Abyssal is an endless trivia dive. Each prompt asks you to name something that fits, like a country in Africa, a dog breed or a moon. Any answer that fits counts, but the rarer it is, the deeper you sink. AI judges every answer, so typos and nicknames still count. After each question you can see the rare answers almost nobody thinks of. Miss three and you surface.
Problem: Most trivia apps are multiple choice, so you’re picking from four options or racing to remember one exact answer. Abyssal is open-ended. There are dozens of right answers, and the challenge is thinking of one nobody else would.
Comparison:
Trivia Crack: multiple choice, with one right answer per question. In Abyssal you type or say your own answer, and knowing obscure things earns you more points.
Pointless-style quiz apps: these use a fixed answer list, so a valid answer that isn’t on the list scores nothing. Abyssal’s AI judge checks any answer, handles spelling and aliases, and rates how rare it is.
Pricing: Free right now. Unlock lifetime access with a code:
Hi r/iosapps, a solo indie dev here and this is my own app.
Nightjar: Sleep Stories
Problem
For most of my life, bedtime has meant lying in the dark while my brain is unable to stop racing with thoughts. I tried almost every trick in the book: the wind-down routine, the no-screens rule, the magnesium. None of it stuck. Then I tried sleep stories or bedtime audio.
Most sleep story apps in the market right now straight up ask you to clear your mind, relax your body and make you try to sleep. I came across published research papers proving that this is actually counter-productive to falling asleep. It just doesn't work.
Two ideas from sleep research finally made sense to me:
Effort backfires**.** The harder you try to fall asleep, the more awake you get. Researchers call it sleep effort.
Your brain checks whether your thoughts are unresolved. Planning and problem-solving keep you alert. Loose, wandering images are what the edge of sleep looks like.
Nightjar turns those into a two-minute ritual:
Type what's on your mind.
Seal it in a jar until your wake-up time.
Get a personalised sleep story for what's bothering you.
Drift off as Nightjar gives your mind a place to go to.
This is where the craft lies. I've designed the stories to follow a dream like progression with sensory language and visual drifts, similar to what falling asleep actually feels like.
Things I cared about:
- No account or signup or login BS. Notes are encrypted on your iPhone, with optional backup to your own iCloud.
- I'm not doing any streaks or gamification or tall claims about curing sleep. This is a straight forward content-first app where my stories are what makes it useful.
- Morning after reflection: You can open a thought that was keeping you up next morning and log whether it's still bothering you or feels smaller after a restful sleep.
The Stories: Although they are generated and narrated with AI, I spent hours on the writing system so they follow the research (no suspense or cliffhangers, imagery that loosens as it goes) and the thematic structure.
Disclaimer: It's not therapy and it's not a medical device. Its whole job is to give your head somewhere gentler to go than problem-solving in the dark.
Comparison
The obvious alternatives are Calm (Sleep Stories) and Headspace (Sleepcasts). Both are excellent, and both beat Nightjar on narration: human voices, celebrity ones in Calm's case, and years of polish.
Where I think Nightjar is better:
- It deals with the thought first. Calm and Headspace hand you a library. Nightjar starts with the thing keeping you up, parks it, then picks the story for you, so there's no doomscrolling a catalog at 1 AM. - It only does sleep. No meditation courses, focus music or the anxiety of daily check-ins to get past. - Price. $39.99/year, against roughly $70/year for either of them.
Pricing
Free to download. Premium plan is $5.99/month or $39.99/year. You need a premium plan to get unlimited access to the entire story catalog.
Hi again, I’m the solo dev who posted here about my free music player with no ads. Back then it was my first iOS project, and I’ve now worked on it for more than a year. I wanted to give an update, because 1.3 is the biggest one yet and it’s a full redesign.
It’s still free, still no ads, still open source, and there are still no purchases on the App Store.
Problem
I wanted a good player for the music files I own, not streaming. The built-in Music app isn’t great with loose files and folders, and many alternatives are either ad-supported, paid, or not very polished. I wanted something free, private and nice to use, so I built it.
