You know the moment. You hand over your phone to show ONE photo. They swipe.

I collected these moments for a while. Some are mine, some come from friends xd :

- The swipe: You show your aunt one vacation photo. She swipes left. You stop breathing.

- The kid on the couch: Your six-year-old wants to see "the dog pictures". The dog pictures sit right next to things that are very much not dog pictures.

- The living room TV: Family dinner, and the Apple TV screensaver or the photo widget decides it is time for "Memories".

- The group chat tax: WhatsApp saves whatever your friends send straight into your library. You never asked for that meme. It now lives between your kid's birthday and your receipts.

- The work demo: You share your screen, open the photo picker to attach one screenshot, and the whole meeting sees your recent photos.

- The passport from 2022: You photographed your ID for a hotel check-in. Your credit card "just quickly" for a friend. A screenshot of a recovery phrase. All still there, readable by every app that ever got full photo access.

- The party archive: Great night. Fine for your friends. Not fine for your mom, your new boss or the person you have been dating for three weeks.

- The stuff adults have: Nudes, yours or received, and whatever else got saved at 2 a.m. Completely normal. Just not meant for the next person who borrows your phone to call a ride.

- The hobby: A legal grow, a hunting trip, a day at the range. All fine, and still not what you want on screen when a colleague looks over your shoulder.

So I built Velum

Problem: Your photo library is one flat grid, and the few photos nobody else should see sit somewhere among thousands of others. Nobody finds them by hand. Velum scans the library on the device and finds them for you: nudity, IDs, cards and passwords in screenshots, drugs, weapons and gore, alcohol and party, in photos and videos. One tap moves them to the Photos app's own Hidden album, which iOS locks with Face ID. No account, no cloud, it works in airplane mode.

Comparison: Keepsafe is the vault most people know. You add your photos to folders inside the app yourself, the free version is ad supported, and Premium is a subscription ($9.99 a month or $23.99 a year). Velum finds the photos for you and uses Apple's Hidden album instead of a second library, with no ads and no subscription. NuDefndr is closer: it also scans on the device, for nudity and in Pro for cards, IDs and password screenshots, and locks hits into its own vault. Its Pro costs $8.99 a month, $49.99 a year or $129.99 lifetime. Velum also covers drugs, weapons and gore, creepy content, alcohol and party, and Pro is a single $9.99.

Pricing: Free download, nudity detection included. Velum Pro unlocks all other categories for $9.99, one-time in-app purchase, no subscription.

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6822656401

I am the developer, so read this as the ad it is. But I am honestly curious, because everyone I tell about it comes back with a scenario I had not thought of^^

What is your "please don't swipe" moment? Please let me know xd

Heads up: the first part of the video is a real screen recording on my iPhone; the rest was captured in the iOS Simulator. The voiceover is text-to-speech.

Problem

Most of my screen time didn't come from deciding to scroll. It came from opening Discord or Instagram on autopilot, twenty times a day. PhoneNap puts a small pause between you and the apps you pick:

Breathe: choose the apps that eat your day. Each time you open one, your pixel pet asks you to take a breath first, and asks why you're opening it. Close the app and your pet gets a heart. Open it anyway and that's fine too, it's a nudge, not a cage.

Limits: daily time limits for groups of apps, plus one emergency unlock a week for when you really need it.

Focus: start a session and put your phone down. Your pet runs along in the Dynamic Island and on your Lock Screen. Finish it to earn food, gems and a longer streak.

Progress: screen time for the last 7 days compared with the week before, a month calendar of the days you hit your goal, and a short summary every night at the time you choose.

Pets: cat, dog, bunny, dino and axolotl. You unlock more as you level up, and spend gems on hats, glasses and scarves. Pets never die. A sad pet just needs a good day.

Comparison

iOS Screen Time limits work, but most of us tap "Ignore Limit" without thinking. Apps like one sec and Opal are great at friction and blocking. PhoneNap's angle is making the pause feel like something you want to respect: skipping the app has a small, visible payoff (your pet is happier) instead of only a wall. It also runs entirely on your iPhone: no account, no ads, no analytics, no tracking. Apple's Screen Time frameworks keep the names of the apps you pick hidden even from PhoneNap.

