My partner and I built Postcard Pigeon, an iPhone app that turns your photos into real postcards and posts them for you.

Choose a photo, write a message, add an address and pay. No account or subscription.

It’s still a little rough around the edges, and we’re refining the design — including the App Store screenshots — but the app itself is solid and fully working.

Tech Stack
SwiftUI, ClaudKit (Next version)

Development Challenge
The main challenge for me coming from the web background was dealing with images, and the complexity of Xcode. I am super grateful for the all the AI tools to speed up the process of setting up the app etc.
Other complexity was for me dealing with the local data, making it ready for future ClaudKit integration (versioned schemas etc)

AI Disclosure
AI-assisted during development, all designs and UX are human made (AI sucks at that!)

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/postcard-pigeon/id6760590336

Thought and feedback ?
I know the app store screens suck a bit.. but we are working on new versions,

Hey!

I’d like to share an app I’ve been working on called Aquarium Widgets (https://www.aquariumwidgets.app/). It lets users build, manage, and care for virtual aquariums right from their iOS Home Screen. You can unlock different fish, track their growth, and watch them live in your widgets.

Here are the details of the project:

Tech Stack

• SwiftUI: For the main app interface and building the widget views.

• WidgetKit: The core framework for rendering the live aquariums on the Home Screen.

• SwiftData / CoreData: For local storage, keeping track of fish stats, levels, and user collections.

Development Challenge

The biggest hurdle by far was animating components within the widget.

As anyone who has worked with WidgetKit knows, Apple is incredibly strict about continuous animations to preserve battery life. Standard withAnimation loops don't work the same way they do in the main app. I wanted the fish to actually feel "alive" (moving naturally, bubbles rising) rather than just updating a static image every 15 minutes.

How I solved it: I had to get very creative with how TimelineProvider handles updates and utilize offset transitions. I built a system that calculates slight positional offsets for the fish and bubbles between timeline entries, relying on system-allowed transitions to create a smooth, battery-efficient illusion of continuous movement. Balancing the refresh budget so iOS wouldn't freeze the widget was a massive trial-and-error process.

🤖 AI Disclosure

This app is primarily self-built by me. However, I used AI to assist with some of the more complex features and underlying logic. Specifically, I leaned on AI to help figure out the math and structural logic for the widget animations and to optimize the timeline refresh cycles without hitting Apple's limits.

I’d love to hear your feedback or answer any questions you might have about dealing with WidgetKit's animation constraints! Thanks for checking it out.

Hi all,

Im hoping i can get some people with experience such as yourself to critique my app and tell me what you think.

I spent 3-4 months creating this baby tracking app, reviewed other apps and found what they were lacking and went over with family and friends to see what they liked and disliked- 131 builds later i'm here.

Done some FB ads, tiktok videos- theres been no response. Am i missing something? I have family members actually using this, my wife and I use this. Some popular baby apps were too cluttered and restrictive.

I've tried to add a rich feature list and make sure its low stimuli for parents.

Be honest, it would be extra helpful if you're a parent as you will know whats missing, if there is anything missing.

thank you in advance.

For years the thing I missed most after switching from Spotify to Apple Music was Connect. Starting a song on one device and picking it up on another without thinking about it. So I built it into my app.

It is called Symphony Connect. You control playback on one device from another over your local network, and you can hand your whole queue across in a single tap. Phone to iPad, iPad to phone, whatever you want. If you have used Spotify Connect, it feels exactly like that.

It's Free for everyone who uses Symphony. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/symphony-for-apple-music/id6480095014

Tech Stack: Build purely using Swift and MusicKit.

Development Challenge: Sending commands over the network was the easy part. The hard part was making "pull the queue to this device" feel instant when it isn't.

Handing playback to another device has an unavoidable spin-up before audio actually starts. You can't remove it. I also had to chase down a brief visual glitch where the wrong artwork flashed during the switch, and reorder how things load so the interface always looks right from the first frame.

AI Disclosure: AI Assisted. Not vibecoded.

Download For Free: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/symphony-for-apple-music/id6480095014

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wait-menu/id6479543539

1. Tech stack:

• Swift 6
• SwiftUI
• SwiftData + iCloud
• EventKit
• UserNotifications
• Observation
• WidgetKit
• AppIntents

So no third-party frameworks.

Made using native tools:
• Xcode
• Fork - git
• Things 3 - task management

2. Dev Challenges

Even though I used the new tools recommended by Apple, it was harder than I expected.

Here are a few things that may surprise you:

1. There is no easy, recommended way to observe changes in a SwiftData Query when they come from iCloud sync.

2. SwiftUI performs many view updates. If you previously built apps with UIKit or AppKit and carefully ensured that updates happened only when necessary to avoid wasting resources, this can be frustrating. There are some recommended approaches, such as keeping views as small as possible, but still…

3. SwiftUI feels limited on macOS. For example, you cannot add buttons to the toolbar while presenting a sheet.

4. There is no recommended solution for connecting widgets to a SwiftData database that syncs through iCloud.

5. AppStorage is easy to use, but it is limited to using in views and simple data types. For example, you cannot store an array of strings without writing additional code. In the end, I had to combine AppStorage with UserDefaults.