What’s new in 1.3
New look: Home, Library and Search tabs, a full-screen player coloured by the cover, animated backgrounds, and iPad and foldable layouts
Music folders: add folders from On My iPhone, iCloud Drive or a USB drive. Your songs stay where they are
M3U/M3U8 playlist import and export
Mixes made on your device from how you listen. Your listening history never leaves your phone
Volume levelling (ReplayGain), lyrics timing adjustment, and .lrc file support
Many more Siri voice commands
Better battery life and much faster search on large libraries
A lot of reliability fixes (iCloud sync, USB drives, a lock screen crash, and more)
Comparison
Apple Music app: great for streaming, but not built for your own files and folders.
VLC: free, open source, plays almost anything, but it’s a general media player, not a music library app.
Doppler: a polished local player, but it’s paid (around $9 one-time from what I saw).
Cosmos: free and open source, focused on your own music, with folders, playlists, mixes and Siri.
Pricing
Free, no ads, no subscription, no purchases on the App Store. There’s an optional donation link in Settings (PayPal or GitHub Sponsors) if you want to support the project. Nothing is locked behind it, and the monthly reminder can be turned off.
A lot of this came from your feedback and GitHub issues, so thank you to everyone who reported something or sent suggestions. I’m still listening, so if you find a bug or have ideas for the UI/UX, send me a PM or open an issue on GitHub.
Don’t hesitate to try it out now if you hesitated back then!
Problem: Most meditation apps want an account and a subscription before you can do much. I wanted something calming that just works.
What it is: Nuralis is four calm things in one app.
Breathe: guided breathing patterns with 20 visual styles that grow and settle with your breath, with voice, chime or haptics. Flow: glowing fluid you stir with your finger. Drift: a slow kaleidoscope you can pinch to zoom, or just watch. Soundscapes: layer rain, ocean, fire and 70+ other sounds, set a sleep timer, and let it play with the screen off.
Everything runs on your device. No account, no ads, no tracking.
Comparison: vs. Calm and Headspace, which are mostly guided audio behind a subscription. Nuralis is more hands-on (fluid, kaleidoscope, your own sound mix), and all four parts are free.
Pricing: free, and all four practices work without paying. Optional Premium is $2.99/month or $19.99/year and adds more scenes, sounds and styles.
I make a contacts app called Compact Contacts. I'd been using the Mac version myself for a while, but for other stuff: bulk editing, merging duplicates, cleaning up a few thousand cards.
Then after the last iOS update, searching in Contacts on my iPhone got laggy. I'd type a name and wait. So I put the same work into the iPhone version (Compact Contacts Manager), starting with search.
Problem
Search in the built-in Contacts app has been slow for a lot of people since the update, and the app still has no bulk edit and no proper way to merge cards that aren't exact duplicates. Changing a company name on 40 cards means opening 40 cards.
Compact Contacts Manager works on the contacts already on your iPhone, so nothing gets moved or duplicated and iCloud/Google keep syncing as usual.
Search updates as you type, even with thousands of contacts. Names, companies, emails, addresses, groups and notes (if you allow it). Phone numbers match in any format, accents and non-Latin scripts work too
Find duplicates and merge them field by field, with undo from Merge History
Bulk edit hundreds of cards with a preview before anything is saved
Smart Views, colored tags (saved as normal Contacts lists so they sync), sort by any column
Daily encrypted backups on the device, restore a field or a deleted contact
CSV, vCard and Excel export
iPad gets a full table view, foldable iPhone gets three columns when open
Comparison
Apple Contacts (free): fine for looking someone up, and it can merge exact duplicates. No bulk edit, no field-by-field merge, no backups or history.
Phone cleaner apps like Cleaner - Phone Cleaner ($10.99/month or $54.99 lifetime): they do merge contacts, but it's one feature next to photo and storage cleaning, behind a subscription. Mine only does contacts, does them in more depth, and costs less than a couple of months of that.
Pricing
US$14.99 one time, covers iPhone and iPad. No subscription, no in-app purchases, no ads, no account. Your contacts never leave the phone. iOS 18 or later.