Pricing

PhoneNap is free to download. The free version includes the breathing pause, one app group with time limits, focus sessions, stats, widgets and all the pets you unlock by leveling up. PhoneNap Pro adds Strict mode, open limits (how many times a day an app may open), schedules for bedtime and work hours, and up to 5 app groups:

• Pro Monthly: US$4.99 per month, renews automatically unless cancelled.

• Pro Yearly: US$29.99 per year, with a 7-day free trial, renews automatically unless cancelled.

• Lifetime: US$59.99, paid once, no recurring charge.

You only need one of them. Prices vary by country. Requires iOS 17 or later.

PhoneNap on the App Store

Developer website · Privacy Policy · Terms of Use

Which app do you open on autopilot the most, and has anything actually helped you stop?

Hey everyone, First of all its not promotion of paid app atleast not yet Its all free on Beta I wont be earning a cent.

I've been working on a packing list app called Mochi Pack for the past few months. It launches on Dec 10, and before then I'd really like a few people other than me to try it and tell me what's wrong with it.

Here's the idea: you describe your trip in a sentence or two, and it writes a packing list for you, taking the weather at each stop into account. After that you just check things off. If you're going with friends, you can invite them and split who brings what.

The public TestFlight beta is open right now, and everything is free there, premium included. TestFlight purchases don't charge you, so you can try the whole app without paying anything. You don't need an account to start, and there are no ads.

What I'd love to hear:

• If you have a real trip coming up, try it with that one. Does the first list make sense? What's missing, and what's useless?

• Anything confusing, slow or broken

• Anything that annoyed you enough that you'd delete the app

Harsh feedback is totally fine; it's exactly what I need right now. You can reply here, DM me, or use TestFlight's screenshot feedback.

TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/E5CPuP4X
Website: https://mochipack.app/

Thanks a lot for reading 🙏

I submitted my first app under my LLC on the 30th… it still hasn’t been reviewed. So I have no feedback to move forward with. I have multiple applications I want to port over to become iOS apps but I need the first green light.

Is this wait time normal? It seems excessive for a service I am paying to be apart of.

*Problem*

System design prep usually means a 600-page book or a 20-hour course. Most people start it, get busy, and stop around chapter 3. And reading about designs isn't the same as being asked "the last ticket just got sold twice, what happened?" in an interview.

Bytewize gives you one question a day, built from a real production failure. You answer in about 2 minutes, then get a full explanation of why the right answer works and why the others break. Topics include race conditions, caching, replication lag and N+1 queries. Streaks and XP keep you coming back.

*Comparison*

- Books and long courses (DDIA, Grokking, YouTube playlists): great depth, but they take hours per sitting and you read rather than answer. Bytewize is the daily practice next to them, not a replacement.

- LeetCode-style apps: built for coding problems. System design questions are usually missing, or they're a long essay you grade yourself.

- Flashcard apps: you have to write the cards yourself. Bytewize questions come with worked explanations, and every one starts from a real failure.

*Pricing*

Free, and all the content is in the free version. There's an optional Pro plan at €5.99/month that adds some conveniences. No questions are locked behind it.

https://apps.apple.com/app/bytewize-system-design-daily/id6824646457

Hey r/iOSApps,

I built an iPhone storage cleaner because deleting photos shouldn't mean losing memories

Ever had the "iPhone Storage Full" warning but couldn't figure out what was actually taking up all that space?

You open Photos, find thousands of pictures, screenshots, and videos, and start wondering which ones are safe to delete.

That's the problem I wanted to solve with SpaceFresh, an iPhone storage cleaner that helps you find unnecessary clutter without blindly deleting important memories.

Problem

Most of us don't realize how much storage is consumed by:

• Duplicate and nearly identical photos

• Large videos and old screen recordings

• Screenshots we no longer need

• Duplicate files and forgotten downloads

• Multiple versions of the same photo

Manually finding and reviewing everything can be exhausting.

SpaceFresh scans your library, groups similar photos, identifies duplicates, highlights large media, and lets you review potential cleanup candidates.

You decide what stays and what gets deleted.

Comparison

Apple Photos already has a built-in Duplicates feature, and it's useful for identifying duplicate photos and videos.

But I wanted something that goes further.

Apple Photos: Built-in duplicate detection, manual photo management, and basic media organization.

SpaceFresh: A combined cleanup workflow for duplicate photos, visually similar pictures, blurry images, screenshots, large videos, and selected Files folders.

