https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo 2026-05-08 07:14:44 -0400 Apple Watch as a capture device. For a five-second idea you'd lose reaching for your phone, the wrist is the smaller, faster surface: open the memo app from the watchOS Smart Stack and send to your own email in as few as 2 taps. Vol. 12 of the Solo iOS Growth Diary is a solo iOS developer's honest field guide to micro-write capture on the Apple Watch — what it does well, what watchOS refuses to let it do, and why retention lives in the inbox, not on the watch face. What's inside: why capture latency, not storage, is the real bottleneck for a memo app; the wrist input menu (watchOS dictation, Scribble, and the onscreen keyboard — excluded on Apple Watch SE and Series 6); the Smart Stack and complications as one-tap launch surfaces; and how watchOS 26 gestures (Wrist Flick, plus Double Tap since watchOS 10.1) make the Watch one-handed but still can't type. A six-row comparison table weighs the Apple Watch against the iPhone as capture devices — launch speed, offline behavior, best memo length, and destination. The deck is built to be argued with: five anti-thesis questions answered in the open ("Watch apps don't retain," "just add auto-dictation," "why not a full keyboard," "isn't it a gimmick that needs cellular?"), a 7-step playbook, a 10-point audit, and an honest scoreboard printed against this series' own numbers — about 36 lifetime views across 11 volumes and 0 stars, with Watch-capture retention left explicitly unmeasured rather than guessed. The centerpiece is an honest limitation: on watchOS there is no public API to auto-start dictation on launch — it begins only when the user taps the mic. That has been true system-wide since watchOS 8 (the note app Drafts lost the same ability then), and it applies to every third-party Watch app. The iPhone app, by contrast, does auto-start voice on launch. It also traces a three-tier wrist-to-vault pipeline: a memo dictated on the Watch is sent to your own email and, for Advanced Mode users, appended to an Obsidian daily note by the iPhone — never by the Watch directly. Fair print: that append is iPhone-only, assumes an iCloud-Drive vault and the yyyy-MM-dd.md daily-note convention, and iCloud can take a few seconds to reflect. Requirements: iOS 16.0+ and watchOS 26.5+, with a self-send email registered on the iPhone first. Simple Memo is an independent app by YURIKA, K.K. — not an official Obsidian app — released as version 3.9 "Apple Watch support" in 2026. References: - Apple Watch capture, and the honest watchOS limit: https://simplememofast.com/en/apple-watch/ - App Store (English channel): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6758438948?ct=apple-watch-en&mt=8 Follow the series: - Speaker Deck: https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo - X: https://x.com/simplememofast New deck every Tuesday, 22:00 JST. Next — Vol. 13: Year One in Numbers (the finale). Apple Watch as a capture device. For a five-second idea you'd lose reaching for your phone, the wrist is the smaller, faster surface: open the memo app from the watchOS Smart Stack and send to your own email in as few as 2 taps. Vol. 12 of the Solo iOS Growth Diary is a solo iOS developer's honest field guide to micro-write capture on the Apple Watch — what it does well, what watchOS refuses to let it do, and why retention lives in the inbox, not on the watch face. What's inside: why capture latency, not storage, is the real bottleneck for a memo app; the wrist input menu (watchOS dictation, Scribble, and the onscreen keyboard — excluded on Apple Watch SE and Series 6); the Smart Stack and complications as one-tap launch surfaces; and how watchOS 26 gestures (Wrist Flick, plus Double Tap since watchOS 10.1) make the Watch one-handed but still can't type. A six-row comparison table weighs the Apple Watch against the iPhone as capture devices — launch speed, offline behavior, best memo length, and destination. The deck is built to be argued with: five anti-thesis questions answered in the open ("Watch apps don't retain," "just add auto-dictation," "why not a full keyboard," "isn't it a gimmick that needs cellular?"), a 7-step playbook, a 10-point audit, and an honest scoreboard printed against this series' own numbers — about 36 lifetime views across 11 volumes and 0 stars, with Watch-capture retention left explicitly unmeasured rather than guessed. The centerpiece is an honest limitation: on watchOS there is no public API to auto-start dictation on launch — it begins