I'm thrilled to announce - after a year of planning and development in secret - that Bundled Notes for iOS will be available in beta on July 3rd.
All participants, capped at 250 via TestFlight, will get Pro for free during the program and for 6 months following.
This is not a quick or lazy port - it’s a fully native app, built by me. And, just like the Android app, it builds on top of the platform design language to offer something uniquely colorful, fun and - of course - customisable.
But enough words - here’s what it looks like:
The beta version will include most of the core functionality from the Android app, including support for all bundle settings, bundle ordering, a custom color-based theming engine, and more.
Though the first few builds will be missing a few features (like multi-select and swiping) the plan is to achieve feature parity rapidly, with the goal being to release publicly to the App Store in August.
Building the iOS app
Releasing the iOS app hasn’t just been about building the iOS app. Over the last year, I’ve been playing a long game to improve the foundations of the service, and to mature the website and marketing presence. This has involved:
- Finishing a complete rebuild of the Android app
- Splitting up the web app and marketing site into two
- Building a flexible system for importing from other apps
- Making all platforms fully translatable
- Building this blog and improving the site SEO
- Reducing the crash rate significantly
- Improving web app code and performance
- Releasing overdue web app features like attachment uploading + templates
- Standardising common components/models in the codebases of each app
- Building new foundational features like global tags
About 8 months ago, I started seriously building the iOS app - but I didn't want to share public ETAs and promises until a beta was genuinely ready. And it finally is!
Will iOS slow down Android development?
Following the rewrite of the Android codebase to Jetpack Compose, which was largely finished in the recent 4.1 update, the Android app is now in incredibly healthy shape. It is significantly more easy for me to build new features now than at any other point in the app’s development history.
In fact, almost all of the iOS development has occurred in the last 7 months - alongside work on the 4.1 update, splitting up the web app and marketing site, building global tags, launching the new translation program, and adding support for import.
Though there is of course some cost to building features on three platforms instead of two, each codebase is built on a foundation of similar components and core data models. Thanks to this, I've been finding it easy to build new features in one app (usually Android, since Compose is my favourite framework) then quickly replicate it in the others.
A new era!
Building the iOS app is a hugely important milestone for expanding Bundled Notes, and making it a more serious player in the productivity space. It opens up new opportunities for growth, forces me to take tablet & foundational features more seriously, and will also mean I'm able to justify devoting more time to building features.
I can't wait for you to try it, and I'm beyond excited for the year to come.
How to join the beta
If you're interested in joining the beta, join the Discord below - I'll be
announcing details in the #ios channel there shortly. Otherwise, I'll be
sharing another blog post to /r/bundled when the beta begins on July 3rd.
Join the Bundled Notes Discord
Thanks for reading, and for the continued support!
Xavier