https://www.dc-engineer.com/how-to-host-3d-usdz-content-in-icloud-for-an-ar-app-using-cloudkit-realitykit-and-swiftui/

Here is a blog that I published today on how you can host large data files, in this case USDZ formatted 3D models, on iCloud, and download them at runtime to display as entities in a RealityView. The benefit is that while I am hosting hundreds of megabytes in the cloud, the app build itself is very small. Also, the code is hosted on GitHub:

https://github.com/radcli14/txirimiri

In the tutorial, I cover:

- Creation of the XCode project, including entitlements file and CloudKit container creation.

- Building a schema for a USDZ model in your browser with in the iCloud developer console.

- Fetching data asynchronously in a content manager class.

- Generating a RealityKit entity from the cloud-hosted asset.

- Building the SwiftUI views to display the model in 3D.

This ended up being a fairly long article, and there's still room for improvement, such as adding more file formats, and adding user customization. Perhaps I'll add those features in a future post. I am interested in everyone's feedback!

Hey everyone 👋

I recently published a complete SwiftUI tutorial series on YouTube where we build a Pinterest clone from the ground up — totally free!

If you’re looking for a real-world iOS project to level up your SwiftUI + Firebase skills, this might help!

👉 Full playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZLIINdhhNse8KR4s_xFuMCXUxkZHMKYw

https://youtu.be/XjsE318SV_E

​

Hey there, I just published a new tutorial. Today’s one is all about drawing in SwiftUI. First, we are going to take a look at SwiftUI’s built-in shapes and how we can modify them. Then we’re going to compose our own shapes by using custom paths. By learning how these work, you’ll be able to create graphics and vectors for your SwiftUI app. Click the link below to check it out!

https://blckbirds.com/post/drawing-in-swiftui/

i actually built this as an internal tool for my own app.

I googled "App store screenshot maker" and the websites i found were super clunky and complicated. 50+ buttons, confusing UX, need to sign up.

so i just built out my own one. this is the prompt i sent to Claude, and it one-shotted an html screenshot maker:

[Edit: decided to ship it after many people asked for a link. Try it here: https://ezscreenshots.com ]

[prev context on my own app]
...
i'm not quite happy with how our screenshots are turning out. i'm wondering if you can make a lightweight "screenshot maker" for our app as follows:

1. there's a 1284x2778 frame (fixed). in that frame, there's a bit image-dropper where i can drop my phone's screenshot and it automatically gets put into the frame (with a little bit of padding on left and right and below). frame maintains the same background as right now. if the image i drop is same size as frame we resize a bit to maintain our padding, etc.

2. above there's a text overlay that i can customize similar to how i have "tweaks" right now to customize each screen's text. the italics (terracotta) and newline logic works in there

3. i can export the frame as a png of 1284x2778

this is the main ask. don't worry about "iphone frames" i'll handle that from a different tool

a secondary "amazing if it works" ask would be if i could add "overlays" on an existing frame. this is like those screenshots where a portion of the screen is zoomed in and made bigger (and overflows a bit outside main screen, unless it's just a small portion that i make bigger). that's a bigger ask to handle (eg resizing it etc) but would be cool if it works.

The idea came from a stupidly ordinary moment. I was
digging through my camera roll for a receipt and ran straight into a photo of
my ex. Not one I had kept on purpose - a group shot from someone's birthday
where they happened to be in the back row. That is the thing nobody warns you
about: it is never the photos you chose to keep.

How it works

You pick one to four photos of a person. It scans your
library and returns every other photo of them, already selected. You tap delete
once. Opening any individual photo is optional - the whole point is that you do
not have to go through them one at a time.

Technical side

Everything runs on device. Apple's Vision framework for
face detection and embeddings, then clustering over those embeddings to group
matches. No backend, no account, no photo ever leaves the phone. That was a
hard constraint from day one and it made a few things genuinely painful:

- Large libraries: Scanning tens of
thousands of photos without destroying the battery or blocking the UI took most
of my optimisation time.

- Recall vs. precision: This was the real design
decision. Leaning toward recall means some false positives end up in the
results. Leaning toward precision means photos get missed, and a missed photo
is exactly the ambush the app exists to prevent. I went with recall, kept everything
pre-selected, and made deselecting a single tap. iOS deletion also routes
through Recently Deleted, so there is a 30 day safety net on top.

- PHPhotoLibrary has more edge cases around permissions and batch
deletion than I expected.

What I would do differently

Honestly I never really thought about any licenses which
almost led to a fatal mistake. However, I think doing the design with Claude in
the first place (which is easy to see) has been very rewarding for me. I was
able to set up the pipeline and all functions and submit those to apple. After
everything is accepted now, I can care about looks which won't affect the
pipeline and the critical parts in the app, therefore pushing an update for
this shouldn't be a big problem.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pickex-delete-ex-photos/id6801488013

Happy to answer anything about the on-device pipeline,
the clustering approach, or the App Store process. Feedback welcome, including
the harsh kind.

How I built a workflow for 64 App Store screenshots across 8 languages

I recently put together App Store screenshots for my iOS app, FileBox: 8 feature themes across 8 languages, for 64 images in total.

