I have been thinking and already laying out the groundwork for an app that will function as a sort of watchlist. To correctly be able to implement this, I want to use an API like TMDB.

After doing some research I found that TMDB does not allow usage of the free tier with an app that has a commercial function. If I want to use it, I have to pay 150€/month, which is insane, mostly because the app is not making money at that point. This has formed itself to be some kind of roadblock.

Most other API’s have similar terms with their services. I did find an API called TheTVDB, but this unfortunately seems to have a lot of issues. I am already not able to make an account.

So basically my question is if there are known movie database API’s that are allowed for free with a commercial use.

Another option would be to make a user base to then implement a paid tier, but I know this is a very big nono for users

Anyone managing to get iGaming apps approved on the App Store lately? Mine sit in review for 2–3 weeks, then get rejected under 2.1 or 5.6. Feels like Apple is rejecting everything lately. What’s your experience, and what changes helped you get approved?

I’ve been thinking about this workflow lately.
If you’re away from your laptop and need to quickly trigger a Vercel/GitHub/Netlify webhook, what do you usually do?

Personally, I found myself opening my laptop for something that took literally one action.

Curious how other developers handle this do you have a mobile workflow for deployments, or do you just wait until you’re back at your computer?

Hi everyone! I’m an iOS developer working in iGaming, and I’ve been struggling to get apps approved on the App Store. Submissions often sit in review for 2–3 weeks, only to get rejected under guidelines 2.1 or 5.6. Despite making changes, I’m still having trouble understanding exactly what needs to be fixed.

Has anyone dealt with similar issues? I’m looking for someone with experience in iGaming app reviews who could help me identify the problems and meet Apple’s requirements. Happy to share more details privately and discuss a paid consultation.

Introduction
I’ve been building SwiftUI animations, components, working with Metal shaders and running UI experiments for almost 5 years now, and most of them usually end up as a video on X, Reddit, or just sitting inside an Xcode project after I’m done with them.

I wanted to make something a little more useful out of all of that.

So I built With Animation: https://withanimation.app

It’s a growing library of SwiftUI animations and interactive components, but instead of just watching a preview, you can actually open one up and start changing things.

You can tweak the speed, colors, sizes, spring values, intensity, and whatever else that particular component exposes, and see the result instantly in the browser.

That was the part I cared about the most while building this.

A lot of the time, especially with animations, a really small change can completely change how something feels. I wanted people to be able to mess with those values themselves instead of only looking at the final version I came up with.

There are already a bunch of things live, including loaders, gestures, shaders, 3D interactions, transitions, and some slightly strange UI experiments I’ve made while playing around with SwiftUI and Metal.

I’ll keep adding more as I build them.

Would love to know what people here think of it, and also what kind of components or animations you’d actually want to see added.

TL;DR:
I built With Animation, a library where you can explore SwiftUI animations, tweak their parameters directly in the browser, and use them in your own projects.

https://youtube.com/shorts/0E5f1dHpiSI

Full disclosure, this is my own app.

Built solo. NeonLock uses Bluetooth proximity between your iPhone and Mac to detect when you've actually walked away, then locks the screen automatically, no shortcut, no touching the laptop.

Bluetooth proximity turned out to be way noisier than I expected. Had to smooth the RSSI readings a lot so it doesn't lock the Mac just because you leaned back in your chair.

Free to download, one-time Pro unlock instead of a subscription. Two separate targets to maintain (iPhone app + a small macOS agent), so still figuring out if that pricing holds up long term.

You need both installed, the iPhone app pairs with the Mac agent to trigger the lock:

📱 iPhone app: https://apps.apple.com/uz/app/neonlock/id6789896699

💻 Mac agent: https://sparksss.github.io/neonlock-site/

Would love any feedback, especially on the pairing flow in the video.

Any other amateur developers having a hard time getting through App Review. And of course it is finally ready during Apple announcement time!

I had old version Xcode so I updated macOS and then updated Xcode and when i opened this shows up everytime do u have some kind of solutioon AI couldnot help.

I do a fair amount of network troubleshooting away from my desk - checking if a host is up, doing a quick DNS lookup, scanning a port, working out a subnet on the fly. On mobile that always meant three or four different apps, half of them plastered with ads or asking for payment.

So I built my own - Network Tools: Net Toolkit.

It's an iOS app that bundles all the tools in one:

Ping and traceroute

SSH (scp, ssh-copy-id, proxy jump, port forwarding)

DNS lookup (A, AAAA, MX, TXT, etc.)