only when the user taps the mic. That has been true system-wide since watchOS 8 (the note app Drafts lost the same ability then), and it applies to every third-party Watch app. The iPhone app, by contrast, does auto-start voice on launch. It also traces a three-tier wrist-to-vault pipeline: a memo dictated on the Watch is sent to your own email and, for Advanced Mode users, appended to an Obsidian daily note by the iPhone — never by the Watch directly. Fair print: that append is iPhone-only, assumes an iCloud-Drive vault and the yyyy-MM-dd.md daily-note convention, and iCloud can take a few seconds to reflect. Requirements: iOS 16.0+ and watchOS 26.5+, with a self-send email registered on the iPhone first. Simple Memo is an independent app by YURIKA, K.K. — not an official Obsidian app — released as version 3.9 "Apple Watch support" in 2026. References: - Apple Watch capture, and the honest watchOS limit: https://simplememofast.com/en/apple-watch/ - App Store (English channel): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6758438948?ct=apple-watch-en&mt=8 Follow the series: - Speaker Deck: https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo - X: https://x.com/simplememofast New deck every Tuesday, 22:00 JST. Next — Vol. 13: Year One in Numbers (the finale). Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400 https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-12-apple-watch-as-a-capture-device-micro-write-retention https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-12-apple-watch-as-a-capture-device-micro-write-retention The share sheet is distribution. For a solo iOS developer with no ad budget, growth doesn't live in a paid user-acquisition auction — it lives in the system surfaces Apple already shipped inside every other app: the iOS Share Sheet, App Intents and the Shortcuts app, and the custom keyboard. Vol. 11 of the Solo iOS Growth Diary maps those surfaces end to end. What's inside: why paid growth inverts for a free-core memo app (published 2025 iOS CPI benchmarks run about $3.13 for productivity and $4.70 overall, versus $0 for an owned surface); how a Share Extension declares what it accepts with NSExtensionActivationRule and hands data to your app through an App Group; how App Intents — shipped in iOS 16 and extended in iOS 26 with 25+ new Shortcuts actions and a "Use Model" step — turn one function into a Siri phrase, a Spotlight result, and a Shortcuts action; and what a custom keyboard (UIInputViewController, RequestsOpenAccess) can and cannot do: no microphone, no text selection, disabled in secure fields. The deck is built to be argued with: a comparison table (build-your-own UI vs the system surface), four anti-thesis questions, a 7-step playbook, a 10-point audit, and an honest scoreboard printed against this series' own numbers — about 30 lifetime views across 10 volumes, 0 stars — because a platform with no share sheet of its own doesn't distribute for you. A worked example weighs two ways to get a memo into a vault: the general iOS Shortcuts Obsidian route (an obsidian:// URL via the Advanced URI plugin, which round-trips through the app) versus a no-plugin background append. Fair print: the background route is iPhone-only, assumes an iCloud-Drive vault and the yyyy-MM-dd.md daily-note convention, and iCloud can take a few seconds to reflect a write. References: - Feature background: https://simplememofast.com/obsidian/ - App Store (English channel): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/captio-style-simple-memo/id6758438948?ct=obsidian-en&mt=8 Follow the series: - Speaker Deck: https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo - X: https://x.com/simplememofast New deck every Tuesday, 22:00 JST. Next — Vol. 12: Apple Watch As A Capture Device. The share sheet is distribution. For a solo iOS developer with no ad budget, growth doesn't live in a paid user-acquisition auction — it lives in the system surfaces Apple already shipped inside every other app: the iOS Share Sheet, App Intents and the Shortcuts app, and the custom keyboard. Vol. 11 of the Solo iOS Growth Diary maps those surfaces end to end. What's inside: why paid growth inverts for a free-core memo app (published 2025 iOS CPI benchmarks run about $3.13 for productivity and $4.70 overall, versus $0 for an owned surface); how a Share Extension declares what it accepts with NSExtensionActivationRule and hands data to your app through an App Group; how App Intents — shipped in iOS 16 and extended in iOS 26 with 25+ new Shortcuts actions and