Bridges for iPad
It’s been a while since I did a post about my link formatting app Bridges. I wanted to talk about where it is in development and what I’m working on next. It’s been in TestFlight longer than I thought but I have a plan to launch soon.
Bridges aims to be a fun utility app for people composing links for podcast show notes or blog posts. With Bridges you have an easy way to save formatted links from the share sheet or enter them manually. You can copy them to your clipboard in a few taps as: Hyperlinks, Markdown, HTML, JSON, or the raw URL. Your links are saved in folders you make and you can categorize your folders into different sections in the app.
The first phase was building out the base features for an iPhone app. I wanted to focus on the biggest platform and build from there. I was initially planning on shipping 1.0 with just the iPhone app. But one day I challenged myself to make an iPad version since lots of the code could be shared. After some work I got the iPad version working with a three column layout. Then I changed the backend to use iCloud to sync the links together so you will have them up to date no matter what platform your on.
The number of people in the TestFlight is in the hundreds. Its a lot more people than I initially thought I would get to try the app. But because there is an iPad version of the app now I wanted to see if I can get more people on the TestFlight and check out the app. So if Bridges seems intriguing definitely join the beta.
In its current TestFlight build Bridges works on iPhone and iPad with iCloud sync. I think its at a good point now where I can start preparing for a 1.0 release. I have written this here before on the blog but I feel much better about where its at. It is still not done but I am starting to think about polishing the experience and setting up the business model.
Since its a utility app that I think people will use multiple times a subscription makes sense. When the app is installed it is created with 2 folders already made to help users see what the app does. From there you can delete them or make new ones. For the app I want it to be free to download but it needs to have a limit for when users need to subscribe. So I think if I set the limit to 5 folders before you pay then people can try the app but then pay if they enjoy using it. Business model and pricing is always something that can be changed but I think this could be a good approach. I would plan to offer a monthly and yearly subscription.
I have a long list of other features and things I want to build for the app. But rather than do all of those I need to focus on shipping what I have. To polish the experience and squash some bugs before its submitted to Apple. It is too close to iOS 17’s release to ship it before then. But I am trying to prep the app now and all of the other things that come with releasing an app as an indie developer.
If you have used the app and enjoy it let me know feedback@bridgesapp.app. And if you find any bugs or have feedback that would be appreciated as well.
