build a localization tool? Was this a pain point you experienced yourself with existing tools out there?

SolarWatch ships in many languages. Before LLMs, I used DeepL to translate my strings files. It worked but was painfully manual. When Apple introduced String Catalogs, I finally built the tool I’d been wanting: XCBabel. I’ve been using it privately long before releasing it. It scratches my own itch and taught me a lot about SwiftUI on macOS.

11) XCBabel - Developer tools live or die by how well they fit into developers’ workflow. What’s your philosophy on how XCBabel should fit into a developers’s existing process? Do you want it to be invisible, or something they actively engage with?

I experimented with versions that plug directly into builds or run as a fastlane plugin. They’re convenient but take away the ability to review translations. I like that XCBabel has a UI where you can see all languages at once, search, review, and adjust machine translations. A pure CLI would lose that.

I’m also considering a small web service where users can rate translations and suggest fixes. A bunch of web tools do this, but I want one that works the way I want.

12) You’ve been in the iOS community for a long time. How has indie development changed since you started? What advice would you give to someone just getting into indie dev today?

The community is wonderful, full of kind, supportive people. As for being an indie dev, it spans a huge spectrum. Maybe you just want a creative outlet. Maybe you want to build the next Flighty, Widgetsmith, Overcast, CardPointers, Slopes, or Art of Fauna.

The key is not comparing your journey to someone else’s highlight reel. Build something you want to exist. Ship it. Share it. Hand out early TestFlight builds. Push it through App Review. Celebrate the wins. Don’t be crushed if your first app vanishes into the App Store void. Keep going. Decide if you want a business or just a hobby. The learning process is worth it (and sometimes very humbling) either way.

13) What’s been the hardest part of being an indie dev? What’s the most fun part?

The hardest part is getting people to notice your app. Promotion is tough for me. It’s always easier to retreat into code and improve the product. I think a lot of indie devs struggle with this, so maybe it’s my resolution for 2026.

The best part is user feedback. A thoughtful email from a user can make your day. Negative feedback is great too: it means someone cared enough to write. The only truly painful response is silence.

14) What’s next for SolarWatch, XCBabel, or any other projects you’re working on? Anything you can share with us?

SolarWatch is overdue for a design refresh. I’ve heard many times that the main UI is confusing for non-techies, so I’m working on prototypes to address that.

For XCBabel, I want a user feedback system for translations.

The next launch, though, is Readback: an ATC communication training app for pilots. It helps new pilots learn radio basics by talking to an infinitely patient controller, and lets experienced pilots practice. I presented an early version at an AI Tinkerers meetup in Berlin and got so much good feedback that I tore the whole thing apart and rebuilt it. I aim to ship it before the end of the year. Now that I said it publicly, I guess it’s official.

15) Do you have any other indie devs that readers should follow / lookout for?

Hidde and Pol are doing excellent work with Helm. Klemens is on fire with Art of Fauna and Art of Flora. And a shout-out to Gabriel Hauber for being one of the earliest XCBabel users and giving great feedback.

Thank you to everybody who made it to this footer! You either spent the time to read or took the effort to scroll 😊

Make sure to visit https://indiedevmonday.com/subscribe to get an email of future issues!

And go to Twitter and give @IndieDevMonday a follow… or multiple follows if you manage more than one Twitter account 😜

We made it to Issue #142! Thank you to everyone who read last week’s issue ❤️

Quick little update from my side! I’m most likely switching the email-sending side of Indie Dev Monday over from Kit to Substack. Kit (ConvertKit when I started) has been great, but it’s really built for bigger newsletters now, and Indie Dev Monday doesn’t need all that extra stuff… or the cost that comes with it.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be migrating everything over to Substack. Your email subscription will move automatically — you don’t have to do anything — and issues should still show up just like always, just in a slightly different format.

If you want to read in the Substack app or follow along there too, here’s the link:

👉 indiedevmonday.substack.com

But again: you don’t need to sign up or change anything. This site will remain as well. Just a little behind-the-scenes housekeeping to find a setup that fits me better and my attempts to grow Indie Dev Monday.

Okay, I think that’s mostly everything I needed to talk about today ☺️ As I mentioned in last week’s issue, with the help of AI I’ve been able to improve a lot of the automation around Indie Dev Monday. I have a new draft system where I can easily queue up indie devs so I should never feel like I’m falling behind. And some of the tedious parts (gathering all the data I need and formatting it) are now done by the robot, which means… my job is really just talking to indie devs and clicking the publish button 💪

Now… on to this week’s indie!

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Today’s Spotlighted Indie Devs

📆 Today I’m featuring Chris Hefferman.

👉 Please make sure to follow them or support them anyway you can! 😇 I’m excited to share their indie dev stories.

Indie Dev

Chris Hefferman

@heffertron

Dorset, England

Creator of Game Hub, Drone Map, Food Hygiene UK Ratings, and 9 other apps

Game Hub

Drone Map

Food Hygiene UK Ratings

Chris Hefferman

Q&A

1) What is your name? Where do you live (city or general area)?

Hey 👋 I’m Chris and I live in a small town called Wimborne Minster in the UK. Wimborne is a quaint market town with coffee shops and cafe’s aplenty, and only 20 minutes away to the beautiful south coast.

2) Introduce yourself. What’s your background? Education? Past work? What do you enjoy inside and outside of tech?

An Apple fan-boy since the original iPhone, I never thought I’d have the privilege of working with Apple products for a living. After my wife and I got married in New Zealand in 2018 (in Hobbiton no less 🧙) I decided to focus on my then un-interesting career in Test Management to something I was more passionate about - learning to code!

As I hadn’t come from a conventional educational background in programming, I took the self teaching route, learning from Apple resources such as “Everyone Can Code” and Sean Allen’s amazing YouTube videos and courses.

After releasing two apps to the App Store (a Lord of the Rings quiz and a Google Adsense and AdMob tracker) and three years of late night coding alongside having two young children I landed my first job as an iOS Developer at a wonderful company called GCN in October 2021 who were excellent at teaching me the ropes.

I currently work full time as an iOS Developer, but still have the itch for a full time indie life!

Outside of tech I love spending time with my two kids and wife, gaming, flying my drone, playing the guitar now and again and of course, even more coding on my side projects! 🤦‍♂️

3) You currently have 12 different apps in the App Store — which is incredible. How did this portfolio come together? Are you someone who follows inspiration quickly, or was this intentional from the start?

Thanks! To be honest, at the start, I always thought I’d just have one or two apps, and focus on those - but as time went on, I had other ideas for apps I wanted to create and so (most of them) naturally came to be.

I say most, as a few are also a way for me to experiment with trends, or wanting to learn different technologies that might not necessarily fit into an existing app.

I love creating them, and I still get enjoyment when submitting new apps, and even new versions to the App Store, so although 12 does seem like a lot more than I was initially planning on setting out to create, I think there’s definitely many more in me!

4) With such a large collection of apps, how do you decide where to focus your time and energy? Do you follow data, user feedback, your own excitement, or something else?

It’s a mix of all the above really - I am definitely someone who can easily get fixated on a problem, or something I’m not particularly happy with in an existing app, and so I’ll focus my energy on that quite quickly.

I’ll also keep an eye on which of my apps are performing well and pivot to working on those to see if I can capitalise on that. I currently have a very large Trello board with different labels for each app so I can keep track of what needs doing across my portfolio, but then sometimes that goes out the window if I feel excited about a new app idea or feature that I want to work on.

Sometimes it’s just about working on something fun!

5) Game Hub — What inspired the initial concept? Was there a pain point or a moment where you thought: “This really needs to exist”?

This app, or at least, the idea of this app was what got me into coding in the first place - so it’s definitely an app that is special to me.

In 2015 I came up with the idea for the app as nothing really existed in the App Store at the time that combined sorting out your gaming backlog, along with social aspects of reviewing and rating games. Unfortunately, at the time I didn’t know how to code! At that time in my life my first child was born and so I put any learning to code on hold as having children is a bit of shell-shock at the beginning!

Fast forward seven years and after working as an by 2022 I had been working as an iOS Dev and I finally knew how to make the app 😆. I was itching to start working on some side projects again, and so I decided to put it into action.

As well as that we were leaning towards a VIPER architecture at work, and I wanted a project at home that I could use to learn more about that architecture, and so that was really the motivation by that point - to work on something outside of work and something I was passionate about, but also teach myself more about VIPER.

6) Game Hub — What’s been the most challenging part of building or maintaining it, either technically or in terms of content/community?

I think the most challenging part for me until very recently was the general architecture of it.

As mentioned, when I set out to make it in 2022 it was written using VIPER, however fast forward three years and I wanted to re-write the entire app’s architecture away from VIPER towards something easier to manage for me.

This must have taken around 2 months for me to complete, and the apps binary still has a lot of old un-used code in it that I keep meaning to rip out, but it’s definitely a lot simpler to reason about now without the use of Presenters, Interactors and Repositories.

I don’t want to get into an architecture discussion (always a hot topic!) but at the time it served me very well at work to learn more about VIPER, so I’m not knocking it at all, but I think for a side-project it was a little overkill and slowed down my development process.

7) Drone Map — What led you to create a mapping tool specifically for drone pilots? Were there features or limitations in existing options that pushed you toward your own solution?

I’m a keen drone pilot myself and love finding new places to fly, or visiting one’s I’ve been to before with great scenery. I found myself jotting these places down in a note, but one thing I thought would be cool is if there was somewhere a community of drone enthusiasts could share places they’d flown on a map for others to see.

I’m still working towards building a community, but so far users have shared over 100 spots across the world, which is super exciting. I’ve recently added some new features such as no-fly zones, weather forecasts and saving other users’ places to your own list to visit to make it even more useful for users.

8) Drone Map — What has surprised you the most while working on geospatial data, flight zones, or mapping features?

I think one thing I struggled to grasp the most was “clustering” the locations so that your UI doesn’t fall over when it has so much data to present. It took me quite a while to fine tune my work so that it felt like a smooth user experience, but also a helpful one by not clustering too much.

9) Food Hygiene UK Ratings — This is such a practical app with real-world impact. What motivated you to build it, and what’s your approach to keeping the data trustworthy and up to date?

Thanks! The motivation for me building this app was to help my wife on I deciding where to eat when we go out! My wife had a kidney transplant 14 years ago, and so although generally well at the moment, we do need to be careful of the hygiene of places where we eat so that she doesn’t get unwell.

In the UK we have a government run agency called the Food Standards Agency that all establishments by law that offer food here have to be rated a score between 0 and 5 on the general food hygiene standard as well as some slightly more in-depth measurements such as confidence in management, hygiene & safety and structural requirements.

The agency offer their data via a very easy to use API, and although there were already some apps that offered this information, for me they looked a little dated. I took this app as a small test bed into using iOS 26’s Liquid Glass (love it or hate it!) and wanted to create something simple but useful to use.

10) Food Hygiene UK Ratings — Are there any features or future improvements you’re especially excited about?

My wife and I are foodies and love eating at nice places whenever life with two young children allows (which isn’t that often!). However, I had hoped to integrate some sort of Michelin Star rating to the establishments as well. Sadly I’m not sure that’s going to be feasible as I don’t see an API available for me to use.

I have also considered the idea of integrating ratings from Trip Advisor, which there is definitely an API for. The downside of this might be that it takes the app away from its original intent of being a simple easy place to find official ratings and so it’s something I might consider A/B testing.

Food for thought! - Sorry, I couldn’t resist 🫠

11) You also have nine other apps — from bird hides to truck stops to watch faces. Is there a common theme behind the kinds of problems you’re drawn to solving?

I’d say my apps generally try to draw a line between some really useful applications, to also throwing a few of them at the wall and seeing what sticks. I want to make sure all my apps are reputable though, and useful in someway to my users.

I take a lot of pride in great UI as I definitely think that is where my strength lies and to help with this I have created myself a shared package that I use in all my apps to keep things looking on brand and helps me make things re-usable to speed up development!

12) Across your less-active apps, is there a small feature or detail you’re particularly proud of that people might overlook?

