I Switched my SideProject app to Subribtion
Week 1 Update - SideProject & FlipFocus
This week's newsletter brings some exciting updates, especially regarding improvements to SideProject and FlipFocus (Flip Timer). These new features will help you better manage your side projects, improve efficiency, and enhance your overall experience.
The now onboarding animation looks so nice!
SideProject has now adopted a hybrid model of both subscription and one-time purchase, offering more flexibility and motivating me to keep up with continuous updates.
This week, I also added a beautiful widget to SideProject, reminiscent of a traditional landscape painting. This not only makes SideProject more visually appealing but also allows users to quickly view and manage their side projects directly from the home screen.
First, we fixed several small bugs in SideProject, especially the issue where subscription statuses couldn't reset. Some users who chose the one-time purchase kept encountering repeated purchase prompts, which was frustrating. After some effort, this issue has finally been resolved. Now, SideProject can be downloaded for free, allowing users to easily explore features for managing, analyzing, and tracking their side projects.
SideProject initially started as a one-time purchase model, but I found it lacked the incentive for continuous updates. Therefore, I transitioned it to a combination of short-term subscription and one-time purchase. I originally assumed AI could automatically recognize old users and convert them to lifetime members, but many users faced issues during the transition. I had to ask them to send screenshots of their orders, after which I manually sent them a redemption code. So far, only about a dozen users have successfully redeemed, which is far less than the number of people who actually purchased. I sincerely apologize for this inconvenience.
This experience made me decide to avoid using the one-time purchase model as much as possible for future apps. However, for apps like FlipFocus, I believe it's reasonable to keep the one-time purchase option, especially considering it has AI features. The AI-related costs are relatively low, so the pricing will also be affordable to ensure the user experience is not compromised.
FlipFocus (Flip Timer) Updates
In addition, I have updated the FlipFocus app. FlipFocus has two main features:
Flip the phone to start the timer automatically: Simply flip your phone to start the timer, without needing to click anything. This is perfect for situations where you need to stay focused, like studying or working.
AI-powered text-to-todo conversion: This feature is particularly useful for users with a large number of tasks or pieces of information. AI can quickly convert descriptive content into structured to-do lists. Although AI conversion is a paid feature, users can also manually convert text using the Markdown template we provide, which is very straightforward.
The release of FlipFocus was a significant breakthrough for me because I encountered many technical challenges during development, especially when implementing complex interactions in SwiftUI. SwiftUI is a very flexible framework, but basic components often tend to cause issues. For example, dealing with multi-select lists, branching structures, and converting between Markdown formats required extensive debugging. The complexity of interactions further increased the difficulty of development. Although there are still two major shortcomings in FlipFocus — it currently doesn't support collapsing lists or swiping left to delete tasks — I will continue to work on these features and hope to address them in future versions.
SubscriptionView and Screen Time API
While developing SubscriptionView, I also faced several challenges, particularly with the Task{} part of the code. This part is quite prone to bugs in SwiftUI, often requiring constant debugging and fixing. Additionally, implementing the restore purchase feature wasn't smooth either, as it took a lot of time to figure out how to ensure users could smoothly restore their purchase when changing devices or reinstalling the app. These issues are still being optimized, but I am confident they will be fully resolved in future updates.
Lastly, I successfully connected to Apple's Screen Time API and retrieved the relevant data! This is incredibly exciting as it opens up many possibilities for future features. Screen Time data is particularly useful for users who want to understand their device usage and plan their time more effectively. Although I am still working on integrating this data with Core Data, it is an important step forward. Moreover, I'm planning a fun gamification feature that will use Screen Time data, combining it with user behavior to create more interactive and engaging elements — stay tuned!
Thanks and Looking Ahead
Thank you all for your support of SideProject and FlipFocus. I hope these updates will improve your experience. If you haven't downloaded these apps yet, give them a try! I am also looking forward to hearing your feedback. Every piece of feedback is extremely valuable to me and helps me continuously improve the product to better meet your needs.
Please continue to follow our updates and new features — there are more exciting and useful functions coming soon!