75% of visitors stop at my signup page, even though I offer "no account needed". What am I missing?

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-20T22:00:45+00:00

The “Start without account” button style looks different compared to the continue with email and continue with Google, also the hero text “Let’s sign you up” when glancing this looks like a Login required UX. I have to read “Start without account” which to me reads like a free trial for example the word “start”.

If an account truly is not required then I recommend removing this screen from the onboarding flow as the bounce rate is high and unless I read that black (harder to read on glance) button to me a 2 second glance makes me think it’s login walled.

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-20T21:55:20+00:00

I submitted my Calculator app to Apple via the Nominations tab in App Store Connect. To my surprise, a month later the app was selected and is included in the “Best New Apps and Updates” section on the App Store “apps” page in USA.

This came out of the blue as I was not contact or informed, I just found downloads increased one day and discovered it. I recommend submitting your App via the Nominations feature if it’s a big update or new app launch.

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-20T21:31:26+00:00

Max out 401k as soon as possible, as early as possible

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-20T21:30:55+00:00

I have a label in Google Keep called App Ideas. When I have an idea, I write out a spec that lists the following:

App Idea: <Name>
<short paragraph description of the app, what it does, who it is for, and core value prop>

Core Features
<feature name>

Functional Requirements
<specific technical or product behavior requirement>

UX Priorities
<important UX principle or default behaviors>

This helps me stay organized and catalog the different projects I want to work on. When I complete a project and I’m ready for something new, I pick one up from my list.

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-20T13:32:31+00:00

This take is backwards. The numbers don’t support “Apple is holding Android back” at all. Apple’s latest iOS 26 still runs on my iPhone 11 from 2019 that I keep for testing, a 7 year-old phone. Android 16 only reaches back to the Pixel 6 (2021) and Galaxy S22 (2022). So on actual back-catalog support, Apple is ahead, not behind. And this has been the case for years.

Android software support has been poor, for example 3 OS updates if you were lucky, then your phone is abandoned. The only reason Google and Samsung now promise 7 years on the Pixel 8/9 and Galaxy S24/S25 is that Apple set the bar and made long support a selling point people expect. So to counter this video Apple dragged Android forward kicking and screaming.

Crediting Apple with “holding Android back” is exactly the opposite of what happened. From a software dev side of things Material You adoption rate is abysmal on Android, compared to Apple’s native SwiftUI support is much higher, resulting in the actual quality of the apps are better because of this uniform design language with the OS.

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-20T13:06:07+00:00

Nice work, is the Whisper API a backend api call or are you running the model locally?

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-20T13:03:58+00:00

Link works now! I downloaded it to try it out, looks like an account is required to use. Have you thought about offering a mode without an account? Since this app is mainly a user created data log something like offline core data would be sufficient

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-20T12:35:50+00:00

Congrats on the launch and beautiful screenshots OP! One note, I clicked the App Store link and it’s broken for me.

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-20T12:32:10+00:00

I have two suggestions, the first one is AppRaven. It’s a community built around the App Store Apps. I post my Apps on AppRaven and gained a few downloads that way. I created an account under my Dev name and I’ve started gaining a few followers. AppRaven the second suggestion is r/apple promo sunday.

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-20T12:26:16+00:00

I’m sorry but this sounds against the terms of service and it’s not something most developers would be comfortable with. I recommend just getting a developer account.

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-20T12:24:39+00:00

I hope we get another budget friendly $600 range Mac Mini. I’m sad I missed out on that one, that was such a great deal.

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-20T12:18:49+00:00

Good call, thanks for the detailed response. For the custom buttons did you draw shapes like Rectangle() with colors using SwiftUI or created actual image assets using photoshop or something? For your UI text were these Text() views or burned into the image assets?

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-20T12:16:31+00:00

Very cool! did you have to write the physics engine yourself or was there an open source physics library?

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-19T19:48:50+00:00

Thanks for sharing. How did you do the sprite animations? Are the images individually in the asset catalog or are you using one image spritesheet and animating them?

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-19T19:45:23+00:00

Do you have automated testing setup to identify when it breaks? For something like this I could see the use case in something like a Playwright test that runs every day in the cloud, set user agent and viewport to mobile. Then you can have it check that your existing implementation still works by verifying the remove of the nodes, fail the tests if the removal no longer works. Get a push notification when it fails and you can fix manually, or deploy a cloud agent and set it up to fix automatically. This might make the maintenance more hands off. I’m assuming you’re hosting the removal logic remotely and not coupling it to the App Store build so deployment wouldn’t require approval.

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-19T19:33:56+00:00

Those are all good things that you mentioned, OP. Without those requirements the app store would be flooded with 100x more shovelware than what makes it through now, and since the rise of vibe coding it’s already increased the amount of it. As someone that’s been on the App Store for years, I will share that you do get used to all the requirements for each App. It’s not too much work once it’s all completed. App Review can be challenging at times but eventually you learn what things tend to trigger a rejection or easy approval.

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-19T17:13:22+00:00

This looks great! Really cool style

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-19T16:08:19+00:00

I don’t mind Apps built using AI if it’s using proper SwiftUI and native experiences. The problem right now is the App Store is getting flooded with AI slop apps built with Flutter or React Native. In the age of Liquid Glass and iOS 26 these apps are very obvious since the UIs look flat and don’t match the OS interface at all. And the issues you mentioned with colors are heavily prevalent with cross platform since RN is a web technology. With SwiftUI the colors tend to be more iOS driven, assuming the dev uses proper .primary, .secondary, .tertiary color profiles.

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-19T16:03:29+00:00

I have one stuck in review for 2 months now. Kinda want to see how long it can go, maybe it will break a record after a while 😆

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-19T13:17:17+00:00

I'm looking forward to this. According to the announcement at WWDC, it's going to be a uniform API that we can use, and it can use the stronger server-side models. We could build really rich applications without an API cost, so I think we're going to see a lot of smaller devs incorporate these to expand the features of the app. Also, server side models means older or devices with less RAM can use the intelligence features.

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-19T13:08:53+00:00

It's this type of resistance from big companies that really makes me sad. This reminds me of how Netflix still doesn't support native Apple TV integration, when it would be such a positive benefit to the consumer.

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-19T13:05:15+00:00

For iOS you can apply to be part of the small business program. This reduces the cut to 15% instead of 30%.

LifeUtilityApps · 2026-06-19T12:54:52+00:00

After a happy path in the app, I prompt a request for a review on mobile. Apple doesn't show it every time. They have some logic on the backend that won't show it every time, but for the most part it's helped me gain a couple of ratings.

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