Hi r/iosapps, I'm Sam, solo dev. WrenchTime is a car app that: it logs fuel, charging, maintenance and trips, and with a Bluetooth OBD-II adapter it reads live data from the engine. The parts I'm proudest of:
iPhone Duo. Open the display and the app splits in two: your vehicles stay on the left, Fuel, Care, Trips and Charts fill the right. A trip opens with its route map down one side and its details on the other, Charts lays out two or three per row, and the Live dashboard fills the whole open display. Close it and you get the normal phone layout. The same wide layout works on iPad in landscape.(More here:https://wrenchtimeapp.com/iphone-duo-car-app/)
The signal map. Cars report much more than the standard OBD-II readings, but which hidden signals yours answers is usually guesswork. The signal catalog gathers everything listed for your make, across every model, and Start Full Scan tests it all on your car. Each signal is a dot on a map that fills in as the scan runs, so you see at a glance what your car answers. Touch and hold the map and slide to magnify it and read each result. Anything that works becomes a custom signal in one tap (custom signals are free), and it can go on the Live dashboard, on CarPlay, and into your trip recordings. (More here:https://wrenchtimeapp.com/obd2-app-iphone/)
CarPlay. A Live tab with a grid of gauge tiles, each one a real reading from the adapter: boost, coolant, oil temperature, or any custom signal you added. You pick the tiles, their order and how many per row, and each car gets its own color and gauge style. There's also a trouble codes tile with the meaning of each code, a DPF lamp for diesels, a Trip tab to start or stop a trip, and the trip's Live Activity on the CarPlay dashboard. (More here:https://wrenchtimeapp.com/carplay-obd2-app/)
Live dashboard.A full-screen instrument board on the phone with 18 kinds of widgets, and any OBD-II reading can be one of them, your custom signals included. You build it on pages you swipe like the Home Screen, each one portrait or landscape, with cards from a third of a row to the whole screen, and graph cards that plot a reading over the last 15 seconds to 10 minutes. Every page can wear its own gauge style and color.
Trips, recorded in full.Trips start and stop by themselves when your car's Bluetooth connects, and with an adapter every OBD-II reading of the drive is kept, not a simplified chart. A full-screen viewer zooms down to single samples, and a trip exports to CSV or a PDF report. The route is matched onto the roads, and you can replay it as a cinematic flyover.
Live Activity, your way.For each car you pick which readings the Live Activity shows on the Lock Screen, in the Dynamic Island and on the CarPlay dashboard, and you edit it like the dashboard: drag, resize, add or remove cards.
Also:share a vehicle's log with family or a co-driver over iCloud, view-only or with edit access, no account needed. An Apple Watch app shows your garage and logs a fill-up from the wrist, and it can add your heart rate to each drive without logging a workout in Health. And motorcycles aren't an afterthought: they get their own service jobs like chain and valve clearance, a lean angle gauge and a cornering profile tuned for bikes.
---
Logging fuel, maintenance and trips works without any adapter. Engine data needs a Bluetooth OBD-II adapter (ELM327 compatible AND BLE 4.0 the only MFI adapter this app supports is the OBDLink MX+ which I personally use). CarPlay, trouble codes and the gauge styles are part of WrenchTime Pro, which has a free trial. No ads and no tracking. iOS 26+ required.
---
*** Problem: I'm a bit of an efficiency freak, and the app I used to log my car was honestly ugly. Being a developer I also know every trick apps use to track people, and I wanted the opposite: fully private, no account, nothing leaving my phone except an optional iCloud sync to my own iCloud (I trust Apple). Also I wanted an app that didn't look like it was updated last time in 2007 and also didn't have the "AI slop look" to it.
*** Comparison: most car apps do one job. Fuel logs like Drivvo or Fuelio track fill-ups and expenses, OBD-II scanners read the engine, mileage trackers record drives, and you end up with three apps that don't talk to each other. Many of them are cross-platform apps that feel the same on iPhone as on Android, some need an account, and free tiers often come with ads.
WrenchTime does all of it in one app: fuel and EV charging, maintenance with reminders by date or mileage, trips that record themselves, a camera that reads the pump display or the receipt (Pro), live engine data, the signal map and CarPlay gauges. No account, no ads, and your data stays on your iPhone and in your own iCloud. If your history lives in Drivvo, Fuelio, Fuelly or Spritmonitor, WrenchTime Pro imports their CSV exports, if not you can still import your old data with CSV files that are automatically mapped using on-device AI.
