[HN Gopher] Show HN: I built a local-first daily planner for iOS
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Show HN: I built a local-first daily planner for iOS
Author : zesfy
Score : 70 points
Date : 2025-11-04 13:34 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apps.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apps.apple.com)
| qwertytyyuu wrote:
| hmmm... a planner is one of the few things that i'd like to have
| access to regardless of what i'm using... One of the few things i
| don't mind and even slightly prefer to be online first for
| seemless sync (with the ability to edit and add to offline
| ofcourse)
| lugarlugarlugar wrote:
| Local-first should mean that you do have it regardless of what
| you're using. Point 2 in Ink&Switch's original essay is "Your
| data is not trapped on one device".
|
| https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/local-first/
| embedding-shape wrote:
| FWIW, the term "local-first" wasn't coined by Ink&Switch so
| different people have different understanding of the term.
|
| But, Ink&Switch rule regardless, I love what they're doing
| and everyone would be better off doing "local-first" in the
| way they suggest, don't get me wrong.
| zesfy wrote:
| Totally get that. I'm planning to support more platforms, and
| I'm glad to say that iCloud sync is already in the plans for
| future development.
| shinycode wrote:
| I fail to see features that default iOS calendar app already has.
| The UI seems really simple and there is dozens of amazing
| calendar apps that have been on the market for 10+ years of
| features in this price range.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > I fail to see features that default iOS calendar app already
| has.
|
| presumably local-first
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| How is iOS calendar not local-first
| drob518 wrote:
| What does that mean?
| ActionHank wrote:
| Love the app, hate IAP / subs model
| petralithic wrote:
| That's the only sustainable model these days, speaking as a
| mobile dev myself.
| spiderice wrote:
| What changed that made selling software (as opposed to
| renting) work before that prevents it from working now?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| There used to be a lot less expectation of post-sale
| maintenance of consumer software in the era where sales
| rather than subscriptions were the norm. There was also
| tolerance for higher up-front prices, and for much of that
| period sales depended on marketing through and validation
| by a narrow set of relatively trusted discovery channels,
| which customer the perceived risk to buyers. Now everything
| is untrusted, no one wants to pay much upfront but everyone
| expects ongoing support over they've got the thing. I'm not
| saying subscription is the only thing that works, but it's
| pretty easy to see that the calculus facing the average
| vendor has shifted tremendously over time.
| devmor wrote:
| fwiw the expectation of post-sale maintenance would not
| be nearly as egregious if companies were not regularly
| pushing new updates that cause new issues
|
| it is a problem of ones own making
| earthnail wrote:
| Well, on mobile the underlying operating system is moving
| so fast that companies must continue to update their apps
| or else they stop working. It's the absolute inverse
| situation to the backwards compatibility story of
| Windows. That kind of backwards compatibility is a wet
| dream for every mobile developer.
| allenu wrote:
| It's a bunch of things. In the old days, if you bought
| software in a box for your OS (let's say DOS), you didn't
| expect it to need to be updated. It also continued to work
| just fine and maybe you didn't update your OS that
| frequently or had security issues to worry about. Nowadays,
| iOS gets updated every year and APIs get deprecated, and
| users update, so you have to maintain the app after
| initially shipping it.
|
| A lot of people also expect the software to add features
| over time. In the old days, you'd ship a brand new major
| version and charge people for that and stop working on the
| old one. With the App Store, I suppose you could
| technically abandon the old version and sell a whole new
| version, but then all your old users will be annoyed if the
| app is removed from the store or no longer works when they
| update their OS. You could gate new features behind a
| paywall, and I know some apps do this, but then it adds to
| the complexity of the app as you have to worry about
| features that work for some users but not others.
|
| I think people also expect software nowadays to be cheap or
| free, I think due to large corporations being able to fund
| free stuff (say gmail) by other means (say ads or tracking
| users). That means users would balk if you asked them to
| pay $50 for your little calendar app, so if you did ask for
| a one-time payment, it would be $5-$10, which is nowhere
| near enough to recoup whatever time you spent, unless you
| hit it big. Hitting it big nowadays with an app is
| difficult since there's so much competition in the App
| Stores and everyone has raced to the bottom to sell apps
| for pennies.
