If you've been following my month of marketing posts for Elite Hoops, then you've seen that I've been working on a free tool to boost my mailing list. They get a practice plan by dropping an email. That project is live now if you wanna check it out! elitehoopsapp.com/tools/thomp...

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It may have taken a few years, but I stumbled upon the first organic post about Elite Hoops on Reddit. Fun moment for me! www.reddit.com/r/basketbal...

Just a Sketch appreciation post. I use it for every single blog post I make at the 9-5 and my own stuff. A fantastic feeling Mac app.

Real talk - how do you respond to support emails about feature requests you don’t ever plan on doing? I’ve been running into this with Elite Hoops more lately, and I haven’t found the best verbage yet.

This is kinda of how I'm looking at my month of marketing. Hiring an agency really helps, because now someone else is going to handle UGC stuff. I think I'm going to learn into the "Free Tools" type of marketing, since those have done well for me previously.

All I want for Christmas is for Apple to use the promo art they asked for :-(

📈 Month of Marketing 📈 For the next 30 days straight, I am going to close Xcode and focus only on marketing for Elite Hoops. I'll keep an updated, running journal here at this post - which I'll try to update at the end of each day : www.swiftjectivec.com/A-Month-of-...

I'm looking to get back on the conference circuit a bit next year 🎤 At Superwall, we're also looking to sponsor a few as well. So if the combo of a perennially tired dad as a speaker along with Superwall as a sponsor sounds great to you, hit me up!

I just merged tons of community additions to the SwiftUI Backports project. Go update to 1.0.4 today: - A lot of tab bar APIs added - Toolbar additions (so glad someone figured out how to do this, I couldn't) - And more Grab it here: github.com/superwall/i...

✍️ New Post ✍️ Tips on using String(localized:), and what I used to translate Elite Soccer Club to 3 languages in a few days: - Cursor+Claude - String Catalogs - Xcode's (awesome!) on-device model for comment generation - ButterKit - Superwall's paywall translations

✍️ New Post ✍️ My guidelines for creating custom controls: Learnable Memorable Accessible www.swiftjectivec.com/Creating-Cu...

Apple just approved a big update to Alyx ☕️☕️☕️ - Add your own custom drinks - Sync with iCloud - Set your own measurement unit - SNES box art in settings (ofc critical) 👯‍♂️ - Lots more Go snag it! itunes.apple.com/us/app/id64...

I couldn't let the custom Alyx SNES box art go to waste. To the settings footer it goes. #ThankYouForPlaying

I often forget this, but you can use a gradient with .foregroundStyle and SF Symbols. That's how I have the multi-colored one here: ``` Image(systemName: "yourSymbol") .foregroundStyle(Gradient(colors: [.purple, .red, .blue]) ```

✍️ New Post ✍️ A tiny snippet showing how to make interactive snippet shortcuts, like Alyx uses prominently: www.swiftjectivec.com/Create-Inte...

#1 thing I heard was people wanted more direction for choosing a caffeine limit. I think I finally got it right. Ended up writing my own scroll edge effect...effect. Worth it though ✨

I recorded a loom with sunglasses on in two minutes to demo Alyx and somehow ended up at #10 on Product Hunt today. If you'd like to join the indie cause: www.producthunt.com/products/aly...

One dumb idea I had (have?) for Alyx was for a chat room to open up once a day so we could all just vibe and talk about what coffee we are drinking. Definitely a mission-critical feature, I know.

🚨 Alyx is now LIVE 🚨 The silliest way to track caffeine, with all of iOS 26's bells & whistles. Scan stuff with Visual Look Up, use interactive Shortcuts, and tons more. Since I'm terrible at making videos, I had SNES-style box art commissioned for it instead 😄🕹️☕️ itunes.apple.com/us/app/id647...

Tomorrow is the day, Alyx officials launches 🚀 Here's hoping all this hustle this summer was worth it. As a pre-launch final video, on the splash page - you can actually tap and fidget with all of the little tiles 🪀

I have no reviews to put on Alyx's paywall at launch, so.... I made reviews from my own real-world experiences 🤭

One of my favorite lil animations in Alyx is the bobble on the paywall. I never really thought to use .brightness() in animation, but it gives it a nice pop and shine.