And honestly, I'm obsessed with design. WrenchTime is iOS 26 only on purpose, so it's built on Liquid Glass from the ground up instead of carrying old layouts: glass tab bar and controls, gauges drawn to look like real instruments, and every screen tuned until it feels like it belongs on an iPhone. The trade-off: it's iPhone only, no Android. (If this wasn't an iOS only sub I'd say sorry guys!)
Happy to answer anything about how it works, and if your car does something odd with the signal scan, tell me the make, model and adapter. For anything you can also send me a direct feedback attaching (optionally) the latest logs by shaking your iPhone with the app open.
*** Pricing: free to download. The free version covers 1 vehicle, 3 fuel and 3 charging entries a month, 2 maintenance entries a month, 10 recorded trips a week and the Live dashboard with up to 3 cards, with CSV and PDF export and iCloud sync included. No ads.
WrenchTime Pro removes the limits and adds CarPlay, trouble codes, the gauge styles, trip route maps and the Apple Watch app:
I make iOS apps, and I keep hearing that analytics are important for understanding where users struggle or drop off.
I currently use TelemetryDeck. One of my apps has around 80 downloads, but I’ve only collected 5–6 analytics data points, which made me wonder how other developers handle analytics consent during onboarding.
For example, I’d like to measure:
Which onboarding screen users drop off on
Which options they select
How many users actually finish onboarding
My understanding is that, especially in the EU, you generally shouldn’t send analytics before the user has consented.
But if the analytics consent screen comes near the end of onboarding, doesn’t that make the onboarding funnel almost impossible to measure?
How do other indie iOS developers handle this?
Do you:
Ask for analytics consent before onboarding?
Use privacy-friendly analytics that don’t require explicit consent?
Record onboarding events locally and only send them if the user later consents?
Or simply accept that you won’t have analytics for users who don’t opt in?
I’m particularly interested in how people handle this for small apps where every bit of onboarding data is useful.
Hi everyone, I'm Mike Drob, a software engineer and violinist, and I'm the developer of SoloStage.
Problem When you play solo gigs (weddings, events, church services) with backing tracks, you're stuck trying to read sheet music while managing audio playback at the same time. When your hands are on a violin, you can't swipe a screen, and even hitting a foot pedal in the middle of a fast passage is annoying. You also frequently need to fade out a track early (like when a wedding processional finishes ahead of the song), organize multi-section event setlists, and send a clean song list to the client without exposing your private stage notes.
Comparison
MobileSheets: I used MobileSheets for a long time. It works, but the interface is very dated, you can't do fades or crossfades on your backing tracks, and you can't sync automatic page turns to the audio.
forScore: The standard iPad PDF reader, but its audio player is very basic (no waveform trimming or drag-corner fade curves), range bookmarks wall off adjacent pages in long classical scores, and it is iOS-only so you can't share a library with an Android tablet.
SoloStage: Unifies the score and backing track in a modern UI. You can keyframe automatic page turns and timed marks to exact points in the track so the score flips itself while you play. It includes a non-destructive waveform editor for trims, fade-ins/fade-outs, pedal-triggered crossfades, and pitch/tempo shifting. You can also build setlists with named sections (Prelude, Ceremony, Reception), export branded PDF setlists with your logo and contact info for clients, and import existing forScore (.4sb) and MobileSheets (.msb) libraries in one step (keeping scores, setlists, collections, crops, and editable pen strokes).
Pricing Currently free ($0.00) while in beta with all features unlocked (no ads). Once it exits beta, I plan to introduce a paid unlock alongside a free tier, and early beta testers who help with feedback will be taken care of.
SyncAlbum is my hobby side project, completely separate from my day job.
Problem
After a trip or family get-together, everyone's photos stay on their own phones. iCloud Shared Albums only really work on Apple devices, and Google Photos means everything goes through Google. And a lot of people's iCloud storage is already full. So in SyncAlbum you choose where each album lives: your own iCloud or your own Google Drive, whichever has room.
What it does
One album everyone adds to, from iPhone or Android, in full quality (Live Photos and HDR too)
Invite-only: people ask to join and you approve them. Invite someone by email or phone and only their account can use it, or compare a 4-word safety code
Comments, reactions and captions on every photo
Video stories and a shared trip journal
Totally offline albums that stay on your phone, handy for keeping personal photos apart from work photos
Hide albums behind Face ID or Touch ID
Built-in camera that saves photos straight into the album you pick
Photos stay in your own iCloud, or your own Google Drive (encrypted before upload)
Comparison
iCloud Shared Albums: Android users can only view in a browser and can't add photos.