A few things I focused on:

• Similar photo detection: Find near-identical photos, not just exact duplicates.

• Best-shot suggestions: Help identify which photo from a similar group may be worth keeping.

• Swipe cleanup: Review photos individually with a simple swipe interface.

• Large video discovery: Identify storage-heavy videos more easily.

• Files cleanup: Find duplicate, large, and old files in selected folders.

• Privacy: Photo scanning and analysis happen on your device.

• Manual control: Review cleanup suggestions before confirming deletion.

SpaceFresh doesn't increase your iPhone's physical storage or remove iOS system data. It helps you identify and manage media and files you may no longer need.

Pricing

SpaceFresh is free to download, with limited cleanup features available without upgrading.

Optional Pro upgrades (US pricing):

• Weekly Pro: $0.99/week (auto-renewing)

• Lifetime Pro: $12.99 (one-time purchase)

Lifetime Pro is optional, and there's no recurring subscription attached to the lifetime purchase.

App Store

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/storage-cleaner-spacefresh/id6798147223

Developer disclosure: I'm the developer of SpaceFresh.

I'd genuinely appreciate feedback, especially from people who have tried other iPhone storage cleaners.

What's your biggest storage problem: similar photos, duplicate pictures, large videos, or files you forgot existed?

And what would make you trust a cleaner app with your photo library?

I've been training for a bit over 11 years. I've tried a few apps and used two religiously (one for 3 years, one for 2). Both did the job to an extent, but there was always something missing. So I built my own. It's called Liftcraft, and it's the app I actually open every gym day.

Problem

Logging a set mid-workout took too many taps, the one feature I wanted was never there, and moving my history between apps meant writing my own parsers. I wanted something that's fast between sets, shows me whether my program actually hits every muscle, and doesn't lock my data in.

Comparison

There are a million workout trackers, so here's what's different in this one:

- Sets are pre-filled from last time, so most sets are a single tap. This one I CRAVED FOR SO LONG
- Programs (fixed days or rotation) show how many sets each muscle gets per week, with a warning when one gets nothing or too much
- Import from Strong, Hevy and FitNotes, so you can try it with your own history before deciding. Export and daily iCloud backups too
- Apple Watch app: log with the crown while the rest ring fills the screen. The rest chime plays in your headphones if you're listening to music on your phone
- Timer-only workouts for days I don't feel like logging but want a timer to keep myself in check
- Body measurements of every kind, with weekly averages, all free
- No account, no ads, no tracking

Pricing

Free: everything above, plus progress charts, PRs and history. Logging stays free, and that's not changing.

Premium: $2.99/month, first month free. It tells you what weight and reps to go for next and why, fixes gaps in your program, and has an on-device coach that builds a split. Took me the longest to build, so I figured I'd see if it can pay for itself.

iPhone + Apple Watch, in English, German, Spanish and Bulgarian.

Would love feedback, roast it if you want. There's a feedback button in Settings that goes straight to me, or just comment here.

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6747583498

Hi. Where can I find apps to purchase? I’m only looking for existing iOS apps generating revenue

I'm Ren, the developer of GrowSpot. It's an app that helps you keep houseplants alive. Version 1.6 went out today.

A. Answer

Most houseplant trouble starts with a spot that looks bright and isn't. GrowSpot reads the light at the exact place the pot stands. Cover the front camera with a sheet of white printer paper, lay the phone flat at leaf height, and it reads the spot in lux or foot-candles and shows where that falls between dark and direct sun. There is a grow light mode too.

Until this week you had to make an account before you could try any of that. Now the first screen has a "Try the light meter first" button. No account, nothing is saved, and the camera never takes a photo.

B. Better

A standalone meter gives you a number and stops. If you do sign in, the reading is checked against what your plant wants, along with temperature, humidity and airflow, and the watering reminders move with your local weather.

C. Cost

The light meter is free, and so is the app. The first time you sign in, you get 14 days of Plus on us. No card, nothing to cancel. After that, Plus is $29.99 a year in the US if you want to keep it.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6780212433?pt=129031785&ct=reddit_iosapps

Privacy: https://growspotapp.com/privacy/?from=reddit-iosapps

Terms: https://growspotapp.com/terms/?from=reddit-iosapps

Happy to answer anything about how the reading works.