🎉 Alyx is approved and is launching Monday 🎉 - Visual Intelligence to scan to log drinks - Interactive widgets - Liquid Glass design-first If any press are looking to cover iOS 26's core features, definitely check out the press kit I made 🙏 alyxcaffeinetracker.com/ios-26/

I added AlarmKit support a day before uploads because if you can't get notified when to have your last sip of caffeine then this app is definitely worthless A

On Upload Eve™️, if you find yourself wanting to use unique dark and light mode icons with Icon Composer, then I hope this blog post finds you well: www.swiftjectivec.com/How-To-Make...

📸 Visual Lookup 2.0 in Alyx 📸 I rebuilt the Visual Lookup integration from the ground up. Now it can recognize most drinks and fetch their caffeine content, it's no longer limited to pre-defined app entities. Here's my test run at Target 🤘

Golly, really happy with how logging caffeine with Foundation Models turned out from a UX perspective. It's so fun I just keep using it even when I don't need it 🤓

In dark mode, Alyx's Liquid Glass icon dons a sleep mask. Because why not. I just feel like it's a thing it should do 💤

In the latest build of Alyx, the closer you get to your caffeine limit the more red the gradient blobs in the UI become 🔺Alyx

🎨 I settled on four themes for launch, and I am proud to announce that Alyx is home to... Cupercinno! California's favorite exclusive color way that I completely made up. It's a crisp dark orange, harkening back to the region's distinct, bold cappuccinos ☕️

☕️ My hall of fame numbies for 2025 in Alyx ☕️ Curious if any of you noobs have me beat???

The feedback from the beta has been great, some really great suggestions. Thank you all so much! Themes coming in the next build later tonight🤘

How about caffeine intake compared to your daily limit expressed as a Github-style chart? Why the heck not! Now live in the beta if you have #iOS26 ☕️ * You can also scrub over it to see each day, which was a lot of fun to get working.

Every indie knows an effective launch starts with Costco Marketing ™️

I wasn't able to find a UI for this sleep analysis for launch, but it's super useful!A If you're on the Alyx beta, check it out in Shortcuts. In fact, there is a lot more you can do in Shortcuts than you can even do in the app itself.

⚡️Log caffeine using Apple Intelligence Not sure how much caffeine something has? Just describe it, put a rough size estimate and done! This was super fun to make, Foundation Models rocks.

✍️ New Post ✍️ A short ode to `OpenIntent` in iOS 26: www.swiftjectivec.com/Open-Intent...

Mapping the espresso picker Shortcut --> Action Button is undefeated for me 👌

😴 Introducing Sleep Forecast 💤 How much caffeine will be coursing through your veins at bedtime? How many minutes (or hours if you're feeling crazy) do you stand to lose based on historical data? Live in the latest build of Alyx for #iOS26 ✨

Yooooo!!! This might be the coolest #iOS26 API yet, Alyx integrates with Visual Lookup 😍!!! Log stuff by pointing your phone at it!

☕️ Alyx for iOS 26 Test Flight ☕️ A brand new caffeine tracking app built entirely around app intents. Liquid glass-first design. Interactive snippets! Foundation models! If you're press looking for an #iOS26 centric app, please DM or reach out! I'd love for you to try it.

Alyx has several Liquid Glass touches, really dig how the chart annotations look in dark mode 😍

Been one of those days ☕️☕️☕️☕️

📉 Caffeine Burn down Chart Widgets 🔥 A mainstay on my own HomeScreen for about a year now, excited to ship it. Also available in App Intent, Shortcuts and in-app flavors, too.

Thanks to iOS 26 App Intent APIs, I can let people: ☕️Choose their espresso shots and log it 🔄 Undo it 🥤Or select another drink 🤘and so on until they're happy - all in the same intent! Can't wait to ship this 🤩

✍️ New Post ✍️ The Business and the Boutique: Elite Hoops as a biz, Alyx as a muse. www.swiftjectivec.com/The-Busines...

Wow, nostalgia blast this morning. My son found my old notebook from college where I scattered out notes for the first version of Spend Stack. Back then, the app names ending in "R" were a thing.

Trying out Alyx's prominent shortcut is part of the onboarding. It turned out fun 🤩