iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 28/09/2026

Stumbled across this app icon while doing keyword research, and I'm still wondering how this app made it through App Review. Did the reviewer ever see Reminders/Calendar on their iOS 26 homescreen?

An app icon which is basically a mashup of iOS 26 reminders and calendar icon: left side checkmarks, right side literally the face of the calendar app icon

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 11/06/2026

Xcode 27's new launcher is quite the downgrade

Xcode 27 launcher, showing basically a VStack of the Xcode icon, app name and version, a button row (open/clone/new), and a list of recent projects.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 29/05/2026

Name something more annoying

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 21/05/2026

Launched my latest app three weeks ago, got 15 unique downloads since then. 🥶 Pretty grounding to be honest, but I know it doesn't come over night. Current focus: ASO and influencer outreach. I’m offering creators a promo code and ask them for feedback, anything else would be a bonus.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 22/04/2026

I like what meetup is doing here. Never really thought about that, but seems like such an easy UX win. Most people probably know that the logo leads back to home anyway, but still.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 18/04/2026

It *might* work actually, depending on your willingness to hack it your way. :P This little prototype even dispels a concern that I had: the bubble adapts it's size to the hovered index! If you want I can put up a gist.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 08/04/2026

Submitted the first version of diu for review today, couple hours later instant rejection. They ask for a screen recording of the app, a description of the apps purpose, and a whole lot other stuff which is already declared in ASC. Is this a default for all new apps? I'm confused. #iosdev

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 06/04/2026

Added a rather low hanging fruit: Import reminders from the Reminders app. Join TestFlight: ‪https://testflight.apple.com/join/73nWYJeN #indiedev #buildinpublic

A screenshot of diu’s Todos tab, showing an import card for Apple Reminders.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 05/04/2026

Sure! You can basically attach a motivation to your tasks, and over time the app will show actionable insights based on that. Here’s adding a todo and a part of the insights as an example.

A sample screenshot of diu's Todos tab, which shows a focused todo with motivation categories you could assign to the todo.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 04/04/2026

Found the reason for that. Meanwhile there are 7 puzzle games called Patches in the App Store. One is even game of the year, crazy that it achieved that after only 4 days in the store. :D

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 01/04/2026

Apparently some AI app generator frequently suggests a puzzle game named Patches 😃 Wanted to check my apps (Patches) App Store page when I saw that several new apps with the same name spawned during the past week or so.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 29/03/2026

I didn't want to use a checkmark for the app icon in the beginning since it's quite overused, but here we are. It's a todo list after all. The spark I used previously was just not it. Too many AI apps are using that. (Looking at you, Gemini!) What do you think? #indiedev #iosdev

A screenshot of a homescreen showing diu’s latest app icon: A simple checkmark with three radiating lines coming from the inner bend.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 28/03/2026

I won't admit how long it took me to create this in Sketch, but let me tell you that a path can have different corner radii.

A simple checkmark with rounded corners.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 24/03/2026

Yay, I was able to fix it by creating a small container view in UIKit 🥳 Whenever the tint is supposed to change, you can just slap a new tinted glass effect onto the effect view.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 24/03/2026

When you change the glass tint color of an interactive button that's currently pressed, it will lose the visual pressed state. ☹️ I wanted to build a press-and-hold control that would cancel the hold-action when leaving the button area. #iosdev

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 13/03/2026

It's been a while since I last used this API, but I immediately remembered this drawing pinned to our office door. Turns out it was a great mnemonic after all! #iosdev

A drawing showing two scenes:

Title: iOS Auto Layout

First drawing: Content Hugging
Shows a person who holds a box together. The person says: "I'm not gonna let you grow"

Second drawing: Content Compression Resistance
Shows a person inside a box, keeping it from being shrinked. The person says: "I'm not gonna let you shrink me"

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 11/03/2026

This is how my whole camera roll looks like since I got a specific machine.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 09/03/2026

I’ve been thinking about how to organize todos for a bit. Last week a friend said she would love to colorize todos, so that she can easily scan for related todos and also filter by color. I love that idea. It’s super simple, but still super flexible. Feels like a good fit.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 06/03/2026

Finally implemented swipe to delete for the to-do list. That wiggling trash icon makes me really happy. #iosdev

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 02/03/2026

Today I spent some time playing around with some ideas for what the app icon could look like. I use the spark icon as a symbol for everything related to motivation, so I wanted the app icon to reflect that. I think I've created a dragon ball.

Shows three app icon variants. All of them have a teal background. First variation has a golden spark on it. Second variation has a glass-like circle with a spark cut-out on it. Third variation has a glass-like circle with a spark cut-out on it, but with a golden glowing blob underneath it.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 01/03/2026

diu comes with a dictation feature to get your todos into the app quickly. Pretty happy with how that little floating panel turned out!