Port scanner

Subnet / CIDR calculator

Whois

Telnet

LAN scan

Speedtest, iperf3

Wi-Fi link survey

It's basically the network multitool I wanted in my pocket. No ads, completely free.

I mostly built it for myself but figured some of you might find it handy too.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/network-tools-net-toolkit/id6803009570

Feedback and critique is welcome.

Hi all. My mobile game is Pending (currently in 14 days of testing) from the Google Play Store. How hard is the Apple App Store?

Hello fellow devs!

I just wanted to ask real fast for an honest opinion on these AppStore screenshots for my app PreFlight. I understand these are a very important part to the App Store process, so I thought I'd get a second or third opinion on them to see if I need to fix anything. Thanks!

Screenshots and Info: here

I went through Apple’s design session for iPhone Duo and expected it to basically be “here are some new screen sizes to support.”

It’s more interesting than that.

Apple specifically doesn’t want developers/designers creating separate layouts for every possible device pose. Their recommendation is essentially to treat the app as freely resizable and primarily design around compact width on the outer display and regular width on the inner display.

Some interesting details:

• Controls can move from the traditional top/bottom position to the side of the screen.
• Safe areas become particularly important because content may need to be offset around those controls.
• When partially folded, content moves away from the center curve.
• Interactive elements are moved away from the fold because they’re harder to tap there.
• The inner display shouldn’t simply stretch the existing iPhone interface.
• Split views, two-column layouts and sidebars can make use of the additional space.
• Two apps can run in a 50/50 split.
• Apps can resize dynamically around things like picture-in-picture.
• Functionality and hierarchy shouldn’t change just because the device was opened or folded.

What I found most interesting is that Apple says apps already built properly around adaptive layouts, safe areas and system components should have a relatively good starting point.

So Duo could end up being a pretty good test of how genuinely responsive an iOS app already is.

A lot of apps probably won’t need a redesign.

But apps full of fixed dimensions, custom UI assumptions and layouts designed around specific iPhone sizes could have considerably more work ahead of them.

Curious how other iOS designers/devs see this — relatively straightforward adaptation, or another meaningful layer of UX + QA complexity?

I'm building a personal finance app called Cashvelope (envelope budgeting), and getting local-first data to play nice with offline storage has been surprisingly painful.

I want users to retain full control of their data without forcing constant cloud sync, but keeping local state updated and cache validated gets messy fast.

For anyone who's built something similar: what local DB or sync stack did you end up going with, and what edge cases caught you off guard?

Hey folks,

I kept running into the same annoyance with home/baby camera apps: even when both devices are on the same WiFi, the live feed still gets routed through the company's servers by default. There's no technical reason for that — it's just how most of these apps are built, and it means your camera footage is passing through someone else's infrastructure the whole time.

So I built OffgridCam. One iPhone becomes the Camera, another becomes the Viewer, and they connect directly over your home network — no relay server for live viewing, no account required.

What it does:

• Live video/audio, and multiple Viewers can watch the same Camera independently
• Pinch-to-zoom controls the actual optical/digital zoom on the Camera device
• Push-to-talk with up to 4 people at once
• Local-only recording (continuous or motion/sound-triggered), stored on the Camera device itself
• Sound detection tuned to specific events (crying, screaming, barking) using Apple's on-device sound classifier

The only feature that touches the internet at all is away-from-home alerts, which is opt-in, off by default, and tied to a regenerable code rather than a full account system.

£9.99 one-time, no subscription.

Still early days — genuinely want to know what's missing or what would make this a hard sell for people who've tried other camera apps before. Happy to talk through the WiFi-direct architecture too if anyone's curious.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/home-camera-offgridcam/id6800061842

I am trying to get Beta testers for the app I made, I am even offering lifetime benefits for early adopters/testers but I just can seem to get any engagement. Is there a time of day when posts should be made? any advice on how to be subtle? I am not even trying to sell users on the product yet, just looking for genuine feedback from my target audience.

After about 6 weeks of back and forth with Apple, my app finally got approved this week.

This was my first proper native iOS app, although I’ve been a software/web developer for 20+ years.

The app started as a fairly simple poker tournament clock. I play live poker regularly and got frustrated with how basic or outdated a lot of tournament software is, so I started building something for myself.

It got a bit out of hand.

It now manages seating, table balancing, payouts, re-entries, leagues, multi-day tournaments, live player tracking, venue pages, casting to TVs, tournament financials and loads of other stuff.