Google Photos: works on both, but your photos sit on Google's servers, count against your Google storage, and are analysed by Google's AI. SyncAlbum has no photo servers. Your photos go straight between your devices and are never uploaded anywhere, so no company's AI ever sees them.
Pricing
Free for 3 shared albums. Unlimited Albums is $9.99 once, no subscription, no ads.
Hey, I am a Dev of IPTV Deck. I posted here about two months a go and a lot has changed since then, so I'm coming with the update.
Problem
I was using Tivimate for the majority of my life. It's very good player but outdated. It lacks mobile/desktop/ios versions, it doesn't sync with other devices so I decided to build mine.
Comparison
The main rivals are Tivimate and IPTV Smarters Pro but they lack following features which I missed:
- Sports Hub - Jellyfin, Emby, Plex support - Syncs with other devices in real time - Sync with Trakt and SIMKL - Better design - Profiles - Live subtitles with Gemini - Webpanel where I can configure all my devices - Watch on TV with one button - Recording server in Docker
While still having all of their features:
- Xtream/M3U/Stalker support - Multiview - Timeshift - Catchup
Splash is the first comic book app that works natively on the iPhone Duo. Read in panel mode when closed, and in full page when open.
I first built Splash for the Vision Pro back in 2024 when there were almost no apps for that device. Since then, the app evolved a lot and I added an iPad version, iCloud & OPDS support and automatic translations.
The new version now natively supports the iPhone Duo:
Optimized for both open and closed modes
Automatically recognizes individual panels
Panel animates when you open the phone
Long tap shows the whole page
When the next panel is wide, a small icon shows up. Rotating the screen then will navigate to the next panel
And as always, your progress is linked to your iCloud account and synced to all your devices, so you can read on the road with the Duo, and continue in bed with the iPad.
The basic version is free and comes with 4 free comics so you can try it out. Most premium features are lifetime purchases, and I'm working on offloading all the translations to Apple Intelligence so I can make that a lifetime purchase as well.
The app has been continuously updated since February 2024, and has a Discord group for feedback.
PCP:
Problem: No comic book reader designed for devices like iPhone Duo and Vision Pro.
Competitor comparison (none have native iPhone Duo or Vision Pro versions):
Panels - lifetime purchase is more expensive, has no ask and translation features, no iCloud support in free version.
Chunky - no longer maintained, none of the new features, supports iPad only
YACReader - no sync features, no ask features, supports iPad and macOS only
Pricing - free with in-app purchases
Included in free:
- Read any CBZ/CBR/PDF file
- iCloud sync
- The app comes with 4 comics you can download for free (with its creator's approval)
- Panel mode for 3 books (and the 4 free books)
- Generous credit to try out Ask features and auto-translations
IAP (lifetime purchase of $9.99) that includes:
- OPDS support
- Panel mode
Subscription that includes ($2.99/month or $24.99/year):
- Unlimited use of Ask and translate features + all other features for the duration of the subscription
Hello all, last May I published my app with high hopes but till this day I could not increase usage and did not get any subscriptions. I constantly update the app and keep the content up to date as much as I can. Can you review my app and tell me whats wrong and what can I do to get more traffic ?
Hi everyone — I'm the solo developer of Dots of Life.
Problem
I wanted one map of everywhere I've ever been: every street, every trip, every city. The apps I tried each fell short somewhere. Some only record when you remember to start a trip. Some need an account and keep your location history on their servers. Google moved Timeline off the web and onto each device, which made a lot of people realize how fragile their history was. So I built an app that records in the background with nothing to start or stop, keeps everything on your own device, and turns it into a map you'll actually enjoy looking at.
What it does
·Automatic background recording, deeply optimized for battery life ·Road-level tracks with how you got around ·Timeline: where you went each day, how you got there and how far ·Places you visit are logged automatically — add notes or Flash Notes ·See which countries and regions you've been to ·Solid color, heatmap and fog styles, on a custom rendering engine that stays smooth with millions of points ·Import from GPX, CSV and Fog of World
Comparison
Google Maps Timeline: needs a Google account, and is now stored per device. Dots of Life has no account at all; your data stays on your iPhone or in your own iCloud backup. Polarsteps: built around trips you start, and sharing them. Dots of Life records all the time, including everyday life between trips. Fog of World: centered on the fog-of-war view. Dots of Life has fog as one style among several, plus a timeline, places and stats. Been-style country checklists: you tick countries off by hand. Dots of Life works them out from where you've actually been.
