Looking for 10 Mac users to test my new macOS app, and send blunt feedback on bugs, UX issues, and quirks.
DM me your Mac model, macOS version, and email provider if you want in.
Appreciate you.
Anyone have any opinions on paid upfront to download vs free and IAP via soft or hard paywall?
Every app I've shipped before this one was paid upfront. Simple math. Someone hits the product page, they buy or they don't.
This time I broke the pattern and I'm still nervous about it. People kept asking me for trials in my previous apps so I started guessing the best way to do it through the AppStore is to release the app for free and offer IAP.
So I made my new app free and the core loop - swipe quizzes, streaks, XP - works forever without paying. Premium content lives in one-time IAP packs at $5.99 each. Buy the pack, own it. No subscription, no "go premium" tier. I didn't want one of those hard paywalls in an otherwise useless app. Too many times I downloaded something only to realise I couldn't use it without subscribing.
I almost didn't do it. With paid-upfront I know what a launch looks like. With free + IAP I'm flying blind (I checked industry numbers say 2–5% of free users ever pay, and that felt terrifying next to ~100% paying under the old model). Building six packs(not my stomach!) is also six times the content work of building one paid app, so if conversion flops I've done a lot for very little.
What pushed me over was watching my own behaviour. I almost never buy paid-upfront apps anymore. I'll download anything free, try it for two minutes, and either delete it or get hooked. Paying before I know if I like something is the higher friction now, not the lower. Although I come from the Mac Apps world where paying upfront used to be normal.
Subscriptions I ruled out though, the app isn't recurring-consumable content, and subs add trust friction I didn't want for something casual. I'd rather sell ownership than rental.
So now I'm watching two numbers: download & first-pack conversion, and whether people who buy one pack ever buy a second. Too early to know either. I'll post real numbers in a month either way.
The thing I'm second-guessing most: I went with six separate packs so people could buy just the topic they wanted. But I keep wondering if six SKUs dilutes the decision compared to one clean "unlock everything" IAP. Or do I add that also as a bundle price? If you've shipped both.. did multiple packs actually convert better, or did the simpler single-unlock win?
Just shipped my first iOS app and it cleared review in about 7 hours, which surprised me given the horror stories I'd read here. I don't think I got lucky, I think a lot of slow reviews come from avoidable stuff. Sharing what I prepared in case it helps anyone about to submit.
Also I think before your submit ask any LLM (Claude, Codex etc) to go through your xCode project and ask it to give you a checklist for submission, including things to add for the review and hints.
Things I did:
What I think helped most: tiny binary (1.8 MB), zero third-party SDKs, no account system, no permissions requested. The smaller the surface area for review, the faster they move I guess.
Of course I don't really know but just sharing what worked for me and hopefully it helps you out.
Happy to answer questions. App is LevelUP if anyone's curious - it's a swipe-to-learn quiz thing I built to replace doomscrolling, but the post is really about the submission process.
Mods okayed this. Honest pitch.
I build well, lose interest at marketing. Clearing five polished products at $499 each.
Each app has zero revenue, zero customers. You're buying a finished product, not a business. Skip this if you want MRR included.
Each is 1-of-1. Full source included.
Included: source code, design assets, 14 days support.
Dossiers, links + screenshots → yuzool.com/delisted
Comment or DM me for more info and offers.
I do client outreach for my consulting work and to try and sell my apps - maybe 500-1,000 personal emails a week. For about a year I was paying Lemlist $97/mo because "that's what you use for cold email." I'd open it Monday, send my batch, and not touch it again until the next Monday.
I realized I was paying ~$1,200/year for what was essentially a glorified mail merge with a CRM bolted on. I never used the AI features, never used the warmup pool, never used the multi-channel stuff.
The web app was slow. Every action took a round trip to their servers. On my Mac, with a list of 100 contacts, it felt absurd.
So I spent a few months building what I actually wanted: a native Mac app that connects to my own inbox via SMTP/IMAP, lets me write a personal template, preview each email before sending, and sends them one-by-one. No web app. No subscription. No AI. Everything stays on my Mac.
Stack: SwiftUI, 1.4MB binary, macOS 14+. Keychain for SMTP credentials. No backend - there's literally no server it talks to. And no electron.
It's on the App Store as Drip Send for $34.99 one-time (currently $19.99).
Genuinely curious what r/macapps would change about it - this sub has the highest concentration of people who'd actually have opinions on a native productivity app.