One of my less actively developed apps I have is an app for MiniDisc Player enthusiasts.

I’m a kid from the late 80’s / 90’s and I absolutely loved my MiniDisc player and I wanted to create an app that recreated that tactile / physical feeling of using one.

I tirelessly designed four separate players using SwiftUI shapes, borders, shadows and overlays to present the most realistic looking players I could achieve. It picks up your Apple Music playlists, and displays them as discs that the user can drag into the player, which then gives the user some really nice haptic feedback as if the disc is being read by the player.

As well as this there is some UI on the player display such as the battery level (which mirror’s your iPhone or iPad’s battery level), a small spinning disc icon which was painful to create in SwiftUI and also some very subtle reflections on the screen. I also even allowed the user to drag the metal slider on the discs themselves which snap back into their original place when the drag gesture ends with a really satisfying haptic feedback and audible “click”!

I doubt much of this is noticeable in isolation to the user, but I think it definitely adds to the overall immersion of using a MiniDisc player and it was important to me to get right, and I loved playing with SwiftUI and pushing it to it’s limits!

13) What does your tech stack look like across all 12 projects? Do you have shared components or internal tools that help you move quickly?

My tech stack looks very similar across my apps as I like to build quickly, and re-use where possible, and so keeping to things I am familiar with enables this.

I have my own Swift package that I pull into most of my apps which saves time on me not having to create reusable views and ensures where needed that my apps stick to a brand. It also means that when I learn new things or improve my UI and UX such as onboarding or paywalls, I can simply update my package once and then update across the apps and it’s done.

For any user data persistence I’m a Firebase devotee. I love how easy it is to set up, how simple the code is to read and also the speed in which you get the data. I appreciate it has some downsides and I wish sub-collections could be fetched with the same read request as the top level collection, but it’s a trade off I’ve been happy to make.

Other notable tools I use in my app development include:

• RevenueCat
• Astro
• RocketSim
• Vivid (lifesaver when you’re outside!)
• Claude Code
• Sketch
• Sora

14) What has been the hardest and most rewarding part of indie life for you so far?

The hardest part definitely for me is getting the right balance in my life on spending time on my apps. I work full time as an iOS Developer, and right now do not make anywhere near enough revenue from my apps to become a full-time indie developer (the dream for sure!).

Therefore balancing my time between full time work, spending time with my family, keeping on top of life admin, and not wanting to take myself away to spend all my spare time on my apps to chase the full time indie dream is challenging.

That niggling feeling when I’m relaxing watching a movie, or playing a video game, that I should be doing something with my app portfolio can be hard to suppress, but I also want to make sure I don’t get fatigued with app development. So I do find that hard to balance.

15) What’s next for Game Hub, Drone Map, Food Hygiene UK Ratings, or any of your other apps? Anything you can share?

My general app lifecycle of switching between creating something new, or honing and refining my existing apps. I’m currently in a honing mode, and I’ve spent the last month really brushing up the user experience on Game Hub.

I also want to experiment with marketing, or rather, feel like I probably should! At the moment, Other than ASO research, I do very little in terms of marketing and it’s not quite getting the results I would like to see and so I think some social media marketing could also help drive some downloads to my apps.

Unfortunately I’ve always been terrible at social media - I feel weird posting about my own work, and I think I need to work on distancing myself from that feeling and just putting it out there to see what lands.

16) Are there any indie developers you think readers should follow or keep an eye on?

Absolutely! The iOS Developer community is such a welcoming and supportive place, and I genuinely don’t think I’d be doing what I do now for a living if it weren’t for many of those supportive developers.

Firstly a big thank you to you for giving me the opportunity to take part in the newsletter - it’s been a staple in my selection of newsletters, and I’m super glad you’re in a place where you feel you can bring it back.

In no other particular order, I’d love to highlight the following people:

• Sean Allen
• Ben Sullivan
• Stewart Lynch
• Shihab Mehboob
• Taiwo Omisore
• Stephen Dixon
• Rudrank Riyam
• Anum
• Ben Harraway
• Christian Selig
• Jordi Bruin
• Adam Lyttle
• Aivars Meijers

I’m sorry if I’ve missed anyone I’ve interacted with over the years, but the iOS Developer community is brilliant, so thank you to everyone!

Thank you to everybody who made it to this footer! You either spent the time to read or took the effort to scroll 😊

Make sure to visit https://indiedevmonday.com/subscribe to get an email of future issues!

And go to Twitter and give @IndieDevMonday a follow… or multiple follows if you manage more than one Twitter account 😜

We made it to Issue #141! Thank you to everyone who read last week’s issue ❤️

This is absolutely something I would say… if we actually did have an issue last week. But it’s been 665 days since Issue 140. I couldn’t let it get to 666, so here we are 😇

But why? Why did I abruptly stop Indie Dev Monday, and why am I starting it again now? Well, I’ll answer that…

I do the things I do because I enjoy them. I find personal value in them. I find future value in them. I find community value in them. So, story time…

At the height of the pandemic, the world felt very dark. Days and weeks blurred together, I was losing my sense of community, and I needed some indie dev inspiration. Indie Dev Monday became my solution. It gave me something to look forward to on Mondays. I got to talk to over 160 indie developers from all over the world and hear new perspectives on nearly everything. It changed my life and, surprisingly, it changed a few others’ lives too (which I never expected).

But then in 2023, I abruptly stopped the interviews. I half-tried to bring them back in 2024. So, why the stop-and-start?

Because I had a major life change. I took on too many things. The personal reasons behind Indie Dev Monday started shrinking compared to everything else I had going on, and it started to feel like work. And my goal is for none of my projects to feel like work. I never want to have to fight myself to keep doing them.

And that brings us to today. I’m able to manage my life and priorities much better now. Indie Dev Monday has the trifecta again: personal, future, and community value. And honestly, I’ve been fighting myself the past few months not to start it back up again. Also, let’s be real, today’s AI makes it way easier for me to get my thoughts out without stressing about spelling or grammar (which I hate). So the fun-to-friction ratio of Indie Dev Monday is officially much higher!

And with that…

WE ARE SO BACK!

Today’s issue features Klemens Strasser!

There are some developers whose work you can spot instantly. Not because they shout about it, but because everything they make feels unmistakably theirs. That’s always been the case for me with Klemens. Every time he ships something new, I find myself smiling at how thoughtful, warm, and human his apps feel. They make you want to slow down, explore, and genuinely appreciate the craft behind them.

I’ve wanted to feature Klemens in Indie Dev Monday for a long time, and after the 665 day break, it felt like the perfect moment. So here you go…

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Today’s Spotlighted Indie Devs

📆 Today I’m featuring Klemens Strasser.

👉 Please make sure to follow them or support them anyway you can! 😇 I’m excited to share their indie dev stories.

Indie Dev

Klemens Strasser

@klemensstrasser

@klemensstrasser@mmastodon.social

Graz, Austria

Indie app developer

The Art of Fauna

PocketShelf

Klemens Strasser

Q&A

1) What is your name? Where do you live (city or general area)?

Hey, I’m Klemens and I live in Graz, Austria. Graz is Austria’s second-biggest city, has a lovely old town, and with Schloss Eggenberg, a beautiful castle with gardens that is just ten minutes away from me, where I can do my daily walks!

2) Introduce yourself. Education? Background? Main job? Interests outside of tech? Interests inside of tech?

I first went to a technical school (HTL Bulme) in Graz to learn electrical engineering and low-level programming. I then went on to study computer science at the Technical University of Graz, quickly finished my Bachelor’s and not so quickly finished my Master’s there.

I started tinkering with my own apps during my studies, worked as a developer at Flexibits and then Nuki, and can now call myself a full-time indie!

Outside of tech, I enjoy cycling, love spending time in nature, and spend unreasonable amounts of money on speciality coffee.

3) When did you start considering yourself an indie developer?

I think in 2014? It was right after the release of Elementary Minute, the first game that I actually released to the App Store. Two weeks into its release, a colleague at uni asked me how the game was doing. I said, “Fine? I make like 7€ a week off it”. And he said, “That’s amazing, so it pays for lunch once a week!”.

This conversation was when I first felt like an indie :D

4) What got you started/interested in creating your own applications outside of your “normal” job?

For me, the applications came before the “normal” job. But I need to go one step back first.

As a kid, I loved playing video games! I always told my mum that one day I wanted to build my own game. And that almost stayed a dream forever. I found out early how brutal the games industry can be and deemed it unreasonable to follow that dream. So I decided to go into the software industry instead. I went on to study computer science for this.

Then one day, I had the idea for my first game. And then for a second one. I thought I could learn Apple technologies to build out these projects. Because that way I could learn about how to build apps and thus, land an actually paying job as an iOS software engineer. And that is what actually happened. I released Elementary Minute, went on to win a Student Apple Design Award with it, met the people from Flexibits (Fantastical, Cardhop) at that WWDC, and landed my first job there.

I kept on building these games and apps on the side until eventually, they became my main source of income.

5) Art of Fauna - What was the spark behind Art of Fauna? Was there a moment when the idea clicked and you thought, “I need to make this”? Did you see this art somewhere a thought you wanted to showcase it in a neat way or were you looking specifically for this kind of art style?

I stupidly scrolled through Instagram and ran into the feed of the Biodiversity Heritage Library. They scan in very old books that were used for scientific research in the past and make them available for free to everybody. When I first saw the feed, I just couldn’t stop scrolling. These images were so gorgeous. I knew I had to build something around it.

Back then, I was playing a bunch of puzzle and cozy games. From Patterned to Alba: A Wildlife Adventure and A Short Hike. And I had the idea to use this dataset to build a puzzle game that emits the similar feeling to those cozy games.

6) Art of Fauna - Giving a portion of each purchase to selected wildlife conservation organizations is an amazing thing to do! Was this always your intention when making Art of Fauna? How do you choose which organization(s) to give to? Are there any unexpected hurdles or things that could be improved with giving a portion of proceeds like this?

Pretty much, yes. For once, I felt inspired by my friends at Broken Rules, who do something similar with their game Gibbon: Beyond the Trees. But the fact that I got these beautiful animal pictures for free played a huge part in it. I felt like I had to “compensate” for that. And I just loved the idea that drawing of animals from the 18th and 19th centuries can be used in a project today to play a tiny part in ensuring the preservation of those animals in the future.

As for choosing - For now, it was just organisations that I researched and felt like are doing an incredible job. But people can also suggest organisations in the app that they are passionate about!

One hurdle I wasn’t aware of at first is that I can claim my tax benefit only when supporting certain organisations in Austria. That definitely hasn’t stopped me from supporting others, but I just honestly would love if the rule wouldn’t apply.

7) Art of Fauna - What part of building Art of Fauna surprised you the most — either creatively or technically?

Definitely the whole mechanic of the two-sided puzzle game. In Art of Fauna, you can always switch between the traditional image puzzle and a text-based puzzle. This was done purely because I needed a way to make it accessible to VoiceOver users. The idea was that these users could use the text side to solve the puzzle with VoiceOver, while people with i.e. cognitive disabilities could stick to the image side.

But the surprising part was how valuable that was to everyone else. If you got stuck on the image side, you could flip to the text side and continue the puzzle there— or vice versa. And also, you could just stick to the text side if you want to learn more about an animal. By reading these facts over and over again, they engrave themselves into your brain. And I would have never expected this when first building the feature.

8) Pocket Shelf - Pocket Shelf’s welcome/onboarding is one of the most fun and friendliest I’ve ever gone through 😊 The first screen being accessibility settings really shows that you care (and all apps should do this). After that, the warm personalized feels and gaining a library card had me hooked. What are the requirements for yourself with onboarding? What is your process liked? Do you start with onboarding, end with onboarding, or shape it as the rest of the app shapes up?

First, thank you for saying that ❤️

But I usually start with building the core experience in an app, so what the user is doing most frequently in it. You would call it the moment-to-moment gameplay in a game, I guess? But for PocketShelf, it’s tracking your reading sessions, making notes, and adding books.

