I designed an APP!

Often, when you think of something you'd like to do, to track, to know, there's an app for that. Except when there's not. But now there can be - when you can make it yourself! Not every app is designed to work for every person. We all have very specific needs and wants, and quite often there's a pretty good app that we're using for something, but it's not quite perfect. We find ourselves thinking, it's ok but I wish it could do "this".

I was walking home from dropping my kids off at school one morning, and I was writing in my tasks app which came with the phone, which was "ok", but as I was trying to organise my lists so that they made sense to me but were still clear to look at and not overwhelming I found myself wondering "how hard can it be to design my own?" Cue a few hours on youtube watching app developers describe code, and the subscriptions they use to create professional apps (pricey!), and then I watched one video which was aimed at total beginners. He said not to go in straight away learning to code from scratch, he recommended a couple of websites which will design your own app for you via describing it to AI. A couple of these require you to sign up to a free trial, but one (endearingly called Lovable) lets you have a free account with 5 free prompts every day, which if you're careful you can easily use to create simple apps. One I created in a day, the other I had to use 2 days worth of credits, but it is SO COOL!

The apps do publish on a web page, not the APP store yet as I think that requires a big guns membership, but once you have the web page open on your phone you click on the share button, and scroll down until you see add to home screen. Then leave it selected as "open as web app" and it will appear and work as any other app!

So, I would love it if you feel like giving mine a try, but I totally encourage you to make your own. My first app, Tinker https://todo-palette-party.lovable.app/ is a simple lists application - you can make new lists, colour code and label them, reorder them in order of importance, and view different lists at a time if you just want to focus on one. This is where I keep my Christmas list! (Which I can also hide from view at any time in case it feels too soon)

My second app is called Habbi https://habbihabits.lovable.app/ and this is a super cute simple tracker application. You can track whatever you want, it has cute little icons and a daily, weekly and monthly view.

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Let me know what you think, and if you have any ideas for improvement as they are extremely easy to update (as long as I have enough free credits). And enjoy creating your own apps! xx