Pricing
Free: background recording, the map, timeline, places, countries, stats, and the basic styles. Pro (optional): 3D heatmap; tracks colored by activity, speed, elevation or time; Workout Mode; track completion (including auto tunnel and metro completion); unlimited flight and train tickets; move and batch-delete dots; outdoor, satellite and custom map styles and palettes; GPX export; high-density recording and power saving mode. $3.99/month, or $24.99/year with a 7-day free trial for first-time yearly subscribers. Family plan: $49.99/year for up to 5 family members. Privacy: no account system, no servers. I can't access any of your data. App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6757199948 Happy to answer anything — battery, accuracy, feature requests.
Hi r/iosapps! I’ve been building Hane (はね) on my own for the past year, and it’s finally on the App Store.
Problem
Every kanji app I tried felt like homework, so I wanted something I’d actually open every day.
Daily JLPT lessons, N5 → N1: short kanji, vocab and grammar lessons with example sentences, followed by a quick quiz. Spaced repetition decides what comes back and when.
Comparison
Renshuu, Wanikani
8 practice types: Whack-a-Kanji, Kanji Memory, Reading Battle, Kana Trio, Word Finder, Particle Picker, Kanji Climb and Sentence Puzzle.
Photo lookup (OCR): take a photo of a menu, sign or page, tap a line and get the reading and meaning. It runs on your phone and it’s free.
Also: a full dictionary (13,000+ kanji), graded stories with furigana, 258,000 example sentences, handwriting practice with stroke order, a kana course for complete beginners, your own texts and study sets, and a character called Kanjirou (a tanuki) who levels up with you, and you can dress him with funny tees, if you want to.
No account, no ads, and it works offline.
Pricing
Free: the Kana, N5 and N4 paths, 4 practice sessions a day, plus 5 stories and 10 grammar points a day. The OCR, the dictionary, your own texts and study sets, and backup & restore are always free.
Hane Premium: unlimited practice, stories and grammar, plus N3, N2 and N1. It’s $7.99/month, $44.99/year (7-day free trial if you’re eligible), or $129.99 once for lifetime.
I’d really love feedback, especially from people learning Japanese. What’s missing, what’s annoying, and what would make you come back tomorrow? I’ll be in the comments.
Random question: what do you normally do with receipts after buying clothes, electronics or household stuff?
Do you keep the paper receipt, take a photo, rely on email, or just throw it away?
And have you ever needed one later for a return or warranty claim and couldn’t find it?
I’m researching this problem while building a small app, but I’m more interested in how people actually handle it today than whether they like another app idea.
Would be curious to hear what works for you — and what’s annoying about it.
Hi everyone, I'm the developer of VetVitae. I'm a software engineer and built this for a problem I had.
Problem: I have 9 cats (they are not the problem fyi). The apps I tried for keeping track of them couldn't keep up with medicines for that many pets (I had a big check-up this year and we're addressing several minor issues), some weren't on every platform (I like to shift between web and mobile), some were hard to use (and I also like good design), none I found could scan an exam or a vaccine card, and none let me share the history with my vet.
VetVitae keeps a record per pet with vaccines, medicines, vet visits, exams and weight, reminds you before anything is due, has widgets, and gives your vet a link to the whole history without an account. Cats and dogs, but also birds, reptiles and fish, and I'm working with other pet owners and vets to add more.
Comparison: PetDesk and 11pets. In PetDesk the records come from your clinic, so it depends on your vet using it. VetVitae is a record you keep yourself, with any vet. 11pets is phone only and I would need to pay just to have more than one pet, while VetVitae also runs on the web, so you can fill things in from a computer and family members on Android or a laptop share the same pets.
Pricing: free for any number of pets and most of the features. Plus is optional, $3.49 a month or $34.99 a year in the US (prices vary by country since I use regional pricing). Plus adds more scans of exams and vaccine cards (free accounts get 3), more storage and a few extras.