And after that works, I try to see what can be pulled into an onboarding to make this core experience better.  If there isn’t anything, other than the accessibility settings, then the onboarding will be very short. But for PocketShelf, it makes sense to nudge the person into adding their first book - so that they can start tracking it right away.

And the library card, for example, is just a fun thing to add some personality and show them that we care about details and doing fun things.

10) Pocket Shelf - Do you have a favorite small detail or feature in Pocket Shelf that people might not notice right away?

I love that the signing of the PocketShelf membership card is not restricted to the name field. Like in a paper card, you can just scribble anywhere, anything on there. We won’t stop you.

And I have one on my to-do list that I still haven’t gotten around to building. When you first read a book in PocketShelf, it adds a little bookmark to the cover. But in the future, the cover should get a little scratch for every time you read it. First, this will look very subtle, but noticeable after a while. To make it feel like a real book that will look more and more used over time.

11) Design & Aesthetics - Your apps all share a really recognizable look and feel. How do you think about design and aesthetics when you’re starting something new? Do you have guiding principles, or is it more intuition and iteration?

Not a real guiding principle really for the aesthetics part at least. Here it’s just a lot of researching the domain, intuition, and then a ton of iterations.

For designing things (i.e. how they work), the only real principle that I have is spending a lot of time trying to nail the core experience or mechanic of each app. Like refining the puzzle mechanic in Art of Fauna. Making the learning view in Study Snacks feel right. Making adding and tracking books in PocketShelf feel seamless.

Everything around it then falls into place. I also iterate a lot there, but I also reuse a lot from old projects. There is only so much you can do to make i.e. a settings screen feel nice. And I learned that as long as the initial impression and the core mechanic of your app work really well, people are usually much more forgiving for the rest of it.

12) Indie Life - What has been the hardest part and the most fun part of being a (now full-time!) indie dev?

For me, it’s definitely hard to juggle my time between all my projects. Like Study Snacks still hasn’t gotten the Liquid Glass update, and other apps deserve some long-due love. And there are parts that I just don’t really like doing, from taxes to legal stuff and parts of marketing. But it’s just part of the deal.

I really enjoy the freedom the indie life brings. From being able to jump on a bike in the middle of the day to spending an unreasonable amount of time working on a tiny detail in an app. And that flexibility also allowed me to travel a lot. I’ve been to seven? conferences this year, plus WWDC. And doing this, meeting friends from all over the world regularly, helps with creativity, but also with the loneliness trap that you can fall into when working alone from home.

13) Indie Life - What’s next for Art of Fauna, Pocket Shelf, or any other projects you’re excited about? Anything you can share with us?

Last week I announced Art of Flora, which is a sister app to Art of Fauna, based on the plant world. It’s only going to be released in March, but people can pre-order it right now (Please do!)

As for PocketShelf, we want to finally add statistics, make an Apple Watch app and do more community based things. Many good things ahead!

Art of Fauna is getting extended with more puzzles and updates as well. The most exciting one here comes this week - A puzzle pack that I created together with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Archives in New York to inform people about the Hudson Canyon.

And then next year I want to give some older projects more love (especially Study Snacks, Subwords and Asymmetric) and maybe even dare to try a new app project! We will see.

14) Do you have any other indie devs that readers should follow / lookout for?

How many can I name here? :D I’m fortunate enough to have so many inspiring indie devs as my friends. Without their help and feedback, I definitely wouldn’t have achieved any of this.

I would start with my partner in crime for building PocketShelf - Frank Solleveld. But also my long-time friends Frederik Riedel, who builds One Sec, and Leo Mehlig of Structured. Hidde van der Ploeg and Pol Piella of Helm (and NowPlaying) fame. Everyone probably knows Jordi Bruin, Antoine van der Lee, and Mustafa Yusuf. And then everyone should know Seb “UIKit” Vidal and Nils Bernschneider, who build Duet and Lengo respectively.

Sofia, Cesár, Bobby, Danijela, Dani, Rob, Chris, Chris, Ryan, Andy, Monika… I could go on here for a while. But that’s the amazing thing with our community. It overflows with kind and inspiring people. I love it <3

Thank you to everybody who made it to this footer! You either spent the time to read or took the effort to scroll 😊

Make sure to visit https://indiedevmonday.com/subscribe to get an email of future issues!

And go to Twitter and give @IndieDevMonday a follow… or multiple follows if you manage more than one Twitter account 😜

We made it to Issue #140! Thank you to everyone who read last month’s issue ❤️

Today’s issue features Justin Bianco! Justin is one of the kindest souls you’ll ever meet. He was also yet another indie developer I met at Deep Dish Swift last year 🙂 I actually wanted to feature Justin before I met him at Deep Dish but then that whole Indie Dev Monday hiatus thing happened 😅 But its happening now! Justin makes an AMAZING sheet music app called forScore. I’m no musican so this won’t interview won’t get the best questions on that but I do know an best-in-class apps and indie developers… forScore and Justin are both best-in-class and I’m so happy to feature them in this issue!

Also… are you releasing an app on VisionOS soon? Let me know so I can feature it! Fill out ​this form​ before Monday, February 5th!

Sponsored

Deep Dish Swift 2026 — Chicago's premier Swift developer conference, April 12-14, 2026. Join us for 1/2 day of indie development talks, 2 days of Swift and iOS talks, a live podcast recording of Launched, and more!

Today’s Spotlighted Indie Devs

📆 Today I’m featuring Justin Bianco.

👉 Please make sure to follow them or support them anyway you can! 😇 I’m excited to share their indie dev stories.

Indie Dev

Justin Bianco

@mastodon.social/@ambulephabus

Palm Springs, CA and Vancouver, WA

Creator of forScore

forScore

Justin Bianco

Q&A

1) What is your name? Where do you live?

I’m Justin Bianco, and I currently split my time between Vancouver, Washington and Palm Springs, California.

2) Introduce yourself. Education? Background? Main job? Interests outside of tech? Interests inside of tech?

I was born in South Africa but grew up in the California Bay Area. Before I started forScore, I mostly worked in retail (including a long stint at the Apple Store) before deciding I needed a more fulfilling career that gave me more autonomy. Unprofessionally, I’m a musician and amateur photographer.

3) Have you ever considered yourself an indie developer?

Yes, since I quit my day job in June 2010 and went full time making forScore.

4) What got you started/interested in creating your own applications outside of your “normal” job?

I’ve always been interested in computers and tinkering with things. I dabbled in coding over the years and even when I started making electronic music in my early teens I think I approached it from a systematic, programmer-esque perspective. I’d say I was always interested in creating applications, just not always equipped to do so. Then I bought a book in 2009, taught myself enough to get started and learned the rest as I went along.

5) How do you balance your time between friends/family, work, hobbies, and indie dev?

I don’t! I spent most of 2010-2023 working as hard as I could, as much as I could, to make forScore better at the expense of a social life and my health. Last year I finally cracked and decided I needed to take a longer break and ended up finding a house down here in Palm Springs where I could trade endless months of rain and darkness for sun and a pool. Now I’m trying to find a middle ground–I just leased my first office space so I can have a dedicated place to work and to have a demo setup for visionOS screenshots and videos. It’s a process. 😜

6) forScore - I know almost nothing about sheet music but I do know if I was to start playing music, I would want to use my iPad for it. And it seems like a lot of people agree and use forScore for that 😊 When inspired you to start building forScore? Were you a developer that loved music? A musician that needed a better solution? Or somewhere in-between?

I’m a lifelong musician/composer (I mostly play piano) and when I saw the iPad I instantly knew sheet music belonged on it. Paper is great, it had a good run, but the iPad can enable so much more. The funny bit is that I’m terrible at actually reading sheet music–I thought making a sheet music app would force me to stop playing by ear but that didn’t quite pan out. I know enough to make an app, obviously, but I still mostly play by ear.

7) forScore - I would have no idea where to get started if I was to build an app for sheet music but it looks like forScore is built around PDFs! Have PDFs been common in the sheet music world for a while? Would you now consider yourself a PDF expert? What features in forScore were made easier because of the use of PDFs? Which features were more difficult because of PDFs?

There’s a lot more that you can do with a format like musicXML but a strict technical description of music leaves a lot up to interpretation and can get quite nuanced. I didn’t have the skills or the desire to dive into rendering that, and most people use PDFs anyway, so I decided that I had to bring the technology to people’s existing collections rather than try to force them over to a different format. It made creating forScore very easy since PDFs are so common, but on the other hand forScore has no idea what music is on the page and can’t follow along or play a song for you. I still think the tradeoffs are worth it but I’d say I’m less of a PDF expert and maybe more of a PDF veteran.

8) forScore - The Reflow feature is sooooo cool! Being able to take a whole PDF of sheet music and turn it into a single horizontal scrolling view for the iPhone sounds super challenging but super fun. What were the initial reactions around Reflow when you released it? Did you have an iPhone app before Reflow? Did you see a lot more iPhone installs after this?

Reflow was an experiment designed first and foremost as an accessibility feature, but also to see if an iPhone version of forScore could be practical. Obviously the small screen is not ideal for sheet music but I wanted to make it useful in some way and once I’d made Reflow I was able to introduce “forScore mini” for iPhone which eventually just became part of forScore itself. Like any accessibility feature, I think Reflow is very important to a small number of people and I’m very happy with that.

9) forScore - I noticed that forScore is a paid upfront app but also offers an in-app subscription. How do you like the approach of having both payment methods? How do you decide what features go into paid upfront and which go into in-app subscription?

I’m always looking for new features to add to forScore but it got to the point where features were niche or complex enough that they were confusing average users and making the app too complicated. The forScore Pro subscription gives me a way to include and maintain those features without detracting from the core experience. As with any app, adding a subscription elicits strong opinions but in the end I think the outcome was worth the growing pains.

10) forScore - Not related to forScore at all but… what instruments do you all play and what is your favorite type of music to play? ☺️

Mostly piano, but I’ve also played saxophone, violin, cello, guitar, bass, flute, and I think I’m probably forgetting a few. I usually play my own songs (you can find my music on most streaming services but please please skip the electronic albums, they’re very very bad).

11) forScore - What’s next?! Do you have any fun future features that you can share with us?

I’m just plugging away at visionOS compatibility right now. forScore is a very complex app so it’s taking a long time to make sure everything is working just the way I want. Beyond that, it really just depends on which iPads Apple updates next and whether or not they include any new capabilities I can take advantage of.

12) What’s been the hardest part of being an indie dev? What’s the most fun part of being an indie dev?

The hardest part is knowing that Apple could kill my business at any time, but also just not having colleagues nearby to rely on or share your successes with. The most fun is being able to control your destiny and be proud of what you’ve done.

13) Is there anything else you’d like to tell the indie dev community about you?

I love being a part of this community, please reach out to me if you’re on Mastodon! @ambulephabus@mastodon.social

14) Do you have any other indie devs that readers should follow / lookout for?

I was late to the social media party so I think anybody I could mention has already been mentioned here previously. Basically everyone who went to Deep Dish Swift last year and the few who couldn’t make it. 😇

Newly Released and Updated Indie Apps

Here are some newly released and newly updated apps from this past week! If you would like to possibly see your app in this list, please submit your app to the look at me form 👀

Funnel: Quick Capture Newly Released

Funnel is a powerful quick capture app, which sends your captures instantly to your favorite apps and services. Funnel allows you to have multiple destinations defined for quick capture. So some things you might want to capture to Apple Reminders, like tasks, whereas others you might want to capture as ideas and thoughts to Obsidian or some other application.

Metapho for Mac Newly Released

Metapho is a powerful tool for photo enthusiasts who want to take care of their photo metadata.

Command X Newly Released

Cut and paste files in Finder using Command+X and Command+V instead of having to first copy (Command+C) and then remember to move (Option+Command+V).

My Vinyls Updated

“My Vinyls” introduces new ways to interact and manage your collection of records, and becomes the bridge between vinyls and digital music. Offline support, Apple Music (and soon Spotify) integrations to play with one tap your records, Widgets, and a new way to manage your folders are all to discover in this big 3.0 release.

