Aleksander Stojanowski

Much later than I wanted to, but a new version of Spark is available to download! 🥳 It’s also a much smaller update than I thought it’d be, but at least now Spark has a new #LiquidGlass icon. 🤩 #BuildInPublic #iOSDev #IndieDev #IndieHacker

I plan to leave basically only the data model, as I want users to be able to upgrade to the new version seamlessly, but everything else I plan to get rid of and start from scratch.

Much later than I wanted to, but a new version of Spark is available to download! 🥳 It’s also a much smaller update than I thought it’d be, but at least now Spark has a new #LiquidGlass icon. 🤩 #BuildInPublic #iOSDev #IndieDev #IndieHacker

However… Struggling with App Intents, I made a tough decision regarding Spark’s future. Instead of slowly progressing as I did over the last half a year or so, I’ll make a hard cutoff and start developing version 2.0. 😳

So… I’ve just learned that most of my adoration for #AppIntents was premature. 😆 I discovered why they didn’t work from actionable notifications, by having the same issue when I tried to use them in .onMove. 😬 #BuildInPublic #IndieHacker #iOSDev #IndieDev

As for the progress in general, I had yet another exhausting week and I haven’t made much progress. I even took a 2-day break from working on Spark completely! 😱 However, I managed to create intents to work with habit groups and extended entities, so I can use them with my view.

So… I’ve just learned that most of my adoration for #AppIntents was premature. 😆 I discovered why they didn’t work from actionable notifications, by having the same issue when I tried to use them in .onMove. 😬 #BuildInPublic #IndieHacker #iOSDev #IndieDev

Running them directly from code by instantiating them and calling perform makes them run in an environment where all their dependencies aren’t initialized. At least that’s what I understand from chatting with AI. However, I admit I haven’t double-checked yet. 😅

So… I’ve just learned that most of my adoration for #AppIntents was premature. 😆 I discovered why they didn’t work from actionable notifications, by having the same issue when I tried to use them in .onMove. 😬 #BuildInPublic #IndieHacker #iOSDev #IndieDev

It looks like two weeks in a row I’m coming back to you with an update. 😅 Again, #TestFlight one, but I’m now much closer to a full update! Today I finished introducing #AppIntents to @letspark.it They aren’t available from Shortcuts or Siri, but they helped me clean up code.

During the week, I also attempted to change a bit some animations in the app, but I failed, so for now there is nothing new the user can actually see by using the app. At least I hope so, there won’t be a bunch of crashes from running intents. 😆

It looks like two weeks in a row I’m coming back to you with an update. 😅 Again, #TestFlight one, but I’m now much closer to a full update! Today I finished introducing #AppIntents to @letspark.it They aren’t available from Shortcuts or Siri, but they helped me clean up code.

I’m back! 🥳 I had some tough times, caught a cold… Generally not the best period. 😅 I’m still not 100% healthy and strong, but back nonetheless. I even brought the Spark update with me! 😱 New #TestFlight version, but the update is an update, it still counts! 😜 #BuildInPublic #iOSDev #IndieDev

Not only will they make the code much simpler, but they will enable me to share them via shortcuts and Siri with users easily in the future. 😉

I’m back! 🥳 I had some tough times, caught a cold… Generally not the best period. 😅 I’m still not 100% healthy and strong, but back nonetheless. I even brought the Spark update with me! 😱 New #TestFlight version, but the update is an update, it still counts! 😜 #BuildInPublic #iOSDev #IndieDev

It’s strongly coupled with my data model, and it makes the changes in the data schema so hard for me. Luckily, I have an idea of how to separate these two matters, and it should remove the main blocker of migrating to a new schema! Hopefully. 🤞

I’m back! 🥳 I had some tough times, caught a cold… Generally not the best period. 😅 I’m still not 100% healthy and strong, but back nonetheless. I even brought the Spark update with me! 😱 New #TestFlight version, but the update is an update, it still counts! 😜 #BuildInPublic #iOSDev #IndieDev