| Otek wrote:
| Weird. Things3 seems to be doing great without it
| ActionHank wrote:
| Sell me a major version every couple of years, would far
| prefer that. IAP and subs just feels scammy and lazy.
| bigyabai wrote:
| I hope you don't mind my $0.00 annual mobile spend as a
| result.
| jon-wood wrote:
| If this were available on macOS as well, and did sync via iCloud
| I'd be all over it. It's a great model for a calendar/task
| manager but I really don't want to have to squint at my phone
| screen while using it.
| criddell wrote:
| If the developer checked the _enable the Mac Catalyst
| destination_ in the Xcode project, you should be able to run it
| on your Mac.
| proee wrote:
| Look into NotePlan.co it syncs with iCloud and has native MacOS
| and iOS apps. I love it.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| When I open this in the Mac app store, there is a download
| button, so I'm guessing it works on both iOS and macOS due to
| catalyst.
| zesfy wrote:
| Thanks. I'm happy to share that iCloud sync and MacOS app is
| something that already in the plan for future development. In
| the meantime, if you have an M-series Mac, you should be able
| to run the app directly on your Mac since I've enabled Mac
| Catalyst support.
| paxys wrote:
| > Morocco runs on UTC+1 most of the year but switches to UTC
| during Ramadan to shorten the fasting day
|
| Unrelated, but I love coming across religious "hacks" like these
| that communities have developed over the years.
|
| A similar one is the fishing line that jews tied around New York
| to get around the rules of Sabbath
| https://www.npr.org/2019/05/13/721551785/a-fishing-line-enci....
| nightpool wrote:
| I think you left this comment on the wrong article ;)
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Indeed I did, thanks!
| unmotivated-hmn wrote:
| how many accounts do you have, my guy?
| Jeremy1026 wrote:
| Only 2.
| paxys wrote:
| Haha yes, but it was unrelated either way
| chakintosh wrote:
| Moroccan here. We used to switch timezones 4 times a year, and
| I guarantee you it was exhausting!
| jadtz wrote:
| Irrelevant to this post, but Morocco switching to UTC does not
| change the number of hours fasted as that is based on sunset
| and sunrise so not really a religious "hack" but more similar
| to daylight saving (work hours remain same).
| g00k wrote:
| Looks nice. I will give this a try today
| zesfy wrote:
| Thanks. Would love to hear how it goes. Let me know if you have
| any feedbacks.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| It looks well done. It is a shame that people posting reviews can
| be such dickheads. Out of the 4 public reviews, 3 are 1 star and
| only one of those is because of an actual issue. One is because
| the app isn't right for them. The other because they wanted dark
| mode (really? You like the app enough to care that it doesn't
| have dark mode but still gave it a 1 star?)
| jeroenhd wrote:
| For 20 bucks a year without any sort of cloud servers to pay
| for, I'd expect dark mode at the very least. The app looks nice
| of course, but it's priced quite steeply.
|
| If you charge a premium, customers will have high expectations.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| It is not a binary system. If every time an app misses a
| feature you want you rate it a 1 star, it completely devalues
| the rating system.
| donq1xote1 wrote:
| Looks awesome! I will give it a try. Wondering what's ur
| monetization plan though.
| raybb wrote:
| I don't have an iPhone to try this, but I've been a long time
| time user of Tasks.org on Android and particularly because it
| supports CalDAV and works so well offline.
|
| However, while we are on the topic of planning apps, you should
| know the Todoist added the best use of AI I've ever seen. It's
| called Ramble mode and you can just talk and instantly it'll
| start showing a list of tasks that update as you go. It is
| extraordinary. I'm considering switching away from tasks.org for
| this one feature.
|
| Here's a short video of it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIczFm3Dy5I
|
| You need paid (free trial is ok) and to enable experiments before
| you can access it.
|
| Anyone know how they might have done this?
| sburud wrote:
| That's cool! Slight fear of replicating the Dropbox comment
| here, but all you really need to do is run whisper (or some
| other speech2text), then once the user stops talking jam the
| transcript through a LLM to force it into JSON or some other
| sensible structure.
| raybb wrote:
| "once the user stops talking" is a key insight here for me.
| When using this I wasn't intentionally pausing to let it
| figure out an answer. It seemed to just pop up while I was
| talking. But upon experimenting some more it does seem to
| wait until here's a bit of a pause most of the time.