a "Use Model" step — turn one function into a Siri phrase, a Spotlight result, and a Shortcuts action; and what a custom keyboard (UIInputViewController, RequestsOpenAccess) can and cannot do: no microphone, no text selection, disabled in secure fields. The deck is built to be argued with: a comparison table (build-your-own UI vs the system surface), four anti-thesis questions, a 7-step playbook, a 10-point audit, and an honest scoreboard printed against this series' own numbers — about 30 lifetime views across 10 volumes, 0 stars — because a platform with no share sheet of its own doesn't distribute for you. A worked example weighs two ways to get a memo into a vault: the general iOS Shortcuts Obsidian route (an obsidian:// URL via the Advanced URI plugin, which round-trips through the app) versus a no-plugin background append. Fair print: the background route is iPhone-only, assumes an iCloud-Drive vault and the yyyy-MM-dd.md daily-note convention, and iCloud can take a few seconds to reflect a write. References: - Feature background: https://simplememofast.com/obsidian/ - App Store (English channel): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/captio-style-simple-memo/id6758438948?ct=obsidian-en&mt=8 Follow the series: - Speaker Deck: https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo - X: https://x.com/simplememofast New deck every Tuesday, 22:00 JST. Next — Vol. 12: Apple Watch As A Capture Device. Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400 https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-11-the-share-sheet-is-distribution-ios-shortcuts-keyboard-share https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-11-the-share-sheet-is-distribution-ios-shortcuts-keyboard-share Most onboarding is a tax the user pays before receiving anything. Vol. 10 of Solo iOS Growth Diary argues that the first screen of a memo app should be a cursor, and that the only activation number worth optimising is time-to-first-write (TTFW). This deck is a field report from a solo iOS developer building SimpleMemo, a Captio-style zero-tap memo app that sends an encrypted memo to your own inbox. It covers what happened when we broke our own rule: on 2025-08-14 we put a 7-day trial in front of the first memo, and activation fell 41%. We reverted it in a week. That number, not a design opinion, is the argument. Inside: - TTFW defined and instrumented — an os_signpost at main(), one at the first committed character, a median and a p90. About 30 lines. - The tap-tax ledger: a typical 2026 memo app charges 9 taps and 4 screens before a single word is written. The target is 0. - What Apple actually requires at first launch. The Human Interface Guidelines ask for a streamlined launch and for permission requests to be delayed; App Store Review Guideline 5.1.1(v) forbids forced registration for non-account-based features, and is a high-volume rejection pattern in 2026; Guideline 4.8 (Login Services) is moot if, like SimpleMemo, you ship zero accounts. - Permission prompts: published iOS notification opt-in benchmarks disagree by roughly 12 points (Airship 2026 ~54%, Pushwoosh 2025 ~56.4%, MobiLoud 2026 ~43.9%). The spread is the lesson — you get one prompt, so do not spend it on a stranger. - Two lanes: a zero-tap default plus an Advanced Mode / opt-in tier, where depth (including an optional append to an Obsidian daily note on iCloud Drive) stays invisible to the user who never asked for it. Fair print included: iPhone-only, iCloud reflection lag, daily-note naming assumptions. - A comparison table (standard onboarding stack vs Onboarding-Zero), a 7-step playbook, a 10-point first-launch audit, and four counter-arguments answered in the open, including "don't tutorials reduce churn?" and "doesn't an account improve retention?". - An honest scoreboard, including where this design still costs us: weak feature discovery, no push channel, blunt attribution, and an empty screen that intimidates some people. Keywords: iOS onboarding UX, friction-free signup, time to first value, app activation metric, SwiftUI FocusState, os_signpost, permission priming, App Store Review Guideline 5.1.1(v). Next week, Vol. 11: The Share Sheet Is Distribution. Follow the series: https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo and https://x.com/simplememofast References: Apple Human Interface Guidelines (Launching, Onboarding) — https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/launching · App Store Review Guidelines — https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ · Airship Mobile Push Benchmarks 2026 · Pushwoosh 2025 benchmark (600+ apps) · The opt-in vault destination described on slide 18 — https://simplememofast.com/obsidian/ Most onboarding is a tax the user pays before receiving anything. Vol. 10 of Solo iOS Growth Diary argues that the first screen of a memo app should be a cursor, and that the only activation number worth optimising is time-to-first-write (TTFW). This deck is a field report from a solo iOS developer building SimpleMemo, a Captio-style zero-tap memo app that sends an encrypted memo to your own inbox. It covers what happened when we broke our own rule: on 2025-08-14 we put a 7-day trial in front of the first memo, and activation fell 41%. We reverted it in a week. That number, not a design opinion, is the argument. Inside: - TTFW defined and instrumented — an os_signpost at main(), one at the first committed character, a median and a p90. About 30 lines. - The tap-tax ledger: a typical 2026 memo app charges 9 taps and 4 screens before a single word is written. The target is 0. - What Apple actually requires at first launch. The Human Interface Guidelines ask for a streamlined launch and for permission requests to be delayed; App Store Review Guideline 5.1.1(v) forbids forced registration for non-account-based features, and is a high-volume rejection pattern in 2026; Guideline 4.8 (Login Services) is moot if, like SimpleMemo, you ship zero accounts. - Permission prompts: published iOS notification opt-in benchmarks disagree by roughly 12 points (Airship 2026 ~54%, Pushwoosh 2025 ~56.4%, MobiLoud 2026 ~43.9%). The spread is the lesson — you get one prompt, so do not spend it on a stranger. - Two lanes: a zero-tap default plus an Advanced Mode / opt-in tier, where depth (including an optional append to an Obsidian daily note on iCloud Drive) stays invisible to the user who never asked for it. Fair print included: iPhone-only, iCloud reflection lag, daily-note naming assumptions. - A comparison table (standard onboarding stack vs Onboarding-Zero), a 7-step playbook, a 10-point first-launch audit, and four counter-arguments answered in the open, including "don't tutorials reduce churn?" and "doesn't an account improve retention?". - An honest scoreboard, including where this design still costs us: weak feature discovery, no push channel, blunt attribution, and an empty screen that intimidates some people. Keywords: iOS onboarding UX, friction-free signup, time to first value, app activation metric, SwiftUI FocusState, os_signpost, permission priming, App Store Review Guideline 5.1.1(v). Next week, Vol. 11: The Share Sheet Is Distribution. Follow the series: https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo and https://x.com/simplememofast References: Apple Human Interface Guidelines (Launching, Onboarding) — https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/launching · App Store Review Guidelines — https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ · Airship Mobile Push Benchmarks 2026 · Pushwoosh 2025 benchmark (600+ apps) · The opt-in vault destination described on slide 18 — https://simplememofast.com/obsidian/ Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400 https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-10-onboarding-zero-the-0-tap-first-write-principle https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-10-onboarding-zero-the-0-tap-first-write-principle StoreKit 2 makes in-app purchases easy; the hard call is what to charge for. Vol. 9 of Solo iOS Growth Diary argues the opposite: keep the core loop free forever and charge only for invisible upgrades — the plumbing power users value. Inside: the Invisible-Upgrade test (zero UI cost to free users, deep value to a power cohort, never a privacy or security essential), a Free / Pro ($9.99/yr or $0.99/mo) / $24.99 lifetime tier design, and the 2026 commission board — 30% standard, 15% after a subscriber's first retained year, and 15% from day one under the App Store Small Business Program (the solo-dev default under $1M in proceeds). StoreKit 2 in ~180 lines of Swift: Product.products(for:), purchase(), VerificationResult (JWS verified on-device), and Transaction.currentEntitlements plus Transaction.updates as the single source of truth — because a cached Bool lies after a refund. Anti-thesis for every claim: "Free + ads beats a subscription" (ads tax the 3-second capture loop and break the privacy promise from Vol. 5), "Paywall the core loop" (gating the first write cut activation 41% in a week — never meter the loop