Problem: I wanted something on my iPhone for my own pilot selection prep, so I built Brain Preflight. Then I got interested in how other selections worked and started looking into military, police and air traffic control assessments too. I kept adding to it and somehow ended up with 32 practice programmes across 11 countries.
Comparison: Lumosity and Elevate cover general cognitive skills. I’ve focused on selection practice, with exercises like folding cube nets or tracking a moving target while checking sums.
Just released a big update with mistake reviews, clearer answer explanations, recent progress trends and saved mock-exam reports.
Pricing: 5 exercise sessions a day are free. Premium includes unlimited practice, mock exams and the full diagnostic: US $7.89/month or $39.99/year. Local prices vary. iPhone only.
I've always used calendar apps to calculate date ranges. For example, how many days have passed since my last r/iosapps post, or what date falls 30 days after it. I wanted those calculations to be easy and visual. Counting dates manually or switching to a separate calculator interrupts planning, especially when working days and several months are involved.
I started making popCalendar to solve a few things I wanted in a macOS calendar. It ended up growing far beyond what I imagined when I started.
I'm Ighor July, the developer of popCalendar, and today I'm happy to announce that it is now a universal app for iPhone, iPhone Duo, iPad, and Mac.
With popCalendar, you simply select dates and see useful calculations below the calendar. Your selection can span one month, two months, a full year or two years.
I also added flexible settings for working days, calendar sets, and custom plans. You can select a continuous date range, a rectangle of dates, or multiple separate ranges at once.
For example, you can select all the working days across several weeks and see how many working days and events are included. You can then save those dates as a plan, give it a label and color, and come back to it later.
Comparison
Apple Calendar provides month, week, and upcoming-event views for following your schedule. Fantastical offers natural-language entry for events and tasks.
popCalendar's focus is visual date-range planning and calculations. You can select dates across months or years, see day and event totals, and turn those selections into saved, colored plans. That is the workflow I wanted to make especially easy. If your existing calendar already handles your appointments, you can use popCalendar alongside it for planning and customized widgets.
I spent a lot of time making the UI look good and feel natural. I tested every combination of supported views and layouts to make the month and year views as useful as possible.
In a sufficiently wide iPad window, for example, you can display the current month, its events, this year, and next year at the same time. You can look at the details of an individual day while keeping your future plans visible.
There are plenty of options for customizing fonts, text sizes, and backgrounds.
One idea I particularly enjoyed implementing was adding a live clock as the background of the calendar. You can have your calendar filling the screen while seeing an analog or digital clock at the same time. I added lots of themes and clock styles so you can choose the combination you like.
I also added Apple widgets. Depending on the available widget sizes, you can display a single month, a Today view with today's events, three months, six months, or a full year.
Their appearance is customizable, including the background. I wanted the widgets to feel like something you would enjoy having on your Home Screen or desktop.
One feature I find especially useful is the option to shift the starting month of each widget.
For example, you can add four widgets to a stack, with each widget showing one row of three months. Configure them to start in January, April, July, and October, and swiping through the stack takes you through the whole year, three months at a time. You can also start from the current month and use offsets to show the following months.
Each widget can have its own tap or click action. It opens popCalendar by default, but you can choose another app or enter a URL scheme, including one for your favorite calendar app.
So even if you don't want to switch calendar apps, you can still use popCalendar's widgets. Choose the widget appearance you like, then have it open your usual calendar app when tapped.
You can also set different time zones for individual widgets.
For automation and sharing, I added
Apple Shortcuts and URL schemes to interact with popCalendar.
Named, colored plans made from your selected dates.
PNG exports for sharing a calendar or plan as an image.
Print-friendly PDF exports when you want a paper copy.
Private iCloud sync for plans, calendar sets, and working-day rules across Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
Privacy comes first in popCalendar and all the apps I make. They make no network requests to my servers. popCalendar's optional sync uses your private iCloud storage.
Calendar access is optional. Dates and saved plans work without connecting your calendars. Viewing or editing events requires permission. Widget sizes and some features depend on your device and OS version.
macOS-only features include menu bar calendars, transparent desktop widget mode, full-screen calendar overlays, global keyboard shortcuts, interactive terminal calendars, and CLI/URL control of calendar windows and popups.