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 27/02/2026

I have a feeling that one of my monitors is going to die soon. :(

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 15/02/2026

Having a lot of fun building the to-do list UI. After several refinements to make it simpler I realized that I got closer to the design of Things, which kind of makes sense. There's only so much you can do when you want to have everything inline and simple.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 07/12/2025

I think I've figured out how to work around this... Since luminanceToAlpha() creates fuzziness beyond the text, I added a mask modifier to cut off the fuzzy part. This gives me clear text again, while keeping the emojis translucent.

A SwiftUI code snippet setting up a text, with luminanceToAlpha modifier and a mask modifier that applies a mask for an identical Text view as above.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 07/12/2025

I'm trying to fix a bug where emojis in a Text within a tinted/clear widget basically become a opaque shape. First idea was to set widgetAccentable(false), didn't work, even if it's the root view. Then I've tested luminanceToAlpha() which makes everything fuzzy. Any hints someone? #iosdev

A screenshot of a clear widget on iOS where text is fully tinted, making the emoji within the text a white circle.

A screenshot of a clear widget on iOS where text is fully tinted, fuzzy but the emoji is visible.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 27/10/2025

I wouldn't trust Expo for this claim alone. How would they know? 🙃

A screenshot of the Expo SDK website saying "Build your app with the best tools in the universe"

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 29/08/2025

I have set up zoom transitions for items in a ScrollView, which leads to a view glitch when you dismiss the detail screen and quickly scroll while the dismiss transition is not yet finished. Probably happens due to changing frames, but no idea how to fix it. :( Anyone else? #iosdev

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 05/06/2025

Still struggling with users not rating the app, so I came up with this feedback prompt. I feel like this might help, since it doesn't interrupt the users flow. 🤞🏻 Also it creates an additional opportunity for the people to give feedback (when they tap "no"). #indiedev

A screenshot of Patches' main screen showing a feedback prompt in the bottom, asking whether the user enjoys the app.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 01/06/2025

This is what the Googles Play Store publishing requirements do to people. #indiedev

An email from someone offering me money to publish their app via my Play Store dev account.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 03/05/2025

Ok, this makes me nervous. This never gets old, right? :D #indiedev

A screenshot showing that we I have applied for production access today by 12:47.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 28/04/2025

Time is ticking... ⏰ The app is more or less ready for 1.0. Now I'm trying to get everything ready for release. Really looking forward to the release, this has been quite a ride. #indiedev

Shows the current state of the Google Play Store production readiness: Having 12/12 testers for 9 of 14 days.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 18/04/2025

Play Store feels a bit like a competitive video game where you have to reach level 10 in order to play ranked matches.

A screenshot of a part of the Play Store dashboard, showing that applying for production requires having 12 testers for 14 days straight, currently sitting at 9 testers.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 11/04/2025

I might have a new favorite IDE

A screenshot of the Android Studio Meerkat launcher, featuring Meerkats.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 24/03/2025

And I thought the 30MB memory limit for iOS widgets was tight. 😃

An excerpt of Logcat showing an exception for exceeding a memory limit sitting at around 5MB.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 17/03/2025

Woohooo!!! 🎉 🥳 New milestone unlocked for @patchesapp.com! So happy to see that people resonate with the idea of sharing positivity on home screens! 💚 #indiedev #buildinpublic

A screenshot of my latest apps 28-days revenue: $106

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 07/03/2025

I've been getting a lot of traffic from Brazil lately, however I don't really know why yet. 😃 Patches is not even localized for pt-BR, but I'll definitely change this soon. #iosdev #indiedev

A screenshot from App Store Connect showing that Brazil gets around 30x more impressions than other territories.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 03/02/2025

I‘m doing my duty, btw! 😂

A screenshot of a custom app icon of art of fauna with a panda on it.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 02/02/2025

Yay, a bit over 3 months in and I've finally reached two-digit MRR. 🥳 I guess I have to cut down on the 1k sub goal for 2025 a bit. 😜 Marketing is hard... isn't it? What are your go to strats? #indiedev #buildinpublic

A screenshot showing 2 active trials, 9 active subscriptions and $10 MRR.

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 25/01/2025

Alright I'm spending too much time with other languages... 🥴 #swift

A code snippet showing "selectedFriend.profileImage != null".

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Sascha Gordner @saschagordner.de · 22/01/2025

Today @patchesapp.com got 5 new users, but none of them invited a friend. Since it's mostly about friend connections, I'm currently adding a friend invite step to the new onboarding. Thought a tip on first time would be enough, but doesn't look like it. #buildinpublic #indiedev

A screenshot showing the home screen of the Patches app. In the top left, there's a friend list button with a tooltip saying that you can invite friends when tapping on that.

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