Thank you to everybody who made it to this footer! You either spent the time to read or took the effort to scroll 😊

Make sure to visit https://indiedevmonday.com/subscribe to get an email of future issues!

And go to Twitter and give @IndieDevMonday a follow… or multiple follows if you manage more than one Twitter account 😜

I first want to give a special birthday shoutout to my wife! She has supported me, Indie Dev Monday, and all of my other crazy things I’ve done over the years. I love every moment I spend with both her and our amazing kids. She is my everything and I have no idea where I would be without her. Happy birthday, love! 🥳🫶

And now… we made it to Issue #139! Thank you to everyone who read last month’s issue ❤️

Today’s issue features Kyle Bashour! Kyle is an amazing indie developer and I was lucky enough to meet in person at Deep Dish Swift last year 🙂 Besides having an incredily awesome app (which you’ll read more about soon), Kyle is also a very giving person. He personally sponsored a Diversity and Student Scholarship ticket to Deep Dish Swift last year. Kyle knows how important and life changing networking and learning can be at a conference and wanted to open up that path for someone else. I’m excited to highlight Kyle’s app, Paku, in this issue but I’m also happy that this issue gets to highlight Kyle and the kind and thoughtful person that he is!

Also.. are you releasing an app on VisionOS soon? Let me know so I can feature it! Fill out ​this form​ before Monday, February 5th!

Sponsored

Deep Dish Swift 2026 — Chicago's premier Swift developer conference, April 12-14, 2026. Join us for 1/2 day of indie development talks, 2 days of Swift and iOS talks, a live podcast recording of Launched, and more!

Today’s Spotlighted Indie Devs

📆 Today I’m featuring Kyle Bashour.

👉 Please make sure to follow them or support them anyway you can! 😇 I’m excited to share their indie dev stories.

Indie Dev

Kyle Bashour

@kylebshr

@mastodon.social/@kylebshr

Portland, Oregon

iOS developer at Mercury and creator of Paku

Paku

Kyle Bashour

Q&A

1) What is your name? Where do you live?

Hey Josh, I’m Kyle! I’m currently living in Portland, but lived in San Francisco for six years before moving here last year.

2) Introduce yourself. Education? Background? Main job? Interests outside of tech? Interests inside of tech?

I grew up in an Apple household, and thought it would be the coolest thing ever to work on hardware like the iPhone. I went to college declaring a major in Mechanical Engineering, but it’s a good thing I also took CS102 my first semester. I realized I hated physics - but I loved coding. I switched to a Computer Science major, and taught myself iOS development using Treehouse and Kodeco (raywenderlich.com back then). So I guess I have a pretty traditional tech background.

I got involved in the college hackathon scene with a few friends, which led to an awesome internship at Yik Yak. I had an offer to go full time when I graduated, but my offer was rescinded literally the day before graduation! That sucked, but it was a good introduction to the world of startups, and at least it makes for a good story.

Luckily, Yik Yak was great at helping folks land on their feet, and since then I’ve been fortunate to work at some well known tech companies in the bay area, ranging in size from 35 to over 10,000 employees. I’m currently working on building the best banking possible at Mercury - we’re at about 600 employees, with a very small mobile team, and I’m really enjoying working at a company that size.

Outside of tech, I love cooking, coffee, cycling, hiking, and playing a game of Valorant once in a while. I was pretty into recording and producing music in high school (I have a song on Spotify if you can find it 👀) and I’d love to get back into that at some point.

3) Have you ever considered yourself an indie developer?

I’ve never been a full-time indie developer, so perhaps it’s an oxymoron - but yes, I do consider myself an indie dev, since I work on solo projects that are fully independent. I like to be involved in the community, sharing and learning from other indie devs, and I don’t think you have to quit your day job to be a part of it or call yourself an indie dev. Some of my favorite indie apps and devs are in the same situation!

4) What got you started/interested in creating your own applications outside of your “normal” job?

It’s probably a common theme, but almost all of my side projects are apps I wanted to build to use myself. The first one I remember making was one to randomize character & car selection in Mario Kart - my roommates and I had gotten so good at Mario Kart Wii that it was the only way to keep things interesting. I got really into playing Codenames, so I built and released a Codenames app called Cypher (this was before there was an official version - I still like mine better, though it only supports local multiplayer).

5) How do you balance your time between friends/family, work, hobbies, and indie dev?

That’s definitely something I wasn’t always good at. During lockdown, I worked on a few too many projects with my then-roommate Jason Eaglin, and got pretty burnt out. Even though it was a ton of fun, writing code all day at work then all evening at home is a recipe for disaster. Since then, it’s actually been pretty easy not to spend too much time working on coding side projects - I only do it when I have a lot of energy and inspiration, and that comes in short enough spurts that I can balance everything else pretty easily. I think going through that made it easy to recognize when I’m on the verge of coding too much and need to do something else for a while.

6) Paku - This is such a great idea and it’s perfectly executed! When did you first get interested in air quality? What were your initial goals with Paku?

I started paying attention in September 2020, when San Francisco turned completely orange due to wildfire smoke. This is a photo from my apartment - zero filters applied.

Everyone started tweeting about https://purpleair.com, and I also stumbled upon the now-defunct https://aqi.wtf, which would load the nearest PurpleAir sensor much faster than the PurpleAir website. Home Screen widgets had just launched on iOS 14, and I thought it was the perfect use-case! I quickly built and shipped the first version within 24 hours. That first version was literally just the widget.

I quickly added a map view, and since then, I’ve added more and more features based on what users ask for. One of the biggest requests was push notifications for changing AQI, which I built using Swift on the server with Vapor. My initial goals were just to have a nice widget for PupleAir. I feel pretty confident saying Paku is now the number one PurpleAir app, which is way more than I expected.

7) Paku - Air quality is something that I’m always forgetting about (you know, since like air is almost always invisible) but Paku has so many ways for me to always keep air quality on my mind with home screen widgets, lock screen widgets, live activities, and a watch app. Have you noticed if any of these types of features helped Paku’s growth or user retention? And have this trophy 🏆 for having such gorgeous widgets and charts! Half the reason I have Paku on my home screen is for the info and the other half is to just make my phone look better!

Wow, thanks for the trophy! I spent a lot of time tweaking those widgets, so I appreciate that.

As far as growth and retention, that’s a good question - I’m pretty sure the biggest reason people use Paku is for the widgets, but that’s been there since day one! I think AQI alerts are probably the other big feature that keeps people around, as it’s the main feature you unlock by purchasing Pro and I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the reception since launching them last year. Live Activities were fun to build, I really wanted to support them, but they get almost no use. I also launched them after the US & Canada wildfires died down this year though. Paku is fairly seasonal, so we’ll see if they get used more this year.

8) Paku - What is Paku’s relationship with PurpleAir? Will Paku only ever work with PurpleAir or do you have plans to integrate with any other types of air quality data sources? Is there any other type of air quality that PurpleAir doesn’t provide that you’d like to show in Paku?

I’ve had the chance to chat with the folks at PurpleAir a few times, and we have a friendly relationship. They’re really great folks who I think were surprised by the wild success of PurpleAir.

I’ve been pretty happy making Paku the best “PurpleAir” app, but I have been thinking about integrating other data sources. PurpleAir is fairly North American-centric, and some users have requested I add support for other data sources. OpenAQ looks pretty interesting, for example. I want to be clear that PurpleAir has been supportive and doesn’t want me to shut down Paku, but what happened with Apollo definitely made me think about it a bit more seriously. It would be a fair amount of work that I don’t feel up for at the moment though, so don’t hold your breath.

9) Paku - What’s been one of the most fun things to build in Paku? What was the most difficult thing?

There’s no single answer to either of those questions! But I think the charts were the most fun things to build. It was one of the first features I built with SwiftUI, and Swift Charts is such a slick framework to work with. I spent a lot of time tweaking the background gradients for the widgets so you can get a sense of the current value at a glance while still providing enough contrast.

Some of the difficult things for me are actually also fun. For example, it can be really difficult doing all the design work when I have no professional design experience or education. I honestly felt like Paku looked pretty amateur until the latest major release, and it’s just very slow at times to figure out what looks good while communicating complex information well. At the same time, it’s fun to flex that muscle and it feels great when it clicks.

Another difficult thing has been doing backend work. Vapor & Swift on Linux make this 10x easier, but I still have to learn how to use Docker, how to safely perform database migrations, and all that jazz. Again, not something I’ve ever done professionally, so there’s a learning curve.

10) Paku - Is there a meaning or story behind the name “Paku”? I tried to dig around for the answer but couldn’t find anything 😊

You need to work on your detective skills Josh! I’ll just say it’s based on the same theme as my LLC name (Pitou Technologies) and another side project code-named called Knuckles that never shipped.

11) Paku - Do you have any future features planned that you can share with us?

At the moment, the biggest feature I want to build is nearby AQI alerts - a feature that will be able to send you notifications for “nearby” AQI automatically, without actually tracking your location constantly. After some iteration I think I’ve got the concept down, but it’s been hard enough to build that I keep putting it off. Essentially, it’ll require you to have a widget that’s displaying nearby sensors (something many users already have set up), and it’ll tell the server which sensor is closest each time the widget refreshes. I’ll determine if the AQI is getting worse or better based on your real-time closest sensor, and send alerts based off of that.

I mostly work on Paku in spurts when I’m highly motivated, to avoid burnout, so we’ll see when that happens. No promises or ETAs.

12) What’s been the hardest part of being an indie dev? What’s the most fun part of being an indie dev?

I think the hardest part, especially if I was trying to go full time, would be consistently marketing the app. That feels like another full time job. I used to get a lot of attention by posting on Reddit, but since cutting back my usage and since Apollo died, I’m not active enough to participate in self promotion days.

The most fun part is building something you’re actually interested in and enjoy using. When I started building Paku, I wasn’t getting that at my day job. It’s great having a smaller playground to explore new Apple technologies as well, which can be hard to do in “big company” projects.

It’s also super fun hearing from users that love the app, and hearing the random use-cases that you would never think of. For example, someone recently wrote in and told me they use an indoor PurpleAir sensor while they’re cooking, and the AQI alerts help them act promptly if something is going to start smoking.

Another part that’s super fun is the indie community. Following other indie devs and hearing about their experiments, what worked and what didn’t, and all the cool new features they’re building has been such an inspiration.

13) Is there anything else you’d like to tell the indie dev community about you?

Your questions have been so great and thorough, so not really!

I’ll leave the readers with a Paku pro tip: if you live somewhere with a dense network of PurpleAir sensors, use the Paku widget for more accurate temperature data than most weather apps! In cities like Portland, or in the Bay Area, the nearest sensor is usually just a couple blocks away. I have mine next to the date on my Lock Screen.

And any readers who want to try out Paku Pro can take 50% off your first year! Just click here to redeem the offer.

14) Do you have any other indie devs that readers should follow / lookout for?

Some of my favorite devs to follow are mastodon.social/@emcro (helped me out with Live Activities!), iosdev.space/@podomunro, and mastodon.social/@jordanmorgan. I also love following icon designers - mastodon.design/@matthewskiles and https://twitter.com/AdamWhitcroft come to mind (and Adam has been doing a ton of great indie dev too lately!)

Newly Released and Updated Indie Apps

Here are some newly released and newly updated apps from this past week! If you would like to possibly see your app in this list, please submit your app to the look at me form 👀

Second Clock Newly Released

Show a second clock for a different time zone in your Mac menu bar.

Memo Widget Newly Released

Sticky notes on your Home Screen, Lock Screen, and desktop.

Picasso - App Screenshot Tool Updated

Design Package! - gradients, images, spanning items over multiple screenshots Gestures! - Drag, rotate and scale items in screenshots Device Library - Easily see all framed devices and export them in one tap Celebration - A surprise celebration when you export screenshots Bug fixes - 3 critical bug fixes affecting saving files and framing screenshots

Thank you to everybody who made it to this footer! You either spent the time to read or took the effort to scroll 😊

Make sure to visit https://indiedevmonday.com/subscribe to get an email of future issues!