|
| However it's still wild to me how fast and responsive it is.
| I can talk for 10 seconds and then in ~500ms I see the
| updates. Perhaps it doesn't even transcribe and rather feeds
| the audio to a multimodal llm along with whatever tasks it
| already knows about? Or maybe it's transcribing live as you
| talk and when you stop it sends it to the llm.
|
| Anyone have a sense of what model they might be using?
| makingstuffs wrote:
| I cannot remember off the top of my head the exact number
| and am clearly too lazy to google it but there is a
| specific length of time in which, if no new noises pass
| through, the human brain processes it as a pause/silence.
|
| I want to say 300ms which would coincide with your 500ms
| example
| wisemang wrote:
| This is definitely dependent on individuals. It's a
| reason during some conversations people can never seem to
| get a word in edgewise, even if the person speaking may
| think they're providing opportunities do so. A mismatch
| in "pause length" can make for frustrating
| communications.
|
| I am also too lazy to google or AI it but it's something
| I remember from when I taught ESL long ago.
| SteveMorin wrote:
| https://boundaryml.com/
|
| LLM to types and done
| ichicoro wrote:
| I'm sorry, I like the look and the idea but... why is a
| subscription necessary for a local-first app?
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I suspect the guy enjoys some food every now and then
| artdigital wrote:
| I'm with the parent on this. I don't mind subscriptions if a
| service is provided that justifies the recurring cost. If
| it's a local offline app then I don't see it justified. Price
| it accordingly or at least give an option for one-time.
|
| But yes, sub vs non-sub model is a very divisive topic.
| Personally would never subscribe to something like a offline
| local todo list
| umpalumpaaa wrote:
| there are a lot of apps that do this though... eg. git
| tower. Sketch. Etc. Not saying that I like it or anything.
| Maybe its the combination of local first + an app that
| seems to be trivial (I am sure it was not but if you hear
| "daily planner" I think its reasonable to assume that its
| less complex than a git client and/or an app like Sketch).
| yreg wrote:
| I have a fully offline app and I offer the users two
| options (in addition of using a "basic" version for free)
|
| - monthly subscription
|
| - or pay one time fee of ~ 6-month subscription and own it
| forever
|
| To be honest, in this case the subscription is cheaper for
| the average user, because most cancel in under six months.
| mikeocool wrote:
| One way of looking at is that subscription software helps
| align developer interests with dedicated users. It's easier
| to retain users than it is to get new users, so developers
| are incentivized to build features/make improvements for
| existing users to keep them as happy users. In a pay once
| upfront model developers are essentially only incentivized
| to build features that attract new users.
| DANmode wrote:
| "Still not selling the imprint of my anus? Here's another
| five bucks!"
|
| i.e.
|
| It's sad I can't use Google's task manager (both because
| it _sucks_ , and I can't trust it),
|
| but that's life.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| So it's ok to pay for machines but for the humans working
| on something then no?
| blktiger wrote:
| A one time cost is fine if you don't mind the app breaking
| next time Apple updates iOS. There is an ongoing cost to
| ensuring the app continues to work.
| r0fl wrote:
| Why would it break next time Apple updates iOS? Will the
| developer not want new sales on that updated iOS ?
| earthnail wrote:
| The maintenance effort required on iOS is substantial.
| About a quarter of your full-time year needs to be
| dedicated to it.
|
| On desktop, you can just publish your software and slowly
| see it age as you work on your next big release. On iOS,
| it ages every year at brutal pace, and your new sales
| will plummet while you work on your next big release,
| meaning your revenue crashes much faster.
|
| Even worse, the iOS App Store has no notion of paid
| upgrades, and publishing a new app is basically like
| starting from scratch as far as discoverability goes. So
| when you finally have your next big release ready, it's
| like launching a completely new company.
|
| Apple _really_ wants developers to make subscription apps
| that ship frequent iterative changes, and other business
| models just simply don 't work well on their mobile
| platform (on Android it's even worse btw).
| righthand wrote:
| I think someone that can afford to publish on the most
| expensive app publishing platform can afford food all the
| time. There are no poor iOS developers.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Everything will cost you, in Apple's ecosystem. This is just
| another line on the tab.
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