Comment by monitron

1 day ago

This is fantastic, thank you. Recently when trying to sleep away from home, I went looking for a noise app and was grossed out by the state of the available apps, just like you said.

BTW One unfortunate feature that many noise apps/websites have (including Apple Music's official noise buttons) is that after a few minutes, they fade out and back in or have some other jarring transition when repeating. This is far from ideal for sleep, meditation, etc. So this is an enhancement request, if your app doesn't already solve this ;)

I'm also curious: do you think that the cost of maintaining the app (keeping it up to date with newer iOS versions, for instance) will eventually dissuade you from keeping it available in its pristine state? I've wondered why there seem to be ZERO free apps by hobbyists on the App Store in categories like this...

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monitron

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alpaca121  19 hours ago

100% agree with you. Most of my time on this project actually went into making sure the loops play seamlessly—no gaps, glitches, or fades—since even the tiniest hiccup can throw off light sleepers. I’ve also tested the app across different headphones and speakers, with and without noise cancellation, but if you try it and notice anything off, please tell me. I’d really love to make it as smooth as possible.

For the app maintenance side, I’m intentionally keeping both the UI and backend super simple so updates are easy to manage. And honestly, I just enjoy iOS development, so even the maintenance part feels more like fun than work.

bko  17 hours ago

I built a free calculator for iOS because I found the free calculators (for iPad) were super spammy and ugly. There was (and still is?) literally video ads that play between calculations. And since Apple didn't (doesn't?) offer a calculator app that came bundled with iPad, it was a huge market.

But I was naive and thought I could just create an obviously superior app and it would find some users. Why hadn't anyone thought of this before? But the app market is so saturated and poorly managed that there's practically no chance you can find users. Or at least I didn't care enough because.. you know.. its a free app. How much can I invest to get you to have a decent experience.

And the other point which was really the death blow to my app, is the ridiculous $100+ a year fee to app store to even host a free app. So after a few years and very few users, I decided to kill it.

1. The search sucks and prioritizes "popular" spammy apps.