And go to Twitter and give @IndieDevMonday a follow… or multiple follows if you manage more than one Twitter account 😜

Annnndddd… we are back from hiatus with Issue #138!

It’s been like 9 months since I’ve last published an Indie Dev Monday issue. That was way too long for me to be away from this amazing indie dev community but I needed to take a step back. Life got way hectic with planning of Deep Dish Swift (which is happening again this year from May 5th to May 7th 👇) and I wasn’t able to balance things properly.

I’m back now and ready to share what our indie devs in this community have to offer!

And this week we we are feature Manuel Kehl! I actually met Manuel in-person at Deep Dish Swift 2023 which was right around the time he was releasing Zenitizer. I didn’t expect it to take 9 months for me to feature Manuel and Zenitizer but… here we go! Hope you enjoy 😊

Also.. are you releasing an app on VisionOS soon? Let me know so I can feature it! Fill out ​this form​ before Monday, February 5th!

Sponsored

Deep Dish Swift 2026 — Chicago's premier Swift developer conference, April 12-14, 2026. Join us for 1/2 day of indie development talks, 2 days of Swift and iOS talks, a live podcast recording of Launched, and more!

Today’s Spotlighted Indie Devs

📆 Today I’m featuring Manuel Kehl.

👉 Please make sure to follow them or support them anyway you can! 😇 I’m excited to share their indie dev stories.

Indie Dev

Manuel Kehl

@manuel_kehl

@iosdev.space/@manuel

Bonn, Germany

iOS, macoS, and watchOS indie dev building Zenitizer

Zenitizer

Manuel Kehl

Q&A

1) What is your name? Where do you live?

Hey, my name is Manuel and I currently live in Bonn, a cozy university town in Germany with tons of pretty, old buildings - also known for being the birthplace of Beethoven. I’m originally from around here but have lived outside of Germany for a total of six years (Scotland, London and California) for both university and work.

2) Introduce yourself. Education? Background? Main job? Interests outside of tech? Interests inside of tech?

Luckily I knew from a fairly young age that I either wanted to become a software developer or rock musician. And, you know… one of them is a proper career while the other involves typing code into a computer and hoping it works… I decided to do the computer thing anyway and so far, I have no regrets 🤓

I initially studied Computer Science here in Germany and for my MSc degree I then had the pleasure to live and study in Scotland which was a truly wonderful experience. After interviewing for a couple roles that were not a great match at the time, I was really fortunate to get an interview at Apple for a job that was perfect for my interests and focus areas. At that point, I had never even had a chance to visit the US, so flying there for a job interview and then later moving there was really surreal and exciting.

In total, I worked at Apple for five years and really loved it (both from a technical standpoint but also because I had the most wonderful co-workers and managers). California is really far from home though and at some point my wife and I decided we’d like to move back somewhere in Europe to be closer to our families. That seemed like the perfect time to also try and “do that indie thing” I’ve been dreaming of instead of looking for another full-time job after the move. Since then, I’ve been doing a mix of freelance work (also iOS dev) and my own app projects (primarily Zenitizer) and I’m loving it!

My interests outside of tech involve “outdoorsy things” (hiking, mountain biking, camping…), music (I sing and play the guitar) and games (both video games but also board/card games - the nerdier, the better). Interests inside tech aside from building apps would be anything to do with smart home and automation. My whole life is 100% run by and dependent on Shortcuts at this point 😅

3) Have you ever considered yourself an indie developer?

I’ve practically started calling myself an “(aspiring) indie dev” the moment I became self-employed. My thought was “as someone who spends a significant chunk of his time pursuing this dream, it is part of who I am, so I might as well start calling myself that”. I was always transparent about the fact that I was just getting started and didn’t even have a single published app, of course, but I think by saying it out loud I made a commitment that helped me stay motivated and actually get Zenitizer ready to ship.

4) What got you started/interested in creating your own applications outside of your “normal” job?

In a way, it’s kind of the other way round for me 😅 I’ve always had that interest and have been working on “side projects” long before I had a “normal job”: my own little tools, scripts and small games during high school and then later lots of open source stuff and other projects while I was in university.

And then, I started working at Apple which made side projects tricky. You can’t publish anything that might be a conflict of interest and since Apple is active in so many areas, that basically involves most things related to tech or coding, so I just didn’t work on side projects during those years. I loved the job itself so much that I didn’t miss side projects too badly, but I also knew that if I ever moved on from Apple, then side projects would have to be a really big priority for me because I had so much “catching up” to do.

5) How do you balance your time between friends/family, work, hobbies, and indie dev?

Good question. How do you accomplish that? I’ll let you know if I find out 🫠

Seriously though, it’s actually been a real struggle for me last year and, knowing that I need to improve in this area, it’s my number one new year’s resolution for 2024.

One significant change that I made is to actually have a proper roadmap (for all of Q1) that takes into account weekly goals for both Zenitizer and freelance projects, to make sure my goals are realistic and sustainable. In the past year, there was so much new stuff I needed to learn, that it was near impossible for me to estimate how long certain things would take, so I mostly just “played by ear”. That was okay for getting started but is definitely not sustainable, so I try to be strict about my planning now and make sure to leave enough slack for unexpected complications.

This kind of planning actually already forced me to push a few things I was “sure I’d get around to in Jan/Feb” to Q2 of 2024 because they would’ve been way out of scope. Some people have a really good gut feeling for these things but I guess, I just need to force myself to be more systematic about planning.

I also need to constantly remind myself that doing things like accounting, marketing or answering user emails is actual work. As someone with a dev background, I often subconsciously feel that “if I haven’t improved the app today, I didn’t accomplish anything”. That could, of course, not be further from the truth but it’s easy enough to fall into this trap. It’s another area where stricter planning certainly helps. By deliberately allotting realistic chunks of time for these things I perceive them as “real work” - as opposed to just trying to “squeeze them in between development cycles”.

6) Zenitizer - I usually say “Congrats on your recent release!” but its been almost a whole year since I’ve done this 😅 But… congrats on your release of Zenitizer! What got you into the meditation space and inspired you to build Zenitizer?

Prior to our move to California, I had been working at an Apple office in London for a year and as someone who grew up in rural Germany, London was super exciting, but also stressful and a quite overwhelming at times. It was during that time that I started meditating and I enjoyed it so much that I have (more or less) stuck with it ever since.

Back then, I used guided meditation apps which were a great way to learn the basics. But over time, the spoken instructions actually felt like a source of distraction for me and the fixed script felt too limiting, which sparked my curiosity about unguided meditation with just a timer. The stock iOS timer app was too limited, because it lacks recurring intervals bells that remind you to return your focus and the meditation timer alternatives I found were either not as well integrated with Apple’s platform features as I wanted, or simply looked and behaved too different from the vision I had in mind.

Unable to find something that ticked all the boxes for me, I started building Zenitizer to “scratch my own itch” in classic indie dev fashion 🤓

7) Zenitizer - The onboarding of Zenitizer is just fantastic! It’s a very clean and simple flow that helped me easily understand Zenitizer’s features but also granted all the permissions that it needed. I kind of want to use this approach in my apps! Have you changed any of the onboarding since your launch? Do you know how it’s been performing? Do you have any other things you want to try with it?

Thank you so much for the kind words. The onboarding was one of the areas that I put a lot of thought into before the launch, so it means a lot to receive positive feedback about it.

The overall flow has mostly stayed the same and the most significant change I made was to show the one week free trial offer for Zenitizer+ during onboarding. Literally anyone who tried this says something along the lines of “I wish I would’ve tried this earlier” so I did too and it certainly improved my trial start and conversion rates. I was hesitant to do it at first because I generally don’t feel super comfortable asking for money, but I also know I want to spend a significant portion of my working hours improving Zenitizer for many years to come, so I have to treat it like a business. Ultimately, it makes sense for users too because Zenitizer does require payment to unlock all features and it’s better to be upfront and transparent about this to set the right expectations from the start.

8) Zenitizer - I’m not a meditation expert but I think it’s something that you want to do consistently. Do you have any mechanisms to help remind or motivate your users to keep meditating?

I certainly wouldn’t call myself a meditation expert either, but surely a “meditation enthusiast” and after many years of meditating semi-regularly, I am convinced that consistency and regular practice is more impactful than the overall session duration.

Zenitizer offers a number of features to support users in building a regular habit. The most prominent one being the idea of a “daily mindful minutes goal” which is, of course, inspired by the Apple Watch activity rings. If you meet that goal, your streak grows. But if you meditate as little as one minute a day, your streak stays “alive” (neither grow nor break) and only if you don’t meditate at all, your streak will break. This was important to me because I don’t want folks to feel any pressure - after all, my app should make users feel more relaxed and not the opposite.

I recently added a statistics feature in the context of a “year in review” update and I’ve been thinking to actually move away from streaks and focus more on statistics, rolling averages and trends instead. Regular practice is important but ultimately it’s perfectly fine to skip a day or two in between so streaks might not be the ideal way to measure “progress”. I’m not 100% settled on the best design for this and I have a few models in mind. I’ll also keep the streaks feature for those who prefer it but maybe make it opt-in for new users.

Zenitizer also supports daily meditation reminders which are tied to the daily goal. For example, you can choose to only be reminded when the goal is incomplete or when you’re about to break your streak. And with Smart Reminders you can use specific Shortcuts actions to post these notifications based on all sorts of Shortcuts automation triggers. I personally have one set up every time I stop my “Deep Work” focus mode or 2 minutes after waking up in the morning. You could also get a meditation reminder, when you arrive at your favorite meditation spot in the local park. I really love Shortcuts so I tend to think of cool ways I could allows users to utilize Shortcuts to deeply integrate Zenitizer in their personal routines and daily lives.

9) Zenitizer - I see you are using App Store In-App Events! I haven’t used them yet so I’m curious how those are working out ☺️ What is your strategy for using them? Do you think any type of app can benefit from using them?

I have to admit that I’m not 100% sure about their effectiveness because due to the way App Store Connect counts impressions, it is (as far as I understand) impossible to tell if the impression happened because someone was already looking at your App Store page or if it actually was the event that brought them there. If anyone reading this knows more about the topic, please do reach out as I’d love to learn more 😉 I have, on at least one occasion, seen one of my events surfaced in the “Events You Might Like” section when browsing the store from my personal account. I hope this means that it has reached other existing and former users of the app.

If nothing else though, it certainly shows potential visitors of your App Store page, at a glance, that the app is in active development. Most folks probably don’t read the update changelogs but a visually prominent banner for a big update, introducing a new feature, is hard to overlook. For bigger releases, I’ll usually create some kind of “banner artwork” anyway, for social media announcements etc. so it’s not a lot of work to repurpose it for an App Store In-App Event. The code to handle special links for opening the relevant part of your app needs to be in place but tweaking it for new updates is also pretty straightforward.

So I guess my verdict is: In-App Events might help in a number of ways but I don’t have any hard facts or numbers to say this for sure. They’re easy enough to set up though once you get a hang of it, so it’s probably worth trying.

10) Zenitizer - What was the most fun thing to build with Zenitizer? What was the most difficult thing?

Fun thing: I think it’s gotta be all the different ways in which Zenitizer supports Shortcuts. As a big Shortcuts fan myself, it brings me so much joy to ask my HomePod to “meditate with Zenitizer” each morning or run an automation that enables Do Not Disturb, dims my lights and starts a meditation session.

The most difficult thing was probably CoreData esp. when I added iCloud support with NSPersistentCloudKitContainer. Not because it’s inherently difficult to set up - in fact, I’d argue it’s super easy to get started and you can have basic sync capability in a few hours. However, to actually get iCloud sync working reliably, it took me more than a month of learning, bug fixing and polishing, as someone who hadn’t used CoreData before.

11) Zenitizer - What’s next for Zenitizer? Do you have any fun features planned that you can share with us?

