gjNotes, my fifth iOS App, is my fourth app released on the App Store.
I started work on gjNotes back in April 2021 when I was still working on gjLists but was distracted by the ‘new shiny’ of SwiftUI. I already had the idea for an app that would allow me to make simple plain text notes (as well as making lists, I like jotting things down in ‘scratch’ notes) and decided this would be an ideal candidate for my first SwiftUI app. SwiftUI makes creating list/table view based apps so simple compared to UIKit that it wasn’t long before I had a MVP.
I’m a big fan of Quick Draft and use it regularly to jot down info on my Mac that sychronises with my iPhone and vice versa. I had experience of synchronising data across devices using iCloud and CloudKit in gjLists and spent the next few weeks researching and implementing iCloud synchronisation in SwiftUI. This turned out to be surprisingly straightforward, and it wasn’t long before I had an app that had all the basic functionality I wanted.
Now came the hard bit, adding the ‘spit and polish’. The first 80% was relatively simple, it’s the last 20% that bites you in the bum. Whilst supposedly working on gjLists, I spent way too much time adding the final touches to gjNotes. Often I would come across showstoppers that were due to the limitations of the current release of SwiftUI and had to pause development. Eventually, with the release of iOS 16.0, I was able to complete all the functionality I wanted for the first release of gjNotes.
And, finally, here it is, v2022.1 the first release of gjNotes. A simple, plain text, note taking app that synchronises across your iCloud devices. As with all of my apps, it does what I need it to do. Hopefully it will prove useful to you.
If you want to create plain text notes that synchronise over your iCloud devices, give gjNotes a try. It’s free and there are no ads. Fabulous! You can download it from the App Store using the link below.
