PopChunk

Inspiration

I've been using various to-do apps forever and have always wanted to make one ever since the days of Wunderlist, which devastated me when it was shut down. It was just a random desire that popped into my head early this year to break down tasks into very small chunks in order to overcome massive mental blocks. I couldn't find an app that lets you do this in the specific way I wanted so I made it myself.

What it does

It's an iOS app where you start with 1 main goal and break it down into a smaller task which goes into a sub level. Think of a sub level as a lower part of a mountain and you are climbing your way to the top goal. You can add tasks to that sub level task and break all those tasks down into even further sub levels.

How I built it

This was made with swift ui, cursor, and revenue cat. I wouldn't have been able to make the project without cursor because of the complex back end logic necessary. I only know the very basics of programming and this was my first real app. Revenue cat is great because I had to change the pricing on the fly and edit the paywall a few times and I didn't have to submit a new app review.

Challenges I ran into

Working out all the bugs in the logic was difficult and made up the majority of the work. For example, if a user completes a task but changes their mind how do you recover all the sub tasks under it? Or if they complete a task at a higher, level how would that affect all the sub tasks? I had to find ways to make all the logic work together.

How I marketed it

I made a few posts on X in the build in public community, have the link on my x profile along with a banner, and I made motivational slides for tik tok and IG. The slides did just ok with the best performing one getting 6k views. I couldn't get the IG account to get any traction at all. I may have gotten 1 sale from the tik tok slides and I believe the rest were entirely from posting and leaving comments on X.

Accomplishments I am proud of

Finishing the app was a major accomplishment and took a lot of persistence when the code often didn't work and sometimes took an entire day to fix tiny bugs. I also made 4 sales which isn't a lot but I have a generous freemium model, the market for these apps doesn't typically pick up until around new years, and it's a bit difficult for a new app to compete on ASO in the space against many established players.

What we learned

Distribution is everything. You have to find social media formats that get views but also convert into downloads. This was difficult because Apple buried the app in search even when people typed in the name which I made unique for this purpose. I also learned to persist when having programming difficulties and to not give up.

What's next for PopChunk

I will be focusing on finding new ways to market it and let people know it exists.

Built With

• cursor
• revenuecat
• swiftui