I’m currently working on polishing the visionOS app to make sure Zenitizer runs smoothly and looks and feels great on the new platform on day one. I identified a few areas of improvement during a visionOS lab in Munich last year and I’m super motivated to have these fixed in time for the release of Apple Vision Pro.

The biggest, planned feature update in the near future is the transition from streaks to stats/trends in conjunction with related changes like a meditation session history view and the ability to edit your history as well as adding session notes during and after meditations. Then there’s integration with Apple Music and possibly the ability to allow users to play their own audio files as background audio, followed by SharePlay support and Apple Watch heart rate tracking, but these are among the features I moved into Q2 already, because I realized that it simply wouldn’t be realistic to squeeze them into Q1 😅

12) What’s been the hardest part of being an indie dev? What is the most fun part of being an indie dev?

The hardest part: you need to wear all the hats. The most fun part: you get to wear all the hats.

I’ve only experienced both extremes in my career: highly specialized role in a really, really big company vs. self-employed, solo freelance and indie hacker. Both have advantages and I could see myself in both roles again in the future. The most notable difference though is that, as a specialist in a big company, you basically get to spend most of your working hours doing a fairly specific thing you’ve been hired for and “everything else” is taken care of by others who are specialized on their thing.

As a solo indie on the other hand, I suddenly found myself not only being a developer but also a designer, accountant, marketer, project manager and many other roles, most of which I had zero experience in. There are days when I absolutely hate it and wish I could “just focus on coding again” but more often than not I find the breath of responsibilities to tackle incredibly rewarding and fun and - if nothing else - it has taught me so many things and given me greater appreciation for work outside of my own “coding bubble” ☺️

13) Is there anything else you’d like to tell the indie dev community about you?

Since my responses above are all fairly verbose, I’ll keep this one short: I really love the Apple developer community and enjoy getting to know and connecting with others. You can find me on my own website, Mastodon, Threads, X/Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram and I’d love to chat, so please don’t hesitate to reach out any time!

14) Do you have any other indie devs that readers should follow / lookout for?;

It’s such an wonderful community and there are way too many people that come to mind (many of which haven been on this newsletter before), but I’ll try to pick just a few:

I deeply appreciate Curtis Herbert (Slopes) for openly sharing his journey of turning his app into a successful business with the whole community. I particularly love how he and his team have managed to keep up the indie spirit despite “growing up as a business”. His talk at Deep Dish Swift was pretty awesome, too, I think 🍕🤓

Similarly, Emmanuel Crouvisier (Cardpointers), who also gave an amazing Indie Dev talk at Deep Dish Swift, is someone you should follow for great tips on how to grow and market your indie app.

Another indie dev I met personally for the first time at Deep Dish Swift and have been following closely is Roddy Munro (Classifier, Ceramispace, Söka). He has a newsletter where he shares his experiences and learnings as an indie developer that is really worth reading and he’s just an all around nice guy to chat with and follow.

Also, I’m a huge fan of Rebecca Owen’s work with Chronicling, because it is such a well-designed and refreshing take on the concept of “counting and tracking things” and, of course, it has really great Shortcuts support. She’s been sharing many learnings and milestones of her indie dev journey on Mastodon and you should definitely follow her!

Newly Released and Updated Indie Apps

Here are some newly released and newly updated apps from this past week! If you would like to possibly see your app in this list, please submit your app to the look at me form 👀

CrossCraft: Custom Crosswords Newly Released

Create individual crossword: puzzle fun with your own questions for birthdays, weddings, clubs, school classes, courses and other events! Put your people's knowledge to the test.

Curriculum vitae - CV Maker Newly Released

Craft your perfect resume effortlessly with Curriculum Vitae. Choose from diverse templates, input your info with ease, and export a polished PDF – all in one intuitive app for seamless job applications.

Type Newly Released

Type lets you quickly jot things down with the timestamp attached, without interrupting your flow.

Guildmaster Newly Released

Guildmaster is an idle game that takes place in a medieval fantasy world in which you play as the master of a new guild. Your job is to grow your guild, gather resources and craft gear for your guild members to prepare them for the adventures they will embark on.

Modulart Studio Newly Released

Modulart Studio offers a playful and entertaining approach to learning modular arithmetic. Delve into the concept through visually stunning circles and intricate paths, making math a thrilling adventure for visual learners and those less enthusiastic about numbers and letters.

Quiche Browser Newly Released

Quiche Browser is a web browser with an extensive range of customization options, to suit your usage, needs, and visual preferences. Customize the toolbar style, buttons, and behavior, create your own action menus, and tweak tabs display and sorting.

Day Progress Newly Released

Keep track of the time remaining in your day, right in the menu bar.

Waay: Music Theory That Matters Updated

Waay teaches music theory you can take straight to your instrument and use. Bite-sized video lessons, practical exercises, and memory retention tools too. And the newest release brings one more feature: syncing between your devices!

Thank you to everybody who made it to this footer! You either spent the time to read or took the effort to scroll 😊

Make sure to visit https://indiedevmonday.com/subscribe to get an email of future issues!

And go to Twitter and give @IndieDevMonday a follow… or multiple follows if you manage more than one Twitter account 😜

We made it to Issue #137! Thank you to everyone who read last month’s issue ❤️

Kind of… it took me like 4 weeks to write another issue 😅 I have a lot going on with family, work, fastlane, Deep Dish Swift and I’ve been meaning to write an issue about going on a hiatus but just couldn’t get around to it. So I figured I should write another a legit issue featuring a super awesome indie dev and THEN annouce my hiatus.

So if you haven’t heard yet… I’m thinking of going on a hiatus 😇 I have Deep Dish and two work trips planned in May and a family trip planned so June so I’m thinking of coming back relaxed and refreshed in July or August. This doesn’t meant I won’t be involved with the indie dev community! This only means that I’m taking a short pause on writing issues. I’m going to be still watching out for awesome devs and apps to feature and preparing for some great issues in the later half of this year 🙌

Sponsored

Deep Dish Swift 2026 — Chicago's premier Swift developer conference, April 12-14, 2026. Join us for 1/2 day of indie development talks, 2 days of Swift and iOS talks, a live podcast recording of Launched, and more!

Today’s Spotlighted Indie Devs

📆 Today I’m featuring Joe Fabisevich.

👉 Please make sure to follow them or support them anyway you can! 😇 I’m excited to share their indie dev stories.

Indie Dev

Joe Fabisevich

@mergesort

@macaw.social/@mergesort

New York City, New York

Buiding apps at Red Panda Club

Short Circuit

Joe Fabisevich

Q&A

1) What is your name? Where do you live?

Hi Josh, you can call me Shorty. I’m excited that this is your first ever Indie Dev Monday interview with an AI — nah, I’m just kidding. This whole conversation was written by hand and is organic human content. I’m Joe Fabisevich, and I live in New York City. I’m sure it’ll hurt you to publish this but my friend, this great city has the best pizza in the world.

2) Introduce yourself. Education? Background? Main job? Interests outside of tech? Interests inside of tech?

I’m a software developer by trade, with a degree in computer science. But if I’m being completely honest (mom please don’t read this) I probably skipped as many classes as I attended. I learn best by building, prototyping, and feeling the joy and inspiration of making something.

I’m just like Taylor Swift, in the sense that both of our careers have had eras. I’ve worked at quite a few startups like Timehop, Bitly, and Betaworks, and have been lucky enough to build apps used by millions of people. I started my own startup, and it was not only fun but taught me so much. Sadly we had to shut Picks down, and all that remains is a very adorable Instagram account.

From 2018-2022 I worked at Twitter on the Societal Health team, some very interesting years in Twitter’s history. My team worked on the problems of misinformation, disinformation, civic integrity, and all of those topics that Twitter is, ahem, well known for these days… My experience at Twitter really helped me grow into the person I am today. I’m very proud of how it shaped my perspective on the world, what it means to build software for people, the duality of technology, and my time working there truly reinforced my belief that we should always be trying to scale empathy and kindness. Unfortunately recent company changes have made it a little hard personally to use the product today, but nowadays I’m an indie developer making apps at Red Panda Club.

Outside of work I’m a huge sports fan, but unfortunately I love teams that hate winning. As a Mets, Knicks, Jets, and Rangers fan I’ve learned a lot about coping with disappointment, it keeps me humble. My baseball playing days are behind me but I still like to go for runs, bike rides, and long walks where I can let my mind run free. And of course there’s little that’s more rewarding than spending time with the people I love, especially when we take advantage of everything New York City has to offer.

3) Have you ever considered yourself an indie developer?

I sure have and do right now! It’s been just over a year since I left Twitter to build indie apps full time at Red Panda Club. The path hasn’t been as straightforward as I was expecting, but it has been incredibly fulfilling, challenging, and everything I’ve always wanted to do.

As an indie developer I have the job title of doing everything. I take a lot of pride in my design skills, design is how a user translates your thoughts into the experience they’re having. I’ve been running a business in some form or another since I was in my early 20’s, naturally that’s a very valuable skill to have as an indie developer. I consider myself a product person and now I’m the product manager of every product. As much as I hate marketing you’ve gotta do it, you won’t have much business without it. And, well, you know, a big part of being an indie developer is actually being a developer… so it’s a bit like having five jobs. Doing a bit of everything isn’t always easy, but it is very enriching.

4) What got you started/interested in creating your own applications outside of your “normal” job?

Why did Renaissance painters paint paintings that people still go to museums to see? Why did The Beatles write love songs that people still sing today? Why does a random person write an elaborate blog post about their experiences when no one may even read it? Because creating something in this world fills our soul and connects us with other people, people who we may never know, speak to, or even be alive at the same time with.

People often treat software as a utilitarian good or a business need, but software can make us feel too. I didn’t have the words for it when I was 20 and building my first app, but I was searching for it. I saw that it was possible to use software to solve the smallest of problems in a way that uniquely resonates with people. Other people’s open source worked has helped build my career, and it’s why I try to give back by open sourcing as much code and knowledge as I can. We’re all standing on the shoulders of every person who’s ever make something in this world, and when you realize that it empowers you to help others in the same way you’ve been helped.

There are blog posts that have changed the way I look at the world, there are courses that have taught me a skill, there are people who make apps that make me more productive and help me accomplish my dreams. That’s why I’m writing about the process of building a business at build.ms, it’s why I share personal essays at fabisevi.ch, and it’s why I now make personal, playful, productivity software at Red Panda Club.

5) How do you balance your time between friends/family, work, hobbies, and indie dev?

One of the reasons I became a full time indie developer was to have a better work/life balance. It turns out that doing raw capitalism 40 hours a week really wore me down and would sap me of my essence. It doesn’t help that I follow a maker’s schedule in a manager’s world, where a lot of important work happens in and around meetings. Most days I take one or two 30-60 minute walks, those walks help my creativity start flowing. Sometimes I pause my work to let my mind run around like a puppy off it’s leash, and an amazing idea will surface from that. I love to bike into Manhattan to meet a friend for lunch, and then resume my work a couple hours later feeling like a completely different person.

All of that are pretty hard to do when you’re “on the clock”, it’s hard to tell your boss that you want to skip a couple of meetings so you can go for a long walk. And since I’m a bit of a night owl (not too late) if you ask me to work from 10-6 you won’t even be getting my best work. My newfound freedom, flexibility, and a very understanding partner all allow me to do my best work as an indie developer — I’m very grateful for that.

6) Short Circuit - Congrats on your recent release of Short Circuit! I asked Short Circuit what the first thing I should ask you and here it is… What was your inspiration behind Short Circuit and how does it differ from other chatbots in the market?

My inspiration for building Short Circuit was a mix of fascination and fear. These days we’re all hearing about LLMs (Large Language Models) like ChatGPT, and when I got a chance to experience using ChatGPT I quickly realized we were witnessing a meaningful leap in technology.

I want to stress that I do not think that ChatGPT or chat bots are the end all be all for large language models, and I don’t view the end goal of Short Circuit to be a chat bot. The beauty of software is that it’s malleable, and so you can make it look like anything you want and do anything you ask, as long as it’s programmed to do so.