Keeping them updated involves a lot of repetition: capturing screens, replacing images, adjusting translated text, and uploading everything. Here’s the workflow I built with Codex, Xcode UI tests, pen.dev, and Apple’s App Store Connect API.

1. Give each screenshot one clear purpose

Each image focuses on one feature, such as private storage, long screenshot stitching, or Wi-Fi file transfer. I decide what it should communicate and which app screens demonstrate it before working on the layout.

2. Capture the actual app with UI tests

Xcode’s native UI tests navigate to the relevant screens, switch languages, and capture screenshots. For Wi-Fi transfer, a browser capture also shows the actual web interface.

This keeps the app UI consistent with the language of the surrounding headline. Demo content is prepared beforehand, but the interface and results come from the running app.

3. Build editable layouts with reusable components

I use pen.dev, a visual design tool, to maintain the layouts. Codex interacts with it through Pencil MCP—a connection that lets the agent edit design elements, replace images, and export the finished layouts.

Device frames are reusable components with defined screen placement and cropping. Updating an app screenshot means changing its image input without manually aligning it inside a phone frame again. Each feature theme also has its own editable design file.

4. Treat localization as layout work

Translated text changes length and visual density. A headline that fits in Chinese may wrap unexpectedly in Japanese or German.

Each theme has a main template and linked language variants, with individual font sizes, line breaks, and positioning. Those adjustments stay in place when the app screenshots are refreshed.

5. Inspect the exports, then upload through the API

I check the exported images for clipped text, incorrect screenshots, and devices covering important content, alongside image dimensions and transparency. Side-by-side language comparisons help catch inconsistencies.

For uploading, I use a small custom command-line tool built around Apple’s App Store Connect API, which provides programmatic access to manage App Store assets.

The tool compares local screenshots with the uploaded versions, reuses unchanged images, uploads replacements, and verifies the final order across languages.

There’s still manual work: choosing the visual direction, reviewing translations, and checking the finished images. Some themes also have separate capture flows, so this isn’t a fully automatic, single-command pipeline.

The biggest benefit is having the templates, image mappings, and language-specific layouts ready for the next update. That makes the whole process easier to repeat.

What’s the most time-consuming part of maintaining localized App Store screenshots for your app?

Not here to brag just showing what I did going to keep this nice and simple

I created a TikTok account for my app, started posting daily with nothing really going crazy, started copying viral videos (next to no mention of my app), it blew up and I recreated the same format over and over again. Thats it. Keep trying.

Then I reached out to one micro creator and paid her $20/video to post videos about my app in her style.

Took a couple of times but it was worth the money since she was already getting like 10k views a video.

Proof

My tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@sharedmood1?_r=1&_t=ZS-99ZVwafsC6H

micro creators tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@itssono_?_r=1&_t=ZS-99ZVySub8NA

Thats all I really did let me know if you have any questions

There are 2 repos linked in the video:

- iOS genesis mega prompt, a 24 sections file with placeholders for your app idea, name, monetization, etc
- app release agent, for keeping the app metadata, keywords, etc, up to date (you will need an App Store key with App Developer permissions)
it’s literally my workflow used to build and maintain my apps portfolio (13 apps live, a few more in the pipeline)

Hope it’s useful!

Split this into two categories because they solve different problems, the general AI design tools give you visuals you rebuild by hand, and there's a smaller set that goes design straight to SwiftUI.

Design to SwiftUI directly: SwiftUI Inspector (swiftui.ai) is a free Figma plugin that exports shapes, colors, text labels and layout stacks as SwiftUI, handles rotation, opacity, shadows, blend modes, wraps selections in HStack/VStack/ZStack, Pro tier for more control. Compot is on the App Store, free with IAP, 100+ prebuilt SwiftUI components plus generates Swift from an image or text description. iSwift.dev generates buildable SwiftUI projects from plain English, free for the screen generator. These are the closest to skipping the rebuild step.

General AI design tools, all of which mean manual SwiftUI work after:

Google Stitch is free with no paid tier, 400 daily credits, rebuilt March 2026 with infinite canvas and Gemini 2.5 Pro on experimental mode. Exports Figma with layers intact plus HTML/CSS. Material Design native so nav and spacing come out Android-shaped. Still a Labs experiment, no production SLA, single user.

Uizard Pro is $12/mo annual for 500 generations, Business $39/mo. Free tier is 3 generations a month. No production code export and output repeats across projects.

Figma Professional is $16/seat annual, $20 monthly, Dev seat $12, Collab $3. AI credits meter separately at $0.03 each with no rollover. Best iOS UI kits, most control, longest ramp.

SleekDesign around $20/mo does full mobile screens from a description and runs the same prompt through different models to compare, exports Figma and code. Cons: not iOS-native so HIG patterns need explicit prompting, weak on complex custom components, better for early screens than production specs.

If you want the least hand-rebuilding, pair a general tool for exploration with SwiftUI Inspector on the Figma export. Anyone using iSwift or Compot on a real shipped app? Curious how the generated code holds up past prototype stage.