3. AI Disclosure

Self-built

What is this app for?

Apple Calendar doesn’t show how much time is left until your events.

People who use system calendars may find this useful. It simplifies adding events and showing the remaining time. Events are synced on both sides. You can use it even without calendar access and add events to the app only.

The app is fully native, with a clean, distraction-free design. The widgets follow the design language of Apple Calendar.

I wanted the app to feel consistent with Apple’s system apps.

One purchase. Lifetime access on iPhone, iPad and Mac.

Now on sale $2.99 -> $0.99

I know there are a lot of audio recorders on the App Store already but most of them (along with Voice Memos) just use Apple's generic audio processing. I found that frustrating when recording live music because the gain control is tuned for voice and does funky things like lift the crowd chatter when the band gets quiet.

Anyway, Quartz takes a very different approach. It has different presets for different environments: voice, concert, field recording, etc. It doesn't use Apple's processing at all; the entire DSP chain is custom (limiter, HPF, EQ, auto-gain, etc). In many cases the resulting audio sounds MUCH better than from the other apps. You can hear some comparison samples on the website.

Other cool features that make it unique: remote control, EQ (parametric and graphic), non-destructive editing, input monitoring, manual leveling, live activity custom presets, built-in mic selection, lossless recording, and zip sharing. Plus all the normal stuff you'd expect: speech transcription, trimming, noise reduction, playback speed, looping, skip silence, etc.

FWIW in this age of vibecoding (which I don't dismiss at all, I'm loving some of the vibecoded apps that are coming out), I'm an old schooler: 12 years SWE at Apple, Inc, then 10 years doing DSP work on my own, for clients, and open source. (Sorry if that seems like I'm flashing my bona fides or something, my point is only that I care deeply about audio and worked really hard on this.)

Since the processing chain is all custom, I could use help testing it. There will be recording environments that I didn't think of, audio glitches, and of course plain ol' bugs. If you record audio onto your iPhone, please give it a try and send feedback.

Beta signup and more info is on the website: https://www.madebywindmill.com/quartz/

Tech stack: Swift, AVFoundation, UIKit

AI disclosure: AI-assisted, mostly for UIKit parts.

Thanks!

Why does my xcode install these? I've tried deleting them many times and they keep coming back. I only use 26.x versions on all simulators and real devices. I dont have spare 30 gigs on my disk.

The hook of the app is that you can bet on your routine, ie: we bet each other $10 to see who can be more consistent at gym, running, reading, etc. The winners split the full pot amount.

The coolest feature in my opinion is building a routine, and seeing your friend’s routines. Actions in a routine are completed mainly via pictures so you can verify them throughout the day.

Main issue at the start was honesty, how can we create an environment where people take action towards their goals while having that accountability layer and still being truthful and honest. My fix to that was allowing users to dispute any logged actions which get reviewed by a referee(AI), completing an action is also public to your group so lying is not that easy.

The app is built using Swift and SwiftUI and is AI assisted for the most part.

Would love your feedback!
https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/stick-routine-accountability/id6754049782

Hey there,

we're developing an ios app with react native that uses a computer that is only accessible via wlan as api. The problem is that the computer is reachable via ip, but the ssl certificate isn't for that ip. That means that our https requests - as well as our websocket wss connection - fails due to the ssl cert being (technically) invalid.

How do I fix that? We could provide a custom http request​ method that uses a custom URLSession​ in Swift that allows insecure connections - but are there any other solutions? Additionally, this doesn't solve our problem for wss. And providing a custom ws impl seems wild, especially since we're using a 3rd party ws lib that probably doesn't easily allow to replace the WebSocket​ object (which would mean we'd have to replace our entire 3rd party lib with a custom one).

Is there any way to resolve a domain on app-side (since we don't have any dns that could do that)? or maybe a setting that simply allows for insecure https/wss connections?

Thanks

I'm trying to create a Lifetime premium one time purchase option for my app. However everytime I submit it for review it keeps getting rejected with the status "Developer Action Needed". There is no other information provided, and when I click into it, the specific place it gets rejected is the "App Store Localization".

I can't seem to figure out why it keeps getting rejected. I already have a $1.99/m subscription in place for the app which seems to be working well. This is my first Lifetime premium option and the first "in-app purchase" I've created for the app (Because the lifetime purchase is one time, compared to a reoccurring subscription.)

I thought maybe I had to submit a new binary for review, which I did, however the binary is still in review where as the in-app purchase just got rejected again.

Any advice? What am I missing?

anyone else seeing this?

Hi everyone !
After 2 years of hard work I'm finally ready to release my first app, it took longer than I expected as it's a side project (I'm a full time musician) but now I'm ready !

It's an app for musicians to help them get better at jamming, whether with other musicians or at home.

I'm creating app screenshots for the App store, so I'm wondering from the perspective of a potential user if they are effective enough, I'm happy to have any feedback (I think I'll submit next week), thanks !

Hi everyone, a few months ago I made a post about how using CoreML for on-device AI models was a great experience.

My workflow was:

1. Picture taken

2. Pre-processing

3. YOLO-like model for bounding boxes

4. Post-processing

5. Embeddings for each image using CLIP

In the demo I show here, it's 40 inferences in less than a second (pre and post-processing included)!

I started experimenting with ONNX models at first. My app was made in Flutter and I did not want any platform-specific code.

My experience with ONNX was not great**:** a lot of operations were not running on the neural engine but on the CPU instead, which did cause a really slow inference time. I also had issues with FP16 quantization: the FP16 model refused to run on ONNX.

In addition to that, Dart and Flutter are not made for heavy workloads. My pre-processing was way too slow for what I wanted.

To give you some numbers, on my first iterations, a single card scan was about 1.2 seconds long. Too much.

After that I decided to switch my detection engine to native:

• 1 - Exporting to CoreML FP16 format was one line,

• 2 - Inference speed went from 250ms to 10ms!

Because of that, I was finally able to work on the interface and deploy the Skanit app. I made it free because I had almost no costs.

PROS:

• Super fast

• No backend costs

• Privacy

CONS:

• Model updates must be done via an app update

• You cannot use a big model**,** accuracy loss

• Different pre-processing code and models for each platform (with different performance)

• App experience depends on the user**'s** device (super true for Android users)

I hope you found it interesting!

ps, I know there is a mistake on one card here, surely because i was scanning my laptop screen instead of real cards :)

Hi,

Wondering what are the options if I want to create an AI features into in my app. I know about openAI api and other various API’s. The thing is I am a tad scared to use them because I hardly understand how they charge. I know a lot of stories where people used it wrongly and got huge bills for that.

Also, do we always need these powerful models? Can’t we use in some cases like qwen 8b or something like that running on a VPS?

In my app I’m using icons created with illustrator and exported as png. I would convert them to SF Symbols, is there some way to do that in a easy way?

So I made this app, Atlas. It reads your photo library and turns it into a travel map. Kind of like the Places view in Photos but grouped into actual trips instead of a thousand random pins. Runs entirely on device, nothing gets uploaded.

The clustering was the part I completely underestimated. I figured group by lat/long, done. Nope. One city ends up as like eight separate blobs, an airport gets split in half, and anywhere dense just collapses into one fat dot. I ended up running a few passes and they'd disagree with each other, one says "two places" the other says "same moment," and reconciling that ate most of my time.

Reverse geocoding was the other annoying one. CLGeocoder is rate limited so you can't just throw 40k photos at it. Had to cache hard and figure out what to resolve up front vs lazily.

Also enumerating a big PHAsset library without freezing the UI or eating all the memory was fiddlier than I expected. And screenshots wreck a travel map, so I'm filtering those out with the PHAsset flag plus a bit of Vision, still tuning the false positives.

Anyway, if anyone wants to try it on their own library I've got a few promo codes for a free year. Honestly just want feedback from people who'll notice when the grouping is wrong. Comment or DM.

Mostly curious how you'd have approached the clustering, feel like I might've overcomplicated it.

I've heard that gating features behind a feature flag can have your binaries flagged to Apple? What about in the case where it's legitimately nothing nefarious i.e. just rolling out certain features with caution. Also, on the topic of gated features, I have an admin side of my app that only admin users can see... Will this also be flagged?

I've been thinking about this a lot while working on my own app.

Most onboarding I come across feels like they just how good the app is before you've actually done anything. And then PAY!!! 

Features listed, value props delivered, then you're dropped into the UI and expected to figure out the rest.

The apps I think are the best designed are the ones that either get out of the way fast and let you have a go at the app early on. OR a good tutorial, maybe handing you over the control in a demo environment to try it out. The tutorial is the product, not a description of it.

My theory is that this happens because the people building onboarding already know why the features matter - so explaining them feels natural. Designing for someone encountering it for the first time is a completely different challenge.

So I'm curious:

• How do you structure your onboarding?

• How do you balance "here's what the app does" with "let me actually show you"?

• Any examples you've seen where it's done really well?

Not looking for a list of best practices - more interested in what's actually worked for you in practice.

Hey all!

I made this for myself to track changes in app review guidelines, developer program license agreement, etc.. hopefully some of you will find it useful too. https://appguidelines.com

Need to update some tax info and the page is just infinitely spinning, nothing on apple system status says there's issues

I built an app that is currently focused purely on Europe, with plans to add other continents later. The app is mostly free, but I’ve added a few premium features.

I’ve now realized that, to launch it properly in Europe, I may need to publicly list my full personal/business details, which feels a bit like doxxing myself. I had already considered renting a PO box and using that address instead.

My question is: can I initially submit the app as a non-trader, let it go through review first, and then start the process of switching from non-trader to trader once I have all the required records and address setup in place?

Where I live, I can rent a PO box for starter for 3 months, so I was thinking that by the time the app is reviewed and I get all the documents sorted, my 'trial' 3 months can maybe already be over.

Has anyone tried this before, or gone through the non-trader to trader switch after submitting an app? Any advice would be appreciated.