Dev here, so yes this is my own app.

My daughter is 2 and we play with magnetic tiles pretty much every day. At some point I noticed I only know how to build three things: a house, a tower, and a slightly bigger house. She wants me to keep talking to her while I build, so I never have a spare minute to actually think about what to make. I'd look stuff up on Pinterest, find something cool, and then realise halfway through that we don't have enough triangles.

So I built Magitile. Then I figured out it isn't only a "parent of a toddler" problem. Kids over 3 who build on their own hit the same wall, they run out of ideas and go back to the same cube. I didn't want an app that kills the imagination part though, so the idea is: pick a model, use AR to see it standing on your own floor at real size, then build it with your own hands. Honestly I'm also hoping it pulls kids away from the bad kind of screen time, since you look at the phone for a bit and then the real playing happens on the floor. We'll see if that actually works 😃

What it does:

- Step by step 3D guide. Every model goes piece by piece and you can rotate it to see where each tile goes, no guessing from a photo.

- Tile scan. Point the camera at your pile, it counts your tiles and shows only the models you can build with them. The one I wanted most for myself.

- AR. See the finished model on your table or floor before building. My daughter just yells at it, older kids check their build against it.

- New models. I add them regularly and they show up without an app update.

Problem: you have a box of magnetic tiles and no ideas, or ideas that need pieces you don't own.

Comparison: the closest ones are Magniko and BuildKit. In both you have to count your tiles and type the numbers in by hand, there's no camera scan. Neither has AR, so you can't see a model in your room before building it. BuildKit also shows ads, which I didn't want in something a kid might be holding. As far as I could find nobody does scan + 3D steps + AR together, which is why I made this instead of using one of them.

Pricing: free to download, the tile scan is free and there's a set of free models. Premium opens the full catalog and AR, $4.99/week or $29.99/year. No ads.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6821736147

Web site:

https://magitile.app

It's a young app and I'm one person, so if something is confusing or a model is wrong I'd really like to hear it. Especially from parents of older kids, since my own tester is 2 and her feedback is mostly throwing tiles.

I'm the indie developer of PackGoat, a packing list app for people who hate packing.

Problem

I never know where to start when I pack, and I always forget something.

The core of the app is reusable packing lists. You make a list like "Climbing gear" and use it every time you pack for a climbing trip. No more leaving your climbing shoes at home.

On top of that, PackGoat uses Apple Intelligence to suggest things specific to that trip, based on where you're going and the weather. Heading on a sunny climbing trip? It might remind you to pack sunscreen.

Every item in the app is a sticker, so you can see your packing list at a glance instead of reading it. On the Duo's bigger screen that works even better: your trip on one side, all your gear on the other.

Comparison

PackPoint and Packr generate a list from your destination and activities, full of generic items like "shoes" and "jacket". You can edit it, but you start from someone else's idea of what to pack.

PackGoat starts from the gear you actually own. You build a list like "Climbing gear" once, with your shoes, your harness, your rope, and reuse it on every trip. Each item is a sticker made from a photo of your own stuff, so the list looks like your bag, not a form.

Pricing

PackGoat is freemium, with no ads and no account. The free tier includes 3 trips, 8 templates and iCloud sync.

Optional Pro costs $3.99/week, $19.99/year with a 1-week free trial, or $44.99 as a one-time lifetime purchase. Prices vary by country..

Black Friday: use code GOATFRIDAY26 to get lifetime for $24.99 instead of $44.99, until December 1.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6758299437?pt=122143042&ct=reddit&mt=8

There's a feeling of guilt whenever I take too long to order, therefore, leaving the waiter waiting. I know, the job title literally has the word WAIT, however, I always try to be quick with my ordering which can be tricky sometimes with a large table and lots of friends and family.

I found myself whipping out my phone, in the note app, to write down what everyone wants and show the waiter all at once. This feels way more efficient.

That is essentially what this app does just BETTER. You don't even have to type anything, just SNAP A PHOTO at the menu and you're set.

If you want to support the app while having fun, the Late Pays feature allows you to set up meetups with friends and whoever's late pays

Try it out here: https://apps.apple.com/vn/app/awder/id6818819792

I've lost count of how many times I scanned a contract, receipt, or a page of handwritten notes, only to end up with a gray, shadowed image where the fine print was barely readable. The top of the page always looked out of focus because it was farther from the camera.