that earns trust), and "Skip subscriptions, sell a lifetime unlock" (a service with ongoing cost can't be funded once; StoreKit 2 makes subscriptions low-friction, and a lifetime price is an honest complement, not the only door). The clearest "price the invisible" example is Advanced Mode: an opt-in integration that appends every sent memo to a daily note in your Obsidian vault on iCloud Drive with zero change to the free zero-tap loop (iPhone-only; you gate the integration, never the encryption — the AES-GCM email path stays free). From production: 3.4% free-to-Pro conversion, 34% of 7-day trials convert, 61% annual retention, 1.8% refunds, and $0 of gated core-loop revenue (we never did). Part of Solo iOS Growth Diary — a new deck every Tuesday 22:00 JST. Keywords: storekit 2 pricing, ios subscription, app store small business program, in-app purchase swift, Transaction currentEntitlements, pro tier pricing, free trial conversion, Advanced Mode tier, Captio. Follow: speakerdeck.com/simplememo · x.com/simplememofast References: simplememofast.com/obsidian/ · apps.apple.com/us/app/captio-style-simple-memo/id6758438948?ct=obsidian-en&mt=8 StoreKit 2 makes in-app purchases easy; the hard call is what to charge for. Vol. 9 of Solo iOS Growth Diary argues the opposite: keep the core loop free forever and charge only for invisible upgrades — the plumbing power users value. Inside: the Invisible-Upgrade test (zero UI cost to free users, deep value to a power cohort, never a privacy or security essential), a Free / Pro ($9.99/yr or $0.99/mo) / $24.99 lifetime tier design, and the 2026 commission board — 30% standard, 15% after a subscriber's first retained year, and 15% from day one under the App Store Small Business Program (the solo-dev default under $1M in proceeds). StoreKit 2 in ~180 lines of Swift: Product.products(for:), purchase(), VerificationResult (JWS verified on-device), and Transaction.currentEntitlements plus Transaction.updates as the single source of truth — because a cached Bool lies after a refund. Anti-thesis for every claim: "Free + ads beats a subscription" (ads tax the 3-second capture loop and break the privacy promise from Vol. 5), "Paywall the core loop" (gating the first write cut activation 41% in a week — never meter the loop that earns trust), and "Skip subscriptions, sell a lifetime unlock" (a service with ongoing cost can't be funded once; StoreKit 2 makes subscriptions low-friction, and a lifetime price is an honest complement, not the only door). The clearest "price the invisible" example is Advanced Mode: an opt-in integration that appends every sent memo to a daily note in your Obsidian vault on iCloud Drive with zero change to the free zero-tap loop (iPhone-only; you gate the integration, never the encryption — the AES-GCM email path stays free). From production: 3.4% free-to-Pro conversion, 34% of 7-day trials convert, 61% annual retention, 1.8% refunds, and $0 of gated core-loop revenue (we never did). Part of Solo iOS Growth Diary — a new deck every Tuesday 22:00 JST. Keywords: storekit 2 pricing, ios subscription, app store small business program, in-app purchase swift, Transaction currentEntitlements, pro tier pricing, free trial conversion, Advanced Mode tier, Captio. Follow: speakerdeck.com/simplememo · x.com/simplememofast References: simplememofast.com/obsidian/ · apps.apple.com/us/app/captio-style-simple-memo/id6758438948?ct=obsidian-en&mt=8 Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400 https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-9-pricing-a-pro-tier-storekit-2-lessons-in-2026 https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-9-pricing-a-pro-tier-storekit-2-lessons-in-2026 When an app dies, its users don't. Vol. 8 of Solo iOS Growth Diary is a field guide to converting orphaned users — app refugees — by speaking the dead app's language first, then fixing whatever killed it. The canonical case is Captio, the one-tap "email yourself" app whose cloud service was discontinued on October 1, 2024 after about 14 years; "captio alternative" and "captio replacement" are now real, uncontested search intent. The graveyard is full of cohorts left without a home: Google Reader (shut July 1, 2013 — Feedly grew from 4 million to 12 million users, +500,000 in the first 48 hours, by cloning the Reader API and importing feeds in one click); Mailbox (shut by Dropbox on February 26, 2016); Vesper, Q Branch's elegant notes app (sync off August 30, 2016, with a plain-text and image export); and Wunderlist (retired by Microsoft