I have always wanted to make an app for my iPhone. Not to the point that I actually wanted to sit down and take the time it would take to learn how to code in Swift, but the thought of creating something for my phone, tailor-made for my needs? That was very appealing. I even knew what I wanted to make: I track all the media I watch and read each year. I would love an app that would help me to do that, just the way I wanted. Something that would graph how many pages I’ve read each week or month, or how many minutes of TV and movies I watched. Something that would let me see what my friends were watching or reading.
But really, I just wanted to see if I could do it.
With the advent of AI, I’d read all about how you should try to use it to do things you never dreamed you could before. I decided I wanted to put that to the test, and what better way to do it than to use it to make that app I always wanted to make? So I turned over to ChatGPT and Claude and began to get to work.
Mind you, my coding background is next to non-existent. I think I took a couple of hour long sessions at summer camp in the 80s. (We used a computer to draw straight lines. That was it.) And I tried to take a “how to code in Swift” online course that I got bored with after 2 weeks. (Swift is the language iOS uses.) Other than that? Nothing. (Pretty sure I’ve blogged about that fact already.)
Making the app was far from easy or simple. I wanted something I could be proud of. Something more than just turning to AI and telling it to do something, and then calling it good. There were very specific tasks I wanted the app to do, and I wanted it all to look and act a certain way. As I used AI, that idea evolved. I had AI advise me on areas I should build up or didn’t need to worry so much about. I started over from scratch five separate times, each time learning more about how the process worked. I learned that my role was really more of a manager than an actual coder. I would tell AI what I wanted it to do, and then ask it what sort of prompts I should use to get it to do that. I had it evaluate what was done, and sometimes used different platforms to get second opinions. (AI is designed to tell you you’re right, even when you’re wrong. Often I’d need to tell it that what we were working on was the work of someone else in order for me to tell me how bad things really were.)
But as things went on, I got better. I learned how apps are organized. I learned about UI design and database stability. I learned about backing my project up to github frequently, and how to analyze the output of AI to make sure it did what I needed it to. I learned about writing tests to make sure the code stayed in line. And then I learned all about the hoops you have to jump through to get an app published in the app store.
And now? My app is officially in the wild. You can find it in the app store this instant. (Though mind you, it’s just version .8, as I’m not ready to call it totally ready just yet. Denisa started to use it and found some bugs right away.) It’s called Ushould2. What does it do?
- Tracks movies, tv shows, books, and board games. You enter in what you watched, read, or played, and it keeps track of how long it was (you have to enter time played for board games, but page count or movie length is tracked automatically.)
- Has a social component, so you can see what your friends are watching, reading, or playing. You have complete control over what you share (can keep some things private) and what you see of your friends’ activity. (Don’t care about their reading habits? You can turn off books for specific people, or movies for everyone, etc.)
- You can rate media with either a thumbs up or a heart. Like, love, or nothing. I don’t do negative reviews in the app. Why not? Because I dislike negative reviews, honestly. I’d much rather people tell me about what they loved than what they hated. And this is my app, so that’s how it’s made.
- You can keep track of what you’d like to watch, read, or play with an “Up Next” list. See something all your friends are watching and don’t want to forget it? Just add it to the list.
- It generates charts for you with details about how much you read, watch, or play. Total minutes or pages per week, month, year, or lifetime. That kind of thing.
- You enter what platforms you subscribe to and how much you pay for them, and it’ll calculate what you pay per hour of watched media on that platform. This has really helped me identify how I’m overpaying for platforms, and how I could really save money by not doing the yearly subscription option. (Note, this feature is behind a paywall.)
- Ultimately, when/if it has more users, it will be able to make recommendations for you on what platforms you should subscribe to. For example, you might notice you’re paying for Paramount+ but not watching it, so you cancel. Then, a year later, when you’ve exhausted everything on a different platform, it will keep track of what shows your friends have been watching and liking, as well as what platform those shows are on. It’ll then suggest to you which platform to switch to, and what shows to check out.
As I said, it’s not complete, and I do keep finding things I want to tweak on it, but it’s at least ready enough for now. (Though I did discover that if you’ve got your font super-sized on a smaller phone, you can’t get past the intro screen because it pushes the “continue” button off the screen. Gotta work on fixing that . . . )
I’ve enjoyed the process, and I have no plans on stopping. Not because I think it’ll make me all the money in the world, but because it’s a fun thing for me to do, and now that I’ve got more experience with it, it’s easier to do as well. (For my next project, I want to design a game. I’m working on that now . . . )
Anyway. Check it out and tell me what you think. If anything’s broken, let me know. Gotta start somewhere.