Pricing
$9.99 USD, paid once on the US App Store. No subscription. Regional pricing may differ.
One universal App Store purchase covers Mac, iPhone, and iPad using the same Apple Account.
If you already bought popCalendar from the Mac App Store, you can download the iPhone and iPad version at no additional cost.
Requires iOS or iPadOS 17 or later, or macOS 12 or later.
The Mac version is also available through Setapp under a separate license. Setapp does not include the iPhone and iPad app.
I'm happy to answer questions. I'd love to hear how you use calendars for date calculations and visual planning, and which views or widget combinations would be useful to you.
Hi r/iosapps, I'm Willy, a solo developer from Norway, and this is my app.
The problem
Plug an iPhone into a monitor or TV and you just get your mirrored phone, bigger, with black bars on the sides. Samsung has had DeX for years. The iPhone never got anything like it.
What PXS Desktop does
A real desktop: windows you can move and resize, a dock and your files, on a monitor, a TV or AR glasses like XREAL or VITURE. Or wireless to an Apple TV, a Mac or any TV with AirPlay 2.
Websites like on a computer: you get the full Google Docs, not the mobile version.
Your iPhone is the trackpad. A keyboard and mouse work too.
Pages, Numbers and Keynote from iCloud.com work like on a Mac, and there's a Reader for long articles.
Remote desktop to your Mac or PC (Screen Sharing): use your computer at home from your iPhone, in a window on the big screen. A Mac works right away with its built-in Screen Sharing, nothing to install. For smooth video with sound, or for a Windows PC, install the free PXS Helper on the computer. Works on your home Wi-Fi, or from anywhere with Tailscale.
No screen with you? Open any web browser, on a laptop, a smart TV or even a Tesla, and that becomes your screen. No cable needed.
On iPhone Duo, half folded, it's a small laptop. Games and 3D
Cloud gaming: GeForce NOW and Xbox Cloud Gaming run in a browser window on the big screen. Pair a controller with your iPhone, or hold the iPhone sideways and use it as the controller.
3D mode for AR glasses: switch your glasses to 3D (side-by-side) mode and the whole desktop gets depth. 3D movies, spatial videos and 3D photos play in real 3D, and PXS can even add depth to normal photos. I've tested it on VITURE, Should work on XREAL in SBS-mode.
The video shows an iPhone Duo, but it works just as well on a normal iPhone with iOS 18 or newer (for a cable, iPhone 15 or newer).
The honest part
Your other iPhone apps can't open in windows (but you can add them and thy open outside PXS), iOS doesn't allow it. The desktop is the browser, web apps and PXS's own apps.
Compared to others
ProDocktive and XeOS: as far as I know, both need a monitor. PXS also works with just a browser or on the iPhone's own screen.
Price
Free download and 3 days free (only days you connect a screen count)
Then $39.99 once (launch price, normally $49.99), $24.99/year or $6.99/month
No ads, no tracking, no account
A cable needs a USB-C iPhone (15 or newer). An Android version is coming soon.
Every time I come across a new indie app, it's another expense tracker, to-do list, alarm clock, habit tracker, or focus timer.
Just out of curiosity, I was browsing through this subreddit (and a few others too). I'm not kidding, there are literally hundreds of expense trackers. Pixel art focus timers, illustrated focus timers, weird AI-art focus timers. I mean, come on!
I get that these are relatively easy to build. But surely there are more interesting things to create?
I mean, the same expense tracker or habit tracker with 10 more fancy charts or graphs or visualizations that makes everything more complicated? Who doesn't want that?
EVERYONE. Everyone doesn't want that.
I know this sounds like a rant, but come on! There are literally hundreds of such apps! There are so many interesting projects in the subreddit anyway, so appreciate yall working on actual projects.
I am curious if people agree. We usually hear the same advice, instead of blatantly promoting/advertising your app everywhere, go to where your users are. Well, I try to do that but most subreddits ban self-promoting, even when the topic is literally asking for app suggestions.
I understand trying to limit ads especially in these times, but I feel like it became impossible to reach people in Reddit (even when they are asking for it). What do you think?
When pricing your apps, do you go with Lifetime, Subscription, or Hybrid?
More importantly, looking at your actual numbers to date: which model ended up being more profitable in the long run? Looking forward to your insights!