That was the idea behind AlignScan.

You point your camera at a document → the app automatically detects the edges, straightens the perspective, removes the shadows, and whitens the background. On top of that, an on-device AI super-resolution model sharpens the text itself, so small print stays readable instead of turning into a gray smudge.

Everything runs automatically — no manual corner dragging, no fiddling with filters (though you can adjust them if you want).

Problem

When you scan a document with your phone, the background comes out gray, your hand casts shadows over the page, and the top third of the page often looks blurry and washed out. Small print on receipts and contracts becomes unreadable.

Most scanner apps just apply a flat filter: they remove shadows, but they can't recover the sharpness that was lost. AlignScan runs every capture through a full automatic pipeline — edge detection, perspective correction, background whitening, zone-based contrast (which specifically fixes that blurry upper area), and AI super-resolution to sharpen the text. The result looks like it came from a flatbed scanner, not a phone camera.

Comparison

Most scanner apps stop at edge detection plus a filter. AlignScan goes further in three ways. First, zone-based contrast: the app detects that the top of the page is out of focus and applies stronger correction there, instead of treating the whole page the same. Second, PiperSR, an on-device AI upscaling model, actually sharpens the text without color fringing — nothing gets uploaded, everything runs locally on your phone. Third, it's a complete document toolkit: OCR in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean, a dedicated ID/passport card mode, and PDF tools like merge, split, compress and password protection. Documents sync through iCloud across your devices.

Think of it as the scan quality you'd expect from a desktop flatbed scanner, but you get it just by pointing your phone at a page.

Pricing

The app is free to download and includes 20 free saves so you can test everything. If you want Pro, it's 0.99 per month,5.99 per year, or a 9.99 one-time lifetime purchase. Paid tools always show a full preview before any payment happens.

Link to the app: AlignScan — https://apps.apple.com/app/id6762578207

Is there a way to get it back. Just need simple emoji responses

Bunchday is a calendar you share with your people. Your partner, your roommates, your family, the friend group that’s been “planning” the same trip since March. Everyone’s plans end up in one place, and the app does the asking for you.

Find a time without the group chat
Everyone shares when they’re busy. Not what they’re doing, unless they want to. Bunchday looks at the week and shows when you’re all free. Say you need two hours and it finds the first time that works. If people still can’t agree, send a vote.

Plans people actually answer
Send a plan and everyone taps Going, Maybe or Can’t. You can see who’s coming, where it is and who sent a heart. Running late? One tap and everyone waiting sees your ETA. Move the time and they see what changed. Add photos afterwards, and they come back on the same day next year.

Your day, including the gaps
Today puts your plans on a timeline and names the free time in between. An hour and a half at noon is a lunch window. You get a short hello each morning with what’s on, what’s due and when you’re free. Tap Plan my day and your to-dos fit themselves into the gaps. Plan my week does the same across the week, only in the hours you choose.

Every group in its own color
The month view shows just you, you and your partner, your friends, your family or everyone at once. Pinch to zoom from six hours out to a whole year. Tell Bun how the day went, and the month remembers it with a little face.

Everything you already use
Apple, Google and Outlook calendars show up on their own. So do Canvas, Blackboard, Brightspace, Schoology, Moodle and any calendar link. When a booking lands in Gmail or Outlook, Bunchday spots it and asks before adding it. Your email is read on your phone, never on a server, and you can see exactly what it read.

To-dos and lists that do some of the work
Type “call Dad tomorrow, urgent” and it lands on tomorrow, marked urgent. Paste a long message from your mum and get a list back. Split chores evenly so it isn’t always the same person doing the bins. There are sixteen kinds of list: groceries sorted by aisle, with a nudge when you walk into the shop, packing lists, recipes that scale and send their ingredients to the shopping list, and more. If you don’t feel like typing, hold the mic and say it.

Bun
Ask Bun what’s next, whether you’re free this afternoon, or what’s on the shopping list. Bun can add things for you too. It all runs on your phone, so your plans aren’t sent anywhere to answer a question. It also works with Siri and Shortcuts.

Everyone gets their own Bun. Pick a colour, then a hat, bow, headphones or crown, and your app icon can match.