Got a normal-looking $3.5k website brief, articulate reply, then "review our current version before the call", then linked repo was a crypto dApp full of junk files and a committed `.env`. It's the Contagious Interview / GitVenom scam (Microsoft + Kaspersky writeups) - install scripts exfil browser creds, SSH keys, and wallets.
Clone is fine, never run a stranger's repo before a contract. Stay sharp. Current market sucks.
----
UPDATE: the account has been blocked on Dribbble so that's a start
Venting and warning, in that order.
I freelance front-end. Like everyone else I've been on Upwork and Dribbble because that's where the briefs are. You know how it goes (I don't like it but): pay credits to apply, write tailored proposals, mostly silence, occasional reply.
This week a reply came through that looked normal. "8-page modern website, $3,500." The guy's follow-up was thoughtful: wants to schedule a call, drops in some industry-sounding phrases about 'flows, edge cases, and system behavior.' And a price which is industry acceptable not trying to squeeze peanuts. Then: while we wait, take a look at our current version, here's the GitHub.
I click. It's a crypto app. Has nothing to do with the brief. And it's full of weird artifacts - files like `$null` and `npm install.cmd` in the root, a committed `.env`, 3 contributors through me off at first, but no stars, no history of being a real working product.
I got lucky and paused. If I'd been more tired, I'd have run `npm install` to be 'prepared for the call' and that would have been game over.
I then searched around and found this is a known scam (Microsoft and Kaspersky call it Contagious Interview / GitVenom). The fake repo runs a payload that steals browser passwords, SSH keys, .env files, and crypto wallets, exfils to Telegram. One tracked attacker pulled in around $485k from a single victim.
What's bothering me isn't that the scam exists. It's how *normal* the entry point was. A real brief on a real platform. Do they even care and check these things? Not really.
A reply that wasn't full of typos or sketchy links. Just a smooth pivot in the second message from 'let's talk about your website' to 'first, run my codebase locally.'
If you're freelancing in 2026, the rules I'm operating by now:
- Clone is fine, never run. No npm install, no opening in VS Code with workspace trust, no executing anything from a prospect before a contract.
- If the 'current version' they want you to review doesn't match the brief they posted - that *is* the scam. Don't rationalize it.
- Real clients share Figma, Notion, or a live URL. They never need you to install their code to evaluate fit.
- Platforms don't vet posters meaningfully. Login + credit cost doesn't equal safety. I was stupid to think it would.
Also, can we collectively admit Upwork and Dribbble have become genuinely hostile to find clean work on? The scam-to-real ratio keeps getting worse. Cool platforms in 2018, minefields now.
If you've got non-marketplace lead sources that have worked for you, would love to hear what's working. I'm trying to rebuild a pipeline that doesn't run through these platforms. I'm a bit lost.
Stay safe.
Front-end dev here. Most of my client work is landing pages, marketing sites and mini-apps across HTML/CSS/JS and I kept rebuilding the same five components (popups, countdowns, comparison tables, etc.) on every project.
So I built yuzool.com/widgets - a local-first widget studio where you can build, preview, and export embeddable widgets. Drops into any stack (plugin for WP, Squarespace, Webflow, HTML sites etc). Free to try, no signup, your edits stay in your browser.
Would love feedback from anyone here who works with clients across multiple platforms and builds many projects. What's missing? What would you actually use? What would make you pay for it?
(And honest aside: I'm taking on client work this month if anyone needs front-end help. But mostly here for the feedback.)
TBH I'm fed up of being scammed on job hunting websites (Upwork and Dribbble) so I just coded these in CSS to pass the time.
https://reddit.com/link/1tan8j1/video/x9u61tu92m0h1/player
Gooey blog trail or cursor embers are my favorite.
Might make another one tomorrow as I wait for job offers to flood my inbox.
Looking for 10 Mac users to test my new macOS app, and send blunt feedback on bugs, UX issues, and quirks.
DM me your Mac model, macOS version, and email provider if you want in.
Appreciate you.
Is Kickstarter a good place to post a software project to get some backing during development? I'm making a productivity email app and want to valid the market but also get some presales to justify the development time needed to get to market. I can't seem to find a site where it's possible to do this. I launched on my site but of course there's little benefit to that as I don't have enough traffic yet.
TLDR - is Kickstarter a suitable place for software / apps?