Working on a new schema (at last 😆), I decided I need to move my data interaction to app intents (yet another excuse 😅), as then I'll have one point to change my logic after schema migration. However, that means I need to extract my logic first, and it made me realize one thing…

Even the description sounds horrible. 😬 Moreover, I believe there are cases when something might go wrong, but I just haven’t encountered them yet. I thought the actors could save me here, but reentrancy means every await call makes my actor method calls interleave. 😩

Working on a new schema (at last 😆), I decided I need to move my data interaction to app intents (yet another excuse 😅), as then I'll have one point to change my logic after schema migration. However, that means I need to extract my logic first, and it made me realize one thing…

I created my handler in a way that enqueues the operations to an async stream and executes them on a background thread in the proper order, but it looks and feels like a very dirty workaround. Especially since I need to be sure that it finishes in a few places.

Working on a new schema (at last 😆), I decided I need to move my data interaction to app intents (yet another excuse 😅), as then I'll have one point to change my logic after schema migration. However, that means I need to extract my logic first, and it made me realize one thing…

I hate notification scheduling on iOS. 😩 The main problem I have right now with moving my code to intents is that I need to handle notifications scheduling correctly, and today I realized why I hate that API so much. It’s asynchronous!

I have to more often say publicly that I don’t have much time to do something, I guess… I’ve sat for a moment to optimize the calendar view before migrating to a new schema, and it happened that I had a lot of opportunities to do so. 😅 #BuildInPublic #iOSDev #IndieDev

I spent more time working on that than I initially anticipated today, but as a result, there is a new #TestFlight build waiting to be released for testers. 😆 As if the optimization was too little, I upgraded the app icon to a #LiquidGlass design as well. 😁

It took me much longer than I wanted, but I started at last moving the new calendar view out of the playground project into Spark, and I must admit the results are great. 😊 Not only can you now easily go through history, but the calendar now scrolls naturally. 😁 #BuildInPublic #iOSDev #IndieDev

There is also a problem with sheets animating together with button presses. I don’t understand what’s going on there, especially when that behavior is gone if the sheet has full height. 🫤 I’m quite sure it has something to do with #LiquidGlass, but I don’t know what yet. 😔

It took me much longer than I wanted, but I started at last moving the new calendar view out of the playground project into Spark, and I must admit the results are great. 😊 Not only can you now easily go through history, but the calendar now scrolls naturally. 😁 #BuildInPublic #iOSDev #IndieDev

I just got the moment of peak engineering! I struggled with an infinitely scrolling calendar timeline. I tried a few approaches, but none of them worked as intended (to say the least 😆). Then it struck me! #BuildInPublic #IndieHacker #iOSDev #IndieDev

I almost gave up for the day, but then I got one more idea… Let’s flip the view horizontally! That’s it! Now calendars scroll in natural order, and everything works smoothly! 🥳 Of course, I needed to flip both, the parent scroll view as well as the calendars themselves. 😅

I just got the moment of peak engineering! I struggled with an infinitely scrolling calendar timeline. I tried a few approaches, but none of them worked as intended (to say the least 😆). Then it struck me! #BuildInPublic #IndieHacker #iOSDev #IndieDev

That in itself caused the app to lag, a big amount. Mostly because a lot of computation was required to create a single month calendar. I need to optimize the view, but it will help only a bit in case of dozens of views being created at once. 😕

I just got the moment of peak engineering! I struggled with an infinitely scrolling calendar timeline. I tried a few approaches, but none of them worked as intended (to say the least 😆). Then it struck me! #BuildInPublic #IndieHacker #iOSDev #IndieDev

It went viral that time wheel in iOS picker isn’t infinite. I did the same. Instead of fighting with adding new months when needed, I generated a list of dates, put them into a lazy stack, and… I got the problem. 🥲

Am I 2 days late? Perhaps, but better late than never, am I right? 😅 I must admit I planned to prepare Spark for iOS 26 release date, but I got distracted, dove into new calendar view, and you know how it sometimes can be.

I hadn’t planned to work on this update until the weekend, but a friend showed me a bug that I needed to fix right away, so I sat yesterday evening and prepared everything. I thought I’d be waiting much longer for a review.