Happy Monday, everyone!

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

Today’s Spotlighted Indie Devs

📆 Today I’m featuring Naftali Antebi.

Naftali is the creator of Libraried. Libraried is app built in SwiftUI for SwiftUI. It’s an interactive reference app for all the SwiftUI components and their various configurations. You can see what the components looks like and how they configurations change them. It also gives you the code to implement them! Libraried is really a neat way to discover and learn about all the diffent components. I consider myself decently knowledgable about SwiftUI but libraried has showed me a few things that I didn’t know that I’ll definitely be using here soon. If you are wanting to learn SwiftUI, learning SwiftUI, or already a SwiftUI expert, Libraried is a tool you’ll want to have. Go download it today!

👉 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

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.

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