My Apps - May 2023
I have three apps in the store right now. I thought I'd just write up a post about them:
Topiary
Topiary is an app for managing the people you follow (and who follow you) on your Mastodon and Fediverse account.
You've been on Mastodon and the Fediverse for a while now, and need to trim back your home feed... Enter, Topiary!
With Topiary, you can take a closer look at both the accounts you follow, and those that follow you.
You can filter mutuals and accounts you follow based on their posting activity. If an account has been abandoned, you can make the choice to unfollow and reduce that clutter.
Topiary is becoming a one-stop follower curation tool, with new features being added with each version.
Try it today, and give things a trim!
Topiary supports Mastodon, Pleroma, Akkoma and PixelFed instances out of the box, via an open source library, TootSDK.
This started as a small "I wonder if I could..." idea over a weekend and snowballed 🫠
I'm having a lot of fun playing with it and adding features I love. I have a couple more features to add, then it will probably be set for a few months before I come back to it again with any ideas that have built up.
Community feature requests for Topiary have been awesome. I'm thankful for everyone who has beta tested it and suggested things to me too!
I implemented "adverts" in the app. These show up gently in the list of accounts the app displays. These are not really adverts in the classic sense. They're just links to mine and some of my friend's apps that I maintain in a JSON file on lightbeamapps.com that the app loads. I specifically didn't want anything tacky or that compromised users' privacy.
Topiary is free to install, with a Pro mode that is essentially a 'tip jar' right now, that grants you access to multiple themes and removes "adverts" from the feed.
You can download Topiary from the App Store
Video to Audio
Video to Audio is an app that I built during a holiday between my last day-job and my current one, back in July/August '22.
It's a simple little thing, dedicated to one task: converting the audio from your video file into a dedicated audio file.
The app is free with some basic limitations unless you upgrade to Pro. (no more than a few recordings saved, an export length limit).
You can download Video to Audio from the App Store
GoVJ
VJ'ing is the art of mixing video in real-time. Typically this is as a backdrop for a DJ or club event, or for a band playing a show.
GoVJ lets anyone turn their iPhone or iPad into a 2-channel video mixer. You can load videos or photos, and trigger them from the 4x4 trigger pad UI.
Up to 4 effects can be added to either channel, with parameters you can control live as the videos play.
This app is where it all started for me for iOS development. I used to VJ in the early 2000s, turning up to events lugging 3x flight cases full of DVD players, hardware video mixer, and Shuttle PCs with video mixing software on them.
When the iPad came out, it inspired me to build an application to do this. And so, an iOS developer was born 🚀
I used to get up at 5AM, put 2x hours in on teaching myself iOS development and then go and do a full day's worth of work, when I first got started. It took quite a long time, but eventually I reached a point where GoVJ was ready, and in August 2015 it was released.
These days the app has been modernised with a fully CoreImage and Metal based video mixing pipeline for speed, and uses SwiftUI for it's interface.
I'm still adding features. I'm currently working on MIDI support so that hardware controllers can be connected to the to control it.
GoVJ is free, with a Pro upgrade either via subscription. If subscriptions aren't your thing, then there is a life-time pro purchase available too.
You can download GoVJ from the App Store
Finishing up
I love working on my side-project apps in my spare time. There have been a few others over the years (StickerBot, HoloVid and AirSynth) which have since retired.
I guess I'd love to be able to work on them full-time one day, maybe if I ever get to retire.
For now though, I keep hacking away in small scraps of time, on whatever is driving my interest. It keeps things interesting!