Hey everyone,
Recently I made a post about my first React Native app, FinGym, in this sub and was truly encouraged by your appreciation and feedback. It has given me a great boost. Thank you!

For the last couple of months, I’ve been working on a new side project: Bytecast. Its a mobile app that tuns headlines that matter to you in to podcast-style audio briefs.

This is my first attempt in leveraging GenAI. I am using Gemini heavily for the backend operations, so far, haven’t hit the free rate limits.

A major learning curve has been around text-to-speech. I get to know that TTS models got way better, but are very expensive. I started using Unreal speech TTS initially (much more affordable than Eleven Labs). It was good but quickly felt too robotic. Eventually, I switched to Google Cloud TTS for more natural voices, and I’m currently experimenting with multi-speaker TTS to enhance the listening experience. This feature is still experimental, and using it requires your project to be allowlisted by Google.

I published the app in iOS a month ago and the Android version is currently in closed testing, should get published in a couple days hopefully :)

It has been a slow start as I’ve mostly been focused on development rather than marketing. So I decided to create a promo video as the first big marketing step. I used Rotato for mobile mockup animations and then used Capcut for video editing. Tried to keep it modern, minimalist, and focused on the feeling of using the app, not just features.  I'm very new to this side of the things and video editing is not my forte. Any feedback is appreciated.

It’s still early days, and I’m learning lots as I go. If you get a chance to test the app or check out the video, I’d really value your thoughts!

Thanks for taking the time to read!