BirthMinder

Birthday reminders in time, wishes ready to send.

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Inspiration

A birthday notification can arrive on time and still be too late to arrange a gift or write something thoughtful. And remembering the date doesn't solve the next problem: knowing what to say.

BirthMinder brings those two moments together. You choose when to be reminded, then have help putting a personal message into words. Built in Poland, it also makes room for name days and family occasions alongside birthdays.

What it does

BirthMinder keeps the people you care about and their important dates on one timeline. Add someone by hand or import contacts, record birthdays, name days and anniversaries, and choose several reminders for an occasion or keep it silent.

When the day arrives, use ready-made wishes or create a personalized message from your relationship and notes about the person. Adjust the tone, length and emoji, then copy or share the message through the app you already use.

People and dates are stored locally, so you can look them up without a connection. Optional sign-in adds synchronization across devices. Personalized message generation requires a connection.

How I built it

The app uses Flutter and Dart for iOS and Android, with Drift for local storage and Riverpod for application state. Supabase provides authentication, synchronization and server-side operations. Reminders use native local notifications.

RevenueCat handles subscriptions and Pro access across both stores. Reminders, the calendar, contact import and ready-made wishes are free. Pro adds unlimited personalized wishes and saved message preferences, with monthly and yearly plans and a seven-day trial on the yearly plan for eligible subscribers.

RevenueCat also powers the referral reward: three qualified friend installs earn six months of Pro through promotional entitlements. Rewards are calculated server-side and confirmed before the app shows them as active. The paywall offers referrals as another route to Pro when someone finds the price too high.

Challenges I ran into

Reminder logic becomes complicated when dates repeat, time zones change and a person has several reminders. The app also handles occasions whose dates move each year. Scheduling and notification behavior needed testing on physical Android and iOS devices, beyond checking the screens in a simulator.

Another challenge was coordinating local data, account synchronization and subscription state. Signing in, signing out or restoring a purchase must leave the app in a consistent state. Referral rewards add another asynchronous step: opening a link and receiving Pro are different events.

Localization also reaches beyond translating labels. Name-day calendars, regional holiday dates and the wording of reminders all affect whether the app feels useful to someone.

Accomplishments I'm proud of

BirthMinder is live on both Google Play and the App Store. The submission demonstrates a working product, including its subscription and referral flows.

The core reminder experience is available without an account or subscription. Someone can add their first person and start using the app before deciding whether sync or personalized wishes are useful to them.

The project combines automated unit and widget tests with physical-device tests for user journeys and notifications. These checks help protect existing behavior as the app evolves.

What I learned

The difficult parts often sit between features: a reminder must still make sense after an edit, a notification tap must open the right context, and a reward must reflect confirmed subscription access.

Physical-device testing exposed issues that successful builds and isolated tests didn't catch. Localization required a similar shift in perspective: a technically correct date or sentence can still be wrong for the user's region or occasion.

What's next for BirthMinder

The next focus is learning from the live app: where people stop during onboarding, whether reminders bring them back, and which acquisition channels bring users who keep using it. Those findings will guide improvements to onboarding, message quality and the subscription offer.

For Shipaton, the submission focuses on the HAMM Award through the subscription and referral model, and the RevenueCat Design Award through conversational onboarding and the journey from a reminder to a message ready to send.

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