Published on

Indie Dev Weekly #6

Authors

2023, 0320-0326

This week, my child was sick, and only went to school on Monday. As for me, I spent most of Monday writing last week's report and working on my blog. For the remaining six days, I didn't write much code except for a demo.

Zen Flip Clock iOS(App Store)

Zen Flip Clock iOS submitted a new version, v4.2.2, on Wednesday, with the updated design optimization of the widget mentioned last week. The review was fast, taking only 42 minutes in the afternoon.

Influenced by Bee, the developer of Walden, I began to pay attention to the keywords of the app. However, the number of keywords decreased slightly after the new update, but fortunately, most of them were low-search-volume keywords.

Over the weekend, I discussed the new content for the next version with the designer, and they provided a stunning design plan. I can't wait to implement it. The initial idea of this design plan was entirely based on my personal preferences. I didn't expect the designer to come up with such an incredible effect after conducting extensive research.

Zen Flip Clock Android(Google Play)

Version v2.5.13 was submitted on Friday, but it wasn't updated and available on the Chinese Android market until mid-week.

As mentioned last week, this version added new localizations and details to the page, but there was no significant growth in downloads on the Play store. ASO is indeed mystical.

Minimal Diary Android(Google Play)

Minimal Diary Android released v1.2.0 this week, with many new features:

  • Custom mood
  • Passcode lock
  • More sharing theme
  • Displaying images in the calendar
  • Optimized UI

It was smooth sailing to launch on other Android markets, but it took a lot of time on Xiaomi's app market. Since the previous version, Xiaomi has been rejecting updates for Minimal Diary, claiming there is no "log-out" function. This app doesn't have a user system at all, and the server only retains users' payment records without any other user data. Still, Xiaomi's reviewers insisted on having a log-out function. Therefore, this version added a log-out button, prompting users to send an email to apply for log-out operations. However, Xiaomi's customer service and reviewers had different opinions. In a group, four Xiaomi employees kept messaging each other, and even Xiaomi's own audit criteria had different interpretations, causing me to revise it three times before finally passing.

I really want to post the complete chat records for everyone to see, but unfortunately, it's too long. There is no unified audit standard for Android markets in China, and even different departments within the same company have different execution standards, which is eye-opening.

AI Tools Keep Emerging

New AI products keep emerging every day, and I'm overwhelmed. Here, I'll briefly introduce two AI tools I used this week.

Bing Image Creator

Bing has also launched its own text-to-image AI tool. I only inputted a simple sentence "Night, moon, wave, pure background," and the generated image satisfied me. I used it as the cover image for this report.

Cursor

Cursor mentioned last week was immediately put into actual production this week.

  • Generated a script for Raycast, but encountered an error when running it. Copied the error to the Cursor chat, and it gave a solution directly.
  • Generated a Cron command-line.
  • The new design of Zen Flip Clock requires a gyroscope, but I know nothing about CoreMotion. I asked Cursor to generate some code, and with a little modification, it worked.

Show My Face

I haven’t been showing my face on social media much in recent years. Partly because of social anxiety and partly because of privacy concerns. But this week, I pushed myself out of my comfort zone twice:

  • On Sunday night, I participated in the W2Solo online gathering for indie developers. I didn’t speak much and didn’t feel like I did a good job. I couldn’t cover all the questions either.
  • Thanks to a recommendation from fatbobman, I recorded a video for SwiftGG’s mobile app competition sharing session held in a certain university. It was my first time recording such a video, and I was very nervous. I stumbled over my words and had to do multiple takes, but I finally managed to submit a decent video after some editing.

New Gear

I recently got interested in Xbox Series S. After doing a lot of research, I finally found a decent Japanese version machine being sold by a local second-hand shop. It runs almost silently and at a great speed, so I immediately purchased one year’s XGP.