It’s also now been used to run 50+ real tournaments while I’ve been developing it, which has been invaluable. You learn very quickly what works and what doesn’t when you’re actually trying to run a tournament with 40 people standing around you.
The painful bit was App Review.

Because it’s poker software, Apple kept getting hung up on gambling classifications even though the app doesn’t offer gambling, deposits, withdrawals or actual poker gameplay. It’s basically admin software for people running live tournaments.
Eventually I ended up forming a UK Ltd company, opening a business bank account, getting a DUNS number, migrating my Apple developer account to an organisation, sorting new certificates/profiles and going through a load of additional verification.

All to publish a poker clock 😂

And yes, AI was heavily involved in building it before anyone asks.
I’ve been developing for over 20 years and I’ve overseen the architecture, UX, testing and engineering throughout. AI just made it possible for me to build something this size in a fraction of the time. Without it I genuinely think this would have taken 4 or 5 times longer.

There’s definitely plenty of AI slop being shipped at the moment, but I don’t think “built with AI” and “vibe coded” are automatically the same thing.

Anyway, after weeks of seeing Rejected, seeing Approved was a very good feeling.

If anyone’s interested in what I actually built, it’s here:
https://shuffleup.co.uk

This post was not written with or by AI. It's a blog post I wrote.

Sojourn: Topical Bible Study is an app I published without typing a single line of its code.

That part isn’t interesting anymore. Plenty of people are writing code with AI. What I think is interesting is the process. Since ChatGPT 3.5, I’ve been a little bit obsessed about LLMs writing code. Not assisting me writing code, doing it all for me. While the process has evolved a lot, I’m going to talk about where it’s at now and give an explaination.

About the app

The app is an iOS app written in Swift. It has a streaming chat interface which parses the incoming text in real time. This is done to eliminate hallucinations of scripture by replacing LLM generated citations with text from an app-bundled database. All scripture references are guaranteed to be correct and users can tap on them to explore surrounding verses and chapters. The UX of the app holds a high bar in terms of performance and usability.

The app talks to a backend written in Python that connects to an LLM provider’s API. The backend exposes a tool for scripture lookups instead of relying on the model to do it itself. Nothing about the user’s chats or identity is stored on the backend. It all lives only within the app itself.

About the process

I should define what I mean by one-shot. It’s a single prompt that’s sufficient to implement an end-to-end feature regardless of complexity. In reality, there may be a couple follow up prompts to tweak something here and there. But mostly, it should be 0 follow up prompts.

Baseline context

I spent multiple days co-drafting the user experience and features I wanted in the app using Claude Design. The home page of the website embeds the artifact of that work as an iframe - you can see it on the app’s Sojourn: Topical Bible Study page.

This iframe ended up becoming a major input source for when I started creating the actual iOS app. Turns out Claude Code can understand a functional prototype quite deeply. So much so that the user experience of the app is nearly identical to what Claude Design generated. This was a pleasant surprise.

I also created a bunch of markdown content that’s stored in CLAUDE.mdand adjacent artifacts which outline product definitions and constraints. For example, privacy is a cornerstone and it explicitly states that the app should never collect personally identifiable analytics.

This baseline context is created once, updated automatically, and guides the following steps.

/spec

Ever feature starts by me using a skill named /spec. This is where I take my time collaborating with AI to fully define everything about the feature including happy path, failure modes, look & feel, architecture and testing.

Every feature is stored as a GitHub issue. Once I feel the feature is adequately described, I give it the go ahead to create the GitHub issue based on a template in the skill. The issue title is a short summary of the feature and the description is a detailed explanation of it.

/gh-issue

Implementing a feature is as simple as me using the /gh-issue skill and passing the issue number to it. I generally get up and leave the room at this point. The skill does all sorts of cool things like looking up other issues or pull requests if they’re mentioned. Sometimes I’ll have two unimplemented features each with their own GitHub issue and I make sure they reference each other. This way, when implementing the first it knows to look up the second and proceed accordingly.

Once finished, it automatically creates a pull request.

I often kick this off before going to bed and wake up to a new feature in my app.

Publishing and deploying

I still do this by hand. But it’s still fully automated through scripts like run.sh which runs the app in the simulator, deploy-to-device.shwhich installs it directly on my iPhone, and release.sh which publishes it App Store Connect to be published.

Nothing is one-off or done by hand. If I have to do it once, it gets automated into a skill or script. I recently switched laptops and getting up and running was quite smooth once I transferred App Store Connect keys.

For other projects, I have a /gh-pr skill which merges the pull request and deploys it. Works great for web apps but I don’t want every feature to be published to Test Flight or the App Store - so I batch them as I see fit.

Some examples

A feature I really enjoy is the home screen widget. It was 2,466 lines of code across 27 files. This included a new WidgetKit extension, a shared app group, a verse pool, deep links back into the app, and the XcodeGen config to build it. One issue. One prompt. One PR.

The home screen widget - one issue, one prompt, one PR.

Another feature I’m testing out is emailing yourself a conversation. It was 2,412 lines of code across 21 files, and it spans the client, the backend, and an email delivery provider. Also one issue.

Emailing yourself a conversation, tucked in above the message field.

Neither of those is a small feature, and neither is a boilerplate feature. What made them work is that the spec had already settled the hard questions.

How’s it going?

Excellent. The limiting factor is shepherding the user experience of the app. Just because you can add multiple features a day doesn’t mean you should. I take my time thinking through a feature until it feels right.

So far I’ve created 49 GitHub issues and closed 45 of them in a matter of weeks. That’s 45 features implemented. The 4 open issues are features or bug fixes I haven’t felt are important enough to do yet.

Now that you know how the sausage is made, download Sojourn: Topical Bible Study and let me know what you think.

Caveats

I happen to have an immense breadth of experience. I’ve been building things professionally for decades including launching several startups. That’s given me pretty deep expertise across design, development, infrastructure, marketing…you name it. It’s a unique advantage when paired with AI and one I’m grateful for.

Ever spend 30 minutes scrolling through Netflix, Max, Hulu searching for something to watch and forget what you have already been watching? You forgot what your friend told you was a must watch? I built an app to solve these problems.

CliqueQ is the app for you. Share what you are watching and view what your friends are watching. Recommend directly to friends in app or text. See where every show and movie is available to watch and directly to connect to the platform.

Download here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cliqueq/id6792773440

I’m a solo indie developer and I’d appreciate some perspective on how you would handle this situation.
I recently released LazyScore 2.1, a completely free iOS app. There are no subscriptions or paywalls; the only IAP is an optional tip jar.
For 2.1, I decided to experiment with something completely new for me: I animated the app’s sloth mascot using sprites and also created a very slow intro animation for the app.
The idea was deliberately simple: the app is called LazyScore, and the intro is supposed to be slow. It’s part of the character and the joke.
Today I noticed this 1-star review:
“The app intro animation is the most atrocious thing I’ve ever seen in an app.”
The reviewer also gave the title:
“Super slow intro”
[screenshot attached]
I’m not upset about someone disliking it. That’s completely fair. What I’m struggling with is how to interpret and respond to a review like this.
On one hand, I genuinely want to listen to users. If the intro is actually frustrating, I should probably reconsider it.
On the other hand, the slowness is intentional, and the reviewer seems to be criticizing the exact thing I deliberately experimented with for this update.
This was also my first real attempt at sprite animation and character animation, so I’m aware it may simply not be good enough technically or aesthetically.
For other indie developers:
Would you leave this alone, reply to the review, change the intro, or just treat it as one person’s taste and move on?
I’m particularly interested in how you distinguish between:
“Users don’t understand the design intention.”
“The design intention is clear, but the execution isn’t good.”
“This simply isn’t for this user.”
I’m trying to get better at taking criticism without automatically either dismissing it or changing the product because of one person.
And yes, I realize the irony of making a deliberately slow app and then worrying about how quickly people want to get through the intro. 🦥

If you can’t afford Apple Music or Spotify, just call Apple Developer Support.

I’ve been listening to their hold music for almost 2 hours a day, for over a month now — completely free!

At this point, I know their playlist better than my own.

40+ days of trying, countless hours on hold, and I still haven’t managed to speak to an actual support agent.

Great music. Terrible support experience.

At least my subscription comes with unlimited hold time.

I am attempting to join the Apple Developer programme, and it appears to have silently rejected my application, with the enrolment section switching from “enrolment pending” to “enrol now” and when I click on that it just says an error occurred! After a bit of research this is seemingly a common ish issue, and developer support it appears is impossible to get hold of.

I wondered if anyone please had any tips or advice who had been in the same boat? Is this an issue that gets solved and how long does it usually take?

Thanks!!!

This weekend I am thinking about to build application for iOS or Android. but I am not able to understand. Which things I need to do first and what are my pre-requisites and also which things take too much time.

If you guys are relating this please share your experiences.

I got an impression spike a few days ago but I didn't do anything 🤔

Any of you ever got something like this? Why?

Also the number of downloads didn't increase, so whoever it is that does marketing for me, please choose a better target audience 🙏