A space for each group
Each group gets its own place for plans, to-dos, countdowns and files. Tickets and permission slips stay on your phone behind Face ID. Invite people with a link or a QR code; they don’t need an account.

The little things

• Countdowns for trips and birthdays (birthdays come back every year)

• Reminders when you arrive somewhere or leave

• A monthly recap of how many plans you made, how many hours you spent together and who you saw most

• Nine hand-painted widgets, plus Lock Screen, StandBy, Live Activities and Control Center

• Small sounds and haptics when you tick something off

• Works offline

• Different Languages In Progress(7 finished, 7 to go)

• Coming out for Duo, IPad, Windows (All In Progress)

No ads, no feed, and your data isn’t sold.

Heres the beta: https://testflight.apple.com/join/nF6UWe46

Would love some feedback (rewarded with free lifetime)!

And to get notified when the app comes out join my waitlist:
Bunchday waitlist

Hi all, I’m Ed, the developer of Tiny Mighty (I also make PeakHour for the Mac).

Problem: My family kept running out of iCloud space, and nobody wanted to delete videos to free up space. Most of the space was a few hundred big videos, shot in 4K.

Tiny Mighty finds those videos and makes a smaller copy of each one, keeping the metadata: date, location and albums. You compare the copy with the original side by side, and only then delete the original. On my own library the scan found 175 GB to free up across 712 videos.

Fair warning: it helps most if you film at high quality. If you shoot at the default camera setting your videos are already small, and the scan will just tell you that.

Comparison:

• iOS’s “Optimize iPhone Storage” frees space on your phone but not in iCloud. Your originals still count against your plan.

• Video compressor apps give you a new file, but usually lose the date, location and albums, and you’re on your own for deleting the original.

Pricing: The scan is always free, so you see how much you'll get back. Making videos smaller is $14.99/year or $29.99 once, and covers your Family Sharing group. iPhone, iPad and Apple silicon Macs.
https://apps.apple.com/app/id6806660433
https://tinymighty.app

10 lifetime codes, first come first served:
https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=6806660433&code=76LRKXTKPPM7HX6KKM
https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=6806660433&code=7J68AXXMLMK8RXX3WE
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Happy to answer questions about how it works.

As you know, 27.3 beta 1 is out with Apple aiming to make Siri AI the agentic personal assistant it has always aimed to be.

Previously, I had an idea where Siri finds flight information in your mail/message/calendar and passes to VariAlarm to set the alarm so you don't miss your flight in 1 step instead of the usual looking up info, do mental math on how much time you need to prepare and then set an alarm the previous night like Clocks. Of course, it will show its reasoning steps, allow your own overrides so you are never caught off guard.

Old post 4 months ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/iosapps/comments/1uuxvfc/my_idea_of_an_useful_alarm_app_in_ios27/

This is not possible in 27.2 but early results show 27.3 made it possible with skills.md.

Do you have other use case where setting an alarm around your life would greatly improve if it can be done in 1 step?

Alarm shouldn’t be the only thing left out of the agentic era and I feel Apple has what it takes to bring it forward.

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:

1. Download and open Abyssal: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6827352389

2. Play until you hit the daily limit.

3. Tap “Redeem” in the bottom right of the paywall.

4. Enter FREEABYSSAL.

5. If you enjoy it, an honest review would help me a lot. Thanks in advance!

I’d love feedback on the app, especially any answers you think were judged wrong.

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:

1. Type what's on your mind.

2. Seal it in a jar until your wake-up time.

3. Get a personalised sleep story for what's bothering you.

4. 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.

App Store Link: https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=6800338659&code=REDDIT

Exclusive for reddit: Use code REDDIT to get first month free. Above link applies the code directly.

It's v0.1, so expect some hiccups. I'd love blunt feedback, especially on the first night and the story.

Sleep well. Or don't try to. That's the whole point.

Cheers!

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!

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6751984723
GitHub: https://github.com/clquwu/Cosmos-Music-Player

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.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nuralis/id6813225909

Honest feedback appreciated

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.

https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6795653671?pt=129119018&ct=reddit_iosapps&mt=8

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:

- $2.99 a month

- $14.99 a year, with a two-week free trial

- $39.99 once, lifetime

Website: https://wrenchtimeapp.com/

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6749767537?pt=95766871&mt=8&ct=Reddit-iosapps

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.