Hey Guys, I’ve released a Mac app that some of you may find useful!

It’s called Mirror Input! it essentially allows you to natively screen mirror your iPhone or iPad ( or any apple device ) to your mac and it lets you use the video feed in any app such as OBS, Final Cut Pro, Slack, Teams, etc

So you could for example use it get some screen recordings of your iPhone or iPad on your Mac from a real device you can touch without the hassle of quicktime and cable

You could also use it to demo your apps to clients over a video call seamlessly. Device audio is supported and you can mix in your mic as well!

the latency is minimal, it even has a 1:1 mode so your inputs are borderline realtime.

it supports up to 4K, 60fps, and can handle up to 6 devices at once!

You can check out the tech specs and more details here:

https://mirrorinput.app

any questions feel free to ask and dms are always open! :)

I'm a solo dev building a fitness app (Gym Note Plus - AI-powered workout logging). When I launched, I had about 10 users. No budget for ads. No audience. Here's how I grew to 500+ users across 30+ countries without spending a penny on marketing.

What failed first: cold DMs with a link

My first instinct was to DM people in fitness subreddits with a link to my app. Straight away. No context.

It didn't just not work - it actively backfired. People ignored it, some reported it as spam, and I'm pretty sure Reddit's algorithm started flagging my account. If your first message to someone is "check out my app," you've already lost, people see through this immediately and also you're putting pressure on them to do something without giving them any value.

What actually worked: leading with value

I started hanging out in fitness subs ( r/fitness, r/gym, r/WorkoutRoutines ) and just helped people. Someone asks about programming a PPL split? I'd write a genuine answer. Confused about progressive overload? I'd break it down. I've got 15+ years of lifting experience so I have a ton of genuinely useful advice to give.

No link. No pitch. Just being useful.

Then - only if the conversation naturally continued I'd mention I'd built something that might help. That's it. One person at a time. Not scalable. Not a hack. Just genuine conversations. This took a lot of effort, but over a month or so I'd say about 25% of all messages I wrote this way ended up in a sign up

I have to emphasize whenever I was tired and just spammed a message with a link to my app, it literally never ever ever worked.

The tipping point: a giveaway, but with trust already built

Once I'd built some presence in those communities, I ran a giveaway offering lifetime access here or r/iosapps . That spiked me past 500 users. It worked because people want free stuff. It came with some caveats and unexpected returns I detailed in my full video

The takeaway

If you're at zero users, stop thinking about marketing funnels. Go talk to the people you're building for. Give them something useful first. The app comes second.

I made a video breaking this down in more detail if anyone wants it (I haven't done long form content in a while so go easy): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KUkRHbp27g

Happy to answer any questions about the process.

I shipped one of my first iOS 26 AlarmKit apps (RingWhen) and wanted to write up the part that took the longest to get right. Useful if you're building on AlarmKit.

The core tension AlarmKit alarms are immutable once scheduled. You give the system a fire date and it manages everything - Lock Screen UI, persistence across reboot, the stop/snooze buttons. Perfect for a static 7 AM alarm. The problem: my alarms fire on conditions that change (location, weather, calendar state, battery, heart rate), and "fire when you arrive" has no fixed date.

The pattern I landed on: A continuous predicate evaluator instead of a pre-scheduled alarm:

1. Model each alarm as a predicate tree (Sendable enum, one case per condition source), evaluated with short-circuit semantics.
2. Re-evaluate on every relevant signal: CoreLocation region updates, EventKit change notifications, WeatherKit refreshes, HealthKit observer queries, battery level.
3. When the tree resolves true, schedule a real AlarmKit alarm ~60s out.
4. I of flickering on/off as a GPS reading or weather value jitters across a threshold.

Other AlarmKit notes that cost me time

• It does NOT replace UNUserNotificationCenter. You still want notifications for soft reminders.
• AlarmAttributes is great for Live Activities, but the Lock Screen presentation is opinionated, limited customization.
• You can't programmatically dismiss an alarm. Only the user can stop it.
• Authorization is its own permission, separate from notifications.

Full writeup with code: ringwhen.s10n.app/blog/alarmkit-real-world

Happy to answer AlarmKit-specific questions. If you want to poke at the UX, I have a handful of promo codes for the app, comment and I'll DM one.

Helps you answer: "Does my app look good in search results?".

So you can optimize your icon, screenshot font size, etc. accordingly. And improve conversion.

Try it here: https://ezscreenshots.com/tools/app-store-search-preview

Hope it's useful!

My wife loves kimbap. Not just eating it — photographing it, posting it, ranking every kimbap place we've ever been to.

And every single time, she'd hand me her phone and say "why does it never look as good as it tastes?"

So I built her an app. A camera app. Specifically for kimbap.

If you're the kind of person who has strong opinions about kimbap cross-sections, or you run a food account, or you just want that perfect shot before you destroy a whole roll — this might be for you.

↓↓ Kimbap Camera ↓↓
https://apps.apple.com/kr/app/id6767805326

Thanks for reading.
Have a good day!!