By building Short Circuit my partner on this project Soroush and I have developed a really great foundation and understanding of large language models as a tool. We now know where they excel, where they falter, and where there’s room to build atop them to provide a great user experience. We have quite a few ideas for how we’d like to mold all of that into Short Circuit, and potentially other products.

LLMs are both overhyped and underhyped, which it makes it difficult to figure out where we’ll be using them and what’s a fanciful dream. That’s where the fear came from, I needed to know what this tool is capable of and what it’ll be replacing, knowing that the tool may some day be replacing me. I don’t think LLMs will be a fad but I also don’t think they’re going away any time soon, so it’s important to understand how they’re going to affect our lives. That combination of fascination and fear led me to build a prototype of using ChatGPT through Siri and Shortcuts a few hours after I got access to OpenAI’s API. That prototype ultimately became Short Circuit, and those features have become some the marquee features we offer.

7) Short Circuit - The chat style onboarding of Short Circuit was amazing! The app started so quickly and had the perfect timing and animations with chat messages that felt natural, welcoming, and informative. How long did it take you to get all of this onboarding just the way you wanted? Did you have any other variations of onboarding that you were playing with?

I’m so glad you feel that way because with apps and people alike you only get one chance to make a first impression. I wish I could say it was easy, but it was actually a lot of painstaking work! I must have spent 8 hours straight at my computer crafting the first run by hand, tweaking the words, timings, and little the bits of flair users see and feel to get a sense of joy during their first experience with the app.

There was a lot of iteration after that, and I was lucky enough to have good intuition for building a chat bot onboarding from previous apps I’ve helped build. My girlfriend Colleen is usually the first person I show my work to and in this case she’d also worked on an app that started as a chat bot product, Shine. Most importantly you learn a lot by putting your product in the hands of people. New users don’t know what you know about your product and will tell you when something doesn’t feel right. With the help of about 80 beta testers I was able to refine the onboarding (and product), which made Short Circuit have the nice feel it has today.

8) Short Circuit - I know that ChatGPT comes with recurring costs for the API usage. How did you determine what pricing structure to use? I know it can be hard to explain the reasoning for subscriptions to some users. Do most users understand these recurring costs?

You’re not the first to ask, and I’d love to be transparent for any other indie developers that are trying to figure out pricing. Pricing is a strategy, and it isn’t a decision you make once. You should be thinking about pricing often, and you should be willing to experiment with your pricing.

When we talk about pricing what we’re doing is solving an economic equation. We want to find price points for our products that maximize profit by delivering the most value to the most people we can reach. That means we’re charging enough to be sustainable and generate a profit, without a price that’s so high it prices too many people out.

By framing our problem around people and value we eliminate many of the user-hostile business models you’ll see on the App Store. I know there’s a lot of money to be made by operating a business in a way that annoys or scams a user into paying money, but avoiding that completely helps me sleep better at night.

We have three unique pricing challenges with Short Circuit.

1. Short Circuit is a product that has a high cost to operate because OpenAI’s API is rather expensive. It’s expensive but fair, running super-computers costs a lot of money. That’s very much unlike most SaaS businesses where the additional cost of a user is marginal, every user OpenAI has costs them a tangible amount of money. Our usage of OpenAI’s API means that Short Circuit is also a business that doesn’t operate like a traditional SaaS, every response one of our users receives can cost as much as $0.01, and scales linearly the more users we have.
2. Using ChatGPT on the web is free. People have asked why we charge for Short Circuit when they can just use ChatGPT on the web for free, and it’s genuinely a great question with a simple answer. OpenAI is burning millions of dollars a day to offer you that product for free, and I don’t have millions of dollars. If I ever do become filthy rich I promise you I’ll give my software away for free too, you can quote me on that!
3. We offer three subscriptions where we cover the costs of sending messages using OpenAI’s API, but we also offer a one-time lifetime unlock where you cover the costs of API calls. That unlock currently costs $29.99 and is actually a great deal if you think Short Circuit is a product you’re going to use for a while. Communicating that to users isn’t easy, and Apple has some limitations around how we can provide users this information in our app. Since a lifetime user will also be paying for their own API calls they have to do the mental math of calculating those additional costs and figure out how much they expect to use Short Circuit before purchasing the product. Traditionally that’s stress you don’t want to add for someone staring at your paywall, but we haven’t found a better way to message the flexibility this option offers to users.

Those constraints led us to use this fancy technique called mathematics to come up with a pricing structure we think is fair to users, and accommodates our cost of running the business and developing the product.

Every ChatGPT query we make using OpenAI’s API has a maximum cost of $0.01. The cost of a message depends on the length of your message and the reply ChatGPT sends. One token is ~3.75 characters, OpenAI charges $0.002/token, and you can send a maximum of 4,000 tokens per message. That adds up to $0.008/query, which we round up to $0.01 to make the math simpler.

That led us to our three pricing tiers.

1. $2.99 to receive 100 responses/month in Short Circuit
2. $5.99 to receive 300 responses/month
3. $14.99 to receive 1,000 responses/month

When you include Apple’s 30% cut a $2.99 subscription becomes $2.09 of revenue, $5.99 becomes $4.19, and $14.99 becomes $10.49. Earning $10.49 from a user in a month sounds pretty great, but our margins are actually a lot slimmer than that when you consider the costs of running Short Circuit.

When a user signs up for the 100 response plan and sends 100 messages at $0.01 per message we earn $1.09 from their subscription that month. For a user on the $5.99 plan we may find ourselves only earning $1.19 per month. The $14.99 plan has the slimmest margins, we may only earn $0.49 from a user if they send all 1,000 of their purchased messages that month.

This is the worst case scenario though, users likely won’t send all of their messages every month, and we’re sure they won’t be receiving 4,000 token responses. Nonetheless we have to price our product as if the user is going to send all of their messages every month at the maximum cost, otherwise we’ll run the risk of losing money on every user. That means we don’t have much wiggle room on price without also changing how many responses a user gets for the new price, something economists would consider elastic demand.

Knowing that not every user is going to cost us every penny we’ve allocated for them does provide additional profit, but that profit goes to cover the costs of running the service. We have servers that communicate with OpenAI, we store messages in our database (for an upcoming conversation sync feature), and we also offer a free trial where users can send 10 messages for free. Every user who tries the app and doesn’t convert into a paying customer is a loss, and can cost us as much as 10 cents. If 10 people try the app and don’t sign up, then we’ve lost $1, so it’s important for us to leave a little room for profit on our subscriptions and lifetime unlock products.

That brings me back to where we started, we’re trying to maximize profit by delivering the most value to the most people we can reach. I can’t say we’ve maximized all of our potential profit yet so there will be room to experiment with the price, but I know we have many happy paying users now so I think we’re off to a good start.

9) Short Circuit - What are some of your favorite use cases or prompts to use with Short Circuit? I’m very inexperienced at using ChatGPT but I’d love to get better. Have your users used Short Circuit for anything that you haven’t thought of?

A lot of people ask this, so I’ve started keeping a list of interesting use cases.

• My favorite use case so far came from a person writing in to tell us that they’re using Short Circuit for birdwatching! One of Short Circuit’s best features is being able to use ChatGPT with Siri, which means you can use ChatGPT without looking at your phone. I’ve never birdwatched but even I understand that a big part of birdwatching is looking at birds, a situation where you can’t look down at your phone to type. I would have never in a million years thought of this use case, but one of our users was so enamored by this feature that they took the time to write in and tell us how it’s transformed one of their favorite hobbies.
• Short Circuit can be a very practical tool for people who don’t bird watch too.
  • Short Circuit is a great writing companion. You can say “shorten this text”, “improve this writing”, “fix grammatical errors”, and your text will be magically improved.
  • People are using Short Circuit to plan their vacations, myself included. Short Circuit is great at quickly identifying popular sites to see and off the beaten path things to do, thanks to Short Circuit I have a nice plan for my trip to DC next weekend.
  • One of our users has been DMing their Dungeons and Dragons campaigns with Short Circuit and told us that they appreciate how we’ve tuned the model to provide more concise responses than ChatGPT.
  • A use case I found very intriguing is meal planning, especially for people with very specific dietary restrictions. A person can ask “Can you give me five meal options that are gluten-free, vegan-friendly, and include tofu or soy?” and it will return you five meal options instantaneously. But that’s only step one, next you can ask for the recipe of one of the results. When you say “Can you give me a recipe for Tofu stir-fry with mixed veggies and gluten-free rice noodles?” you’ll now have lunch plans tomorrow, something that’s a struggle for many people with dietary restrictions.
• As a developer I find myself turning to Short Circuit more and more to write code these days. I don’t want to over-promise and under-deliver, but ChatGPT and GPT-4 (coming soon to Short Circuit) are incredibly good pair programmers.
  • When I’m stuck the first thing I do now is turn to Short Circuit. If I need to write a function I’ll write a prompt for what the function should do, and most of the time Short Circuit gives me what I need on the first try. It’s important to know you won’t always get what you want immediately, for example when I get back a closure-based result I’ll just ask Short Circuit for an async/await variant. Sometimes I need to rephrase the question a bit, but I almost always arrive at a good result by the second or third response.
  • ChatGPT can write your tests for you, add documentation where it’s missing, and I’ve been using Short Circuit as a universal programming language translator. You can even ask Short Circuit to explain some code to you, and it will break down the code step by step.
  • Short Circuit even rebuilt the Red Panda Club website. I believe in dogfooding my own product so I looked at my old website and composed a 150 word prompt of what I wanted out of modern, updated, and upgraded website. The original website was HTML and CSS that I’d quickly thrown together a few years ago, and would tweak over the years. The old website wasn’t responsive, I had trouble adjusting the layout, and any time I wanted to update something I had to think about what was going to break in the process. I decided to use this opportunity to upgrade the website to React to make changes easier, specified that the design needed to be responsive, and then added some new features like a grid of Red Panda Club’s apps. The new website I’d designed with my words was shockingly close to what I wanted. It took about 5 minutes of prompt engineering to build a good looking website, and I spent another 30 minutes making tweaks to get everything just how I wanted it.

10) Short Circuit - What was the hardest part about building Short Circuit? What was the most fun part of building Short Circuit? Did you ever use Short Circuit to help build Short Circuit? 👀

The hardest and most fun part was going from idea to 1.0 in only 19 days. (The app spent then spent another 10 days in app review so maybe that was actually the hardest part. 😅) The code isn’t a rough prototype either, we made a lot of good technical decisions, but since we’re still learning about this domain we could have made a lot of poor choices as well. It’s been a while since I shipped a substantial app this fast, and it wouldn’t have been possible without me using Short Circuit to help build Short Circuit.

When I’m stuck I now turn to Short Circuit before deciding to bother someone else. I used Short Circuit to help write my App Store description, to brainstorm ASO keywords, and to even write most of the subscription code in Short Circuit. It’s clear that ChatGPT was trained on RevenueCat’s extensive documentation because the code it gave me when I prompted Short Circuit for subscription code using RevenueCat’s iOS SDK the code was pretty close to production ready.

11) Short Circuit - What’s next?! Do you have any future features that you can share with us?

We have a lot of things we want to build, but we have three features coming over the next couple of weeks.

• A native Mac app. Short Circuit users have been spending a substantial amount of time using the Mac app, which is why I’m excited to bring them a high quality fully native Mac client. (Today the Mac app is very good and functional, but is an iPad app running on the Mac.) I’m excited about all the possibilities like a menu bar app, keyboard shortcuts, and multiple windows for complex workflows.
• Conversation Sync. If you receive a response on your iPhone it will show up on your iPad and Mac too. We want to build a streamlined experience for users across all clients, and to have their conversations available everywhere they go.
• Per-conversation fine-tuning. Short Circuit lets users have multiple conversations at a time with ChatGPT, which helps us provide more context to ChatGPT. That context is important for helping users dive deeper into a specific subject, and we want to take that to the next level. Soon a user will be able to choose their large language model (for example GPT-4), provide a custom prompt for the entire conversation (like “explain this to me like Albert Einstein” or “help me debug this code”), or even customize how much creativity they want in the responses.