on May 6, 2020 and handed to Microsoft To Do via a built-in importer). Captio sent 2.3 million emails in its final year alone — the intent pool is measurably alive. Every refugee carries three things — vocabulary, data, and muscle memory — and you have to honor all three: say their words ("email yourself," "one tap") on the product page; build a real import on-ramp that accepts the dead app's export (plain text, CSV, JSON); and preserve the one defining gesture instead of redesigning the reflex. Then remove the single point of failure that orphaned them in the first place — Captio died with the Gmail API; the durable replacements are email-as-sync, an append-only Outbox, and on-device AES-GCM encryption. Orphaned cohorts split into hard refugees (the app died) and soft refugees who fled complexity or pricing — the Evernote exodus, Notion fatigue, and capture-first PKM users. For that cohort, a sent memo can also land as a timestamped line in an Obsidian daily note — capture on iPhone, organize in the vault (iPhone-only today; assumes a daily-note or Inbox convention). Anti-thesis for every claim: "Generic onboarding works" (a five-screen tour insults a returning expert who is rebuilding a habit, not learning a category), "refugees are disloyal — they'll churn again" (they were left, not fickle; involuntary migrants are stickier, and our refugee cohort retains about 49% at 30 days versus about 41% overall), and "just clone the dead app exactly" (cloning earns recognition but inherits the fragility that killed it — a clone is the next shutdown, rescheduled). Honest scoreboard: about 23% of installs come from dead-app "alternative" queries, about 58% of refugees write within 24 hours, refugee 30-day retention about 49% versus about 41% baseline — and 0 automated importers shipped so far, the gap we're printing on purpose. Part of the Solo iOS Growth Diary series — a new deck every Tuesday 22:00 JST. Keywords: app community migration, captio replacement, app refugees, orphaned users, note to self app alternative, converting discontinued app users, indie ios growth. Follow: speakerdeck.com/simplememo · x.com/simplememofast Reference: apps.apple.com/us/app/captio-style-simple-memo/id6758438948?ct=obsidian-en&mt=8 When an app dies, its users don't. Vol. 8 of Solo iOS Growth Diary is a field guide to converting orphaned users — app refugees — by speaking the dead app's language first, then fixing whatever killed it. The canonical case is Captio, the one-tap "email yourself" app whose cloud service was discontinued on October 1, 2024 after about 14 years; "captio alternative" and "captio replacement" are now real, uncontested search intent. The graveyard is full of cohorts left without a home: Google Reader (shut July 1, 2013 — Feedly grew from 4 million to 12 million users, +500,000 in the first 48 hours, by cloning the Reader API and importing feeds in one click); Mailbox (shut by Dropbox on February 26, 2016); Vesper, Q Branch's elegant notes app (sync off August 30, 2016, with a plain-text and image export); and Wunderlist (retired by Microsoft on May 6, 2020 and handed to Microsoft To Do via a built-in importer). Captio sent 2.3 million emails in its final year alone — the intent pool is measurably alive. Every refugee carries three things — vocabulary, data, and muscle memory — and you have to honor all three: say their words ("email yourself," "one tap") on the product page; build a real import on-ramp that accepts the dead app's export (plain text, CSV, JSON); and preserve the one defining gesture instead of redesigning the reflex. Then remove the single point of failure that orphaned them in the first place — Captio died with the Gmail API; the durable replacements are email-as-sync, an append-only Outbox, and on-device AES-GCM encryption. Orphaned cohorts split into hard refugees (the app died) and soft refugees who fled complexity or pricing — the Evernote exodus, Notion fatigue, and capture-first PKM users. For that cohort, a sent memo can also land as a timestamped line in an Obsidian daily note — capture on iPhone, organize in the vault (iPhone-only today; assumes a daily-note or Inbox convention). Anti-thesis for every claim: "Generic onboarding works" (a five-screen tour insults a returning expert who is rebuilding a habit, not learning a category), "refugees are disloyal — they'll churn again" (they were left, not fickle; involuntary migrants are stickier, and our refugee cohort retains about 49% at 30 days versus about 41% overall), and "just clone the dead app exactