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Home Screen
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Item View
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Shopping List
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Items List
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Add a New Item
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Settings Screen
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Inspiration
Some things at home wear out quietly: the toothbrush, the kitchen sponge, the furnace filter, the cartridge in the water pitcher. Nobody remembers when they last changed them, and a lot of people aren't sure how often they should. In the US, "how often to replace toothbrush" is searched about 5,400 times a month on Google.
When someone on Reddit asked for an app to keep track of air filter changes, the most popular reply said to just use Apple's Reminders app. That works for one thing. It won't tell you that the sponge is two weeks overdue while the filter still has a month left, or that you're down to your last spare. We wanted one calm place for all of it.
What it does
Swapstead keeps track of the things around your home that need replacing on a schedule. Pick from 42 common items or add your own, and choose how often each one should be replaced, anywhere from two weeks to a year.
Each item has a ring that empties as it gets older. The Today screen shows what's overdue, what's due soon and what's fine, with Kip the koala keeping you company. When you swap something out, tap "Replaced today" and the countdown starts again.
If you keep spares, tell Swapstead how many you have. When you're down to your last one, it goes on the shopping list by itself.
Instead of a pile of alerts, you get one short note each morning with everything that's due. Home Screen widgets show what's coming up, and you can mark things replaced right from them. It works on iPhone and iPad and stays in sync through iCloud.
Reminders for five items are free. Swapstead Plus removes the limit and adds full history and extra themes.
How we built it
We started from an interactive design prototype and rebuilt it as a native iPhone and iPad app in SwiftUI, with the new Liquid Glass look from iOS 26. Kip is drawn from the prototype's artwork, so the mascot stays sharp at any size and can change mood.
Subscriptions and the paywall run on RevenueCat. Plans, prices and the paywall itself all come from the RevenueCat dashboard, so none of them are built into the app. iCloud keeps your items in sync between devices.
Challenges we ran into
Our biggest headache was a RevenueCat error saying there was "an issue with your configuration". Everything looked right in the dashboard. The real problem was in our app: it still remembered the plans from before we switched to RevenueCat, so there was nothing to show. We took every plan out of the app and let RevenueCat decide what to offer. Now a plan we add in the dashboard simply shows up.
Widgets were harder than expected. They need to know whether you're a subscriber, but they can't wait for the app to open, so they check with the App Store on their own.
iPhones only let an app line up a limited number of notifications, so we queue about two months of morning notes and top them up whenever the app gets the chance.
Our first onboarding also cheated. To make the first screen look busy, it filled in example items, some already overdue. A brand-new user would open the app and see a filter they'd just added marked as 12 days late. Now everything you add starts fresh.
People who use very large text sizes saw words like "Toothbrush" split in the middle. We went through every screen at the largest size so words shrink instead of breaking.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Swapstead is out on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, with subscriptions running through RevenueCat from day one.
The first time you open it, it's honest with you. It doesn't invent problems to look useful.
It works at every text size, which took more rounds of fixes than any single feature.
On iPad you get a sidebar and a wider landscape layout instead of a stretched phone screen.
What we learned
Let RevenueCat own everything about pricing. The less the app knows about plans, the less there is to fall out of sync.
A confusing label can look exactly like a bug. In testing, we added three spares to an item and expected it on the shopping list. It didn't show up, because the number meant "spares you already have", not "spares to buy". The app was right and the label was misleading, so now it spells out what will happen: "Goes on the shopping list right away" or "Joins the shopping list at 1 left".
What's next for Swapstead: Replacement Tracker
Next, we'd like households to share one list, so partners and roommates see the same items, and we want a custom paywall designed in RevenueCat. More items and more languages will follow.
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