We’re always listening to users about what they want, but also can’t wait to surprise them with some other plans we have.

12) What’s been the hardest part of being an indie dev? What is the most fun part of being an indie dev?

Something I’ve learned is that a person’s strengths are also their weaknesses. By doing the development, design, product, business, and marketing for everything I build I get to see a creation come to life from my head. It’s incredibly rewarding, and because I don’t have to work with another designer or developer or business person I’m able to prototype or build high quality products incredibly fast, products that are as true to my vision as they can be.

But when I’m stuck or fail, I’m stuck or failing all alone. I love most parts of my job, but like many indie developers I find marketing to be really draining. I know I have to do it to make my products succeed so I do it, but I always feel bad that I’m not doing something I excel at, or that I’m not working on my product.

I carry that burden with me because I won’t be able to earn a living if I don’t do it well, but I also know I have options. I could (and will likely) hire someone to help with the things I’m not good at or don’t want to do, for example marketing. Having someone do marketing will take one of the five jobs I’m doing off my plate, I already don’t have enough time in the day to do it all and can’t do it at the level of quality I expect from myself. It’s all a balancing act, and I try to remind myself that I don’t need to walk a tight rope when there’s a perfectly good bridge right next to me.

13) Is there anything else you’d like to tell the indie dev community about you?

I’ve written about 4,000 words so far so I’m going to keep this really short. I love the iOS developer and indie developer communities, and do my best to give back to them as much as I can.

• Please try Short Circuit, I think you’ll really like it. Don’t forget to get creative with it, that’s half the fun of this new technology! We’d love to hear what you think.
• Most of my time is spent working on Red Panda Club’s flagship app, Plinky. Plinky is a link saving app with a collaborative twist, it’s in beta right now but I’d love for you to sign up for the waiting list. So far people are loving it, and I’m excited to make my way back to it after the next batch of Short Circuit updates.
• I’m cataloging my journey of building a business at build.ms. My writing doesn’t only feature lessons about building your business, but the experience I’m going through in hopes that it can help you on your indie journey as well.
• My personal writing lives at fabisevi.ch, that’s where you can really get to know me.
• And you can follow me on Mastodon where I post helpful tips and unhelpful puns.

14) Do you have any other indie devs that readers should follow / lookout for?

There are so many great people in this community, people I learn from every day. I find what Christian Selig is doing with Apollo to be amazing, I love how personal Becky Hansmeyer’s writing about her work is, and I love seeing Emmanuel Crouvisier build in public. But I’d also like to mention people who are building software outside of the community that inspires me. They’re not full time indies but when I see people like Omar Rizwan, Neil Sardesai, and Gavin Nelson all pushing boundaries that break down the dichotomy between developer, designer, and creative, it pushes me to do my work even better, and I’m grateful that all these people share their work so freely.

Newly Released and Updated Indie Apps

Here are some newly released and newly updated apps from this past week! If you would like to possibly see your app in this list, please submit your app to the look at me form 👀

Replacicon for Mac Newly Released

Replacicon makes it easy to find and change app icons on the Mac. It scans online sources containing thousands of replacement app icons for each of your installed macOS apps and shows them all to you in one place. In just a click, you can change your third-party app icons so they better match the rest of the system.

Study with Subwords Newly Released

The idea is simple - you create a study list, like one for countries and their capital or English words and their translation into Spanish. Study with Subwords will split these words into pieces and you have to put them back together.

Tomaito Newly Released

Tomaito generates delicious recipes tailored to your preferences. Input ingredients, dish type, cuisine, and/or dietary preferences, and you will have a recipe made from scratch just for you. Customize it and add it to your cookbook. Start your culinary adventure today with Tomaito!

bracketry Newly Released

Bracketry is meant to be a universal solution for tournament brackets in any kind of sport. It solves a number of tricky layout problems to present tournament data in a clear and flexible way

DateStamper Newly Released

Now available on the Mac! Apply beautiful date stamps to your photos (and location and caption). #ThanksCatalyst

kingbit Newly Released

kingbit is a new iOS game that's sort of like chess, but the pieces take up multiple squares. It's easy to learn and quick to play. And matches last about 5-10 minutes (a perfect substitute for toilet scrolling!) The game is completely free, and has two modes: "play against the computer" and online asynchronous multiplayer!

Aiko Newly Released

High-quality on-device transcription powered by AI. Easily convert speech to text from meetings, lectures, and more.

TimeWave - Time Manager Updated

- Live Activities + Dynamic Island - Shortcuts + Siri - Widgets

Derailleur Updated

Derailleur is a gear calculator for cyclists! This new update packs powerful new features like creating multiple configurations, importing and exporting DRL files, and much more. Find a gear that works for you and share with your friends!

Paku for PurpleAir Updated

Paku 4.0 is here, with some great new features! - Favorites: favorite sensors quickly check them in your favorites list without finding them on the map. - Private Sensors: add private sensors to Paku and view them on the map, in widgets, and set up alerts for them (pro only). - App Icons: customize your Home Screen with several beautiful new app icons (pro only). - Performance: the app has been optimized to load sensor data more quickly. With 4.0, Paku Push becomes Paku Pro, unlocking private sensors and app icons. If you're already subscribed to Paku Push, you'll unlock Pro features automatically with no price increase.

hashColor Updated

Completely rewritten in SwiftUI with a more compact design and better import functionality.

forScore Updated

A brand new icon, the ability to turn pages by winking, Apple Pencil hover support, a completely rewritten tuner, and so much more!

Workout Sum Updated

Introducing Workout Sum V2 - a completely rebuilt app that takes advantage of the latest and greatest features available. Get ready for new and exciting features, including the ability to set and track custom goals for each exercise. The refined design is now available in both light and dark mode, providing an optimal viewing experience in any lighting condition. Plus, with the rebuilt widgets, you can now access your workout information directly from your lock screen. Track more data than ever before with new metrics like METs, heart rate, elevation, and even weather conditions. Additionally, we've added new exercise types to help you diversify your workout routine. Under the hood, we've made significant improvements to make the app faster, more accurate, and smoother. Welcome to the ultimate workout companion - Workout Sum V2.

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We made it to Issue #136! Thank you to everyone who read last week’s issue ❤️

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Today’s Spotlighted Indie Devs

📆 Today I’m featuring Naftali Antebi.

👉 Please make sure to follow them or support them anyway you can! 😇 I’m excited to share their indie dev stories.

Indie Dev

Naftali Antebi

@swiftdev_ui

New Jersey, US

High school tutorer, iOS contractor, and creator of LIbraried

Libraried

Naftali Antebi

Q&A

1) What is your name? Where do you live?

My name is Naftali Antebi and I live in NJ

2) Introduce yourself. Education? Background? Main job? Interests outside of tech? Interests inside of tech?

I grew up in a small town in New Jersey, but I’ve always been fascinated by technology and computers. I don’t have any formal education beyond high school. My main job is tutoring high schoolers, I also have a contract iOS dev job (6-8 hours a week). Outside of work, I love spending time with my family and doing Graphic Design. I also enjoy beta testing apps and trying out new technology. Other than technology-related things I don’t really have any hobbies (I’m a nerd like that).

3) Have you ever considered yourself an indie developer?

To be honest until about June 2022 I didn’t know what an indie dev was, now that I know, I’d say I’m working towards it.

4) What got you started/interested in creating your own applications outside of your “normal” job?

I love designing things and I started redesigning an app in Adobe XD, but after I was done a few screens I said to myself what’s the point if I can’t do anything with the design other than hire a developer (which I was too cheap to even think about it) so I started learning SwiftUI

5) How do you balance your time between friends/family, work, hobbies, and indie dev?

Family first. Work is work and needs to get done to pay the bills. Friends? What’s that 🙈 ? but in all honesty I don’t see my friends that often there’s just not enough time in the day. My hobby which is iOS development is at night when my wife and kids are sleeping

6) Libraried -This is such a fantastic reference tool! I forget all the components that SwiftUI offers and their customizations. This feels like a a must have for all SwiftUI developers? When did you start working on this? What were your initial goals?

Actually I had gotten an iPad mini as a gift and I started learning Swift right when Apple released Swift Playgrounds 4 for the iPad that allowed making apps on it (since I only owned a 2015 MacBook Pro that couldn’t download Xcode cause there wasn’t enough free space). I was doing a lot of UI designs in SwiftUI, and then I decided to redesign an app that I used fairly often but that app design was stuck in iOS 2. So I redesigned the entire app and sent a sample to the owner, I never heard back from them, so I decided I’d compete. I built the entire app over July and August and tried submitting to the AppStore but it got rejected 4 times (even after appealing), also dealing with the backend for that app was a pain so i dropped that app. I then decided I needed to have an app on the AppStore and since I’m always reading documentation on my phone I was wondering why there wasn’t any good resources for SwiftUI in an app, so I decided to build Libraried. I started September 1 2022 and released it on Sep 25 2022

7) Libraried - Being able to see all the components and toggle different configurations is so helpful! I’m so bad at reading documentation so having an interactive piece of documentation like this is great. Were some components harder to put in the app than others? How do you make sure you stay up-to-date with any new APIs that become available?

Yes some components I had to use hacks to get them to change based on the user selection. For example Picker has a few different styles but each one is its own style so I couldn’t just use @State var of type PickerStyle. How I keep up to date is whenever Apple releases a new version of Swift Playgrounds I look to see what’s new.

8) Libraried - I had no idea about the Timeline View component 🤯 I need to find a way to use this as one of my apps. Are there any components or configurations that you’ve come across that have surprised you? Are there any that you now use differently?

Yes I had no idea Buttons had the controlSize modifier. I learned that a LazyVStack has an option for pinned headers, and the few times that I’ve needed it, it was a game changer.

9) Libraried - What’s been one of the hardest parts of building and releasing an app? What’s been the most fun?

I wouldn’t say there were hard parts, just some things that I didn’t understand right away. Building it was fun, mainly bringing SwiftUI to life!

10) Libraried - What’s next?! Do you have any future features that you can share with us?

I first need to figure out what section will be next, but for now I’m putting it on hold as I’m working on another app 👀

11) What’s been the hardest part of being an indie dev? What’s the most fun part of being an indie dev?

The learning is hard, especially reading the documentation from Apple. At one point I was looking for a tutorial on how to read Apple’s docs 😂 Now though (I think) I can read them.

12) Is there anything else you’d like to tell the indie dev community about you?

I don’t think so, if anyone has any questions feel free to reach out.

13) Do you have any other indie devs that readers should follow / lookout for?

I need to give a shout out to Devin Davies, when I first saw Crouton in 2019, I decided that I need to make an app that’s just as aesthetically pleasing. Another inspiration is Andrew Zheng what he has built is mind blowing. Recently I came across another app that blew my mind and it actually won the Swift Student Challenge, it’s Assembler from Lena.

Newly Released and Updated Indie Apps

Here are some newly released and newly updated apps from this past week! If you would like to possibly see your app in this list, please submit your app to the look at me form 👀

Please Don't Rain Newly Released

Please Don’t Rain is a fun, convenient way to track whether rain (or snow) will affect a day that’s important to you.

Classifier Updated

Classifier 3.0 is here! It's now easier than ever to digitize your collections, with a refreshed user interface and a new way to create your collections.

TimeWave Updated

A New Design Language for the Calibre & Editor. Mac (Apple Silicon) Support. Added Markdown Notes.

Expenses: Spending Tracker Updated

・You can now enter exchange rates manually and set them as default if needed. ・The current exchange rate (fixed) is now the default rather than automatic updates. ・Improved Export option. ・Moved Transfer option to the input view. ・Minor bug fixes and performance improvements.

Thank you to everybody who made it to this footer! You either spent the time to read or took the effort to scroll 😊

Make sure to visit https://indiedevmonday.com/subscribe to get an email of future issues!

And go to Twitter and give @IndieDevMonday a follow… or multiple follows if you manage more than one Twitter account 😜