Sofa Blog

Subscribe

Introducing Super Sofa Lifetime Billing

Introducing Super Sofa Lifetime Billing

Today I’m introducing a new way of leveling up to Super Sofa, a lifetime billing option. A lifetime billing option is exactly what it says on the tin: pay for Super Sofa once and enjoy the full benefits forever. This rounds out the Super Sofa offering in a nice

Making Lists More Customizable

Making Lists More Customizable

Hey gang, ready for a fun update? Sofa 3.3 enables you to make your lists even more personal and fun. * Cover images for lists * Large titles and descriptions * New layout options * Custom settings per list * Edit custom item's image and title * Markdown for Sticky Notes * 8 new themes About

Sofa on Apple Silicon Macs

Sofa on Apple Silicon Macs

Hey gang, Sofa 3.2.4 has one significant new feature for M1 Mac owners and many more minor improvements and fixes. I hope you all enjoy it! What’s New * Sofa is now available on M1 Macs! Improvements * Added a setting for choosing how Logging to Activity works * Improved

Closing the Sofa Forums

Having a good idea and vision for how something will play out is one thing. Executing and seeing the results is another. The Sofa Forums launched at the end of 2020, and a year later, it's time to shut them down. Why Close the Forums? There are a bunch of

Sofa Work Log: Apps, Audiobooks, and Board Games

Apps, Audiobooks, and Board Games are coming soon to Sofa. This brings the number of unique data types to nine! Sofa 2.0 launched in 2017 with movies, TV shows, and books. It’s come a long way. Apps Add any iOS or Mac app that is currently live in

Work Log: Deeplinks and Creator Themes

This week I talk about a new feature coming soon called Deeplinks. This allows you to copy a deeplink to a list or item. You can add that link to a notes app to reference for later. I also demoed new Creator Themes for designers and developers.

Data Management and Sofa Roadmap

This week I talk about how I’ve iterated on improving data management in the app, and how I’m sharing the Sofa roadmap. * Sofa Roadmap * Obsidian

Improving Sofa’s Data Management

This week I talk about how I’m improving data management in the app, details of a promotion I did recently, and some feedback from the community.

Sofa’s Indie App Santa Promotion Results

I was lucky enough to participate in Indie App Santa on January 11. It’s a fun daily promotion of indie apps created by François Boulais. The idea behind Indie App Santa is that for 24 hrs only, there needs to be a discount or promotion of some kind. Since

A Place to Discuss Sofa

I have little control over how and where people talk about Sofa. I’m perfectly happy, and lucky, for anyone to talk about Sofa in any way, shape, or form. That being said, I would like to have an official place for people to discuss Sofa and their downtime. Not

Sofa 2020 Year in Review

Sofa 2020 Year in Review

2020 has been one long shit show. Focusing on the good things in life has been difficult, to say the least. Sofa was a positive outlet for me this year and gave me a place to take a break from everything else going on. I’m thankful I have it.

The SwiftUI Detour

I recently released version 2.12 of Sofa. That release brought new features, but more importantly, included a major refactoring of the app. This was triggered by two announcements at this year’s WWDC: 1. UITableView will eventually (soon?) be deprecated 2. SwiftUI evolved in nice ways and could potentially

Sofa’s iOS 14 Update

Sofa’s iOS 14 Update

2020 has been full of surprises for all of us. For Sofa, I only planned on one major release this year followed up by a bunch of smaller releases. Things didn’t turn out that way. This iOS 14 update is big. I don’t like working on big releases.

Creators Campfire Podcast Interview

I was interviewed for the Creators Campfire podcast the other day and had a great time. We chatted about Sofa, app development, and more. If you prefer to listen as a podcast, you can do so here.

Thinking through custom items in Sofa

Thinking through custom items in Sofa

I recently added the ability for people to save custom items to Sofa. This post outlines the thinking behind the feature and how it works. Two of the main reasons people find Sofa so enjoyable to use are the rich display of the various media types and the mixing of

A More Well-Rounded Sofa Experience

A More Well-Rounded Sofa Experience

Back in December of 2019, I wrote how I’m focused on making Sofa a more well-rounded product. There are a number of compromises that people have to make in order to feel comfortable using the product. Well, today a bunch of those compromised get squashed. I’m happy to

Sofa Year in Review 2019

Sofa Year in Review 2019

I’m a fan of doing a “year in review” exercise. It’s easy to forget all the work that’s been done, which results in me feeling like I haven’t made enough progress. In fact, a lot of work has been done, which makes me feel good! At

Making it Easy to Leave Sofa

Making it Easy to Leave Sofa

The experience of leaving a product is just as important as when you start using it. I just implemented the ability to export your data in Sofa. It’s a feature that probably should’ve been there earlier, but, you know, that’s life. If you’ve been on the

Updates for iOS 13

Updates for iOS 13

There are a bunch of new features in iOS 13. To bring Sofa up to date, I focused on three things: 1. Dark Mode 2. Context Menus 3. Bug fixes Dark Mode Sofa has had a dark mode since the spring of 2019, but now it will automatically follow your

Implementing iOS 13 Dark Mode Settings in Sofa

Implementing iOS 13 Dark Mode Settings in Sofa

In iOS 13, people will be able to choose a light or dark “theme” that will apply system-wide. Regardless of what you think about dark mode, apps that don’t adopt this will stick out like a sore thumb. Luckily, Sofa already has a dark mode, but I needed to

New: Reorder Sections, Lists, and List Items 🎉

New: Reorder Sections, Lists, and List Items 🎉

Reordering of sections, lists, and list items has been the most requested feature for a while now. You may even be thinking, “Why the hell did it take so long?”. First, it’s trickier than it appears to be to implement well. Secondly, I’m the only one person who

Sofa 2.8: Introducing Themes

Sofa 2.8: Introducing Themes

Sofa 2.8 introduces themes! Woot! You can choose between Classic, Dark, and Black. Why Themes Themes are a purely cosmetic feature that doesn’t add any real functionality. The thing is, themes are undeniably fun. Fun is a feature. Themes allow you to personalize the experience to be more

Fixing Sofa’s Tight-Coupling Problem with Coordinators

Sofa was suffering from a tight-coupling problem between view controllers. I discovered this while trying to refactor my massive controllers. I stumbled upon the coordinator pattern, which ended up being a great solution. A quick note I’m a beginner when it comes to iOS development, and the coordinator pattern

Sofa 2.7: Adding More To Your Lists

Sofa 2.7: Adding More To Your Lists

There are an enormous amount of ways that you can spend your downtime. So far, Sofa has been able to help you with a few of those: books, movies & TV, and podcasts. Today we are adding a few more to that list. Introducing Music Albums and Video Games You can

Sofa 2018: Year In Review

Sofa 2018: Year In Review

I launched Sofa 2.0 in November of 2017. My focus since then has been understanding and creating the core experience of the product. Throughout 2018 I’ve shipped updates, conducted research, and introduced many new features. I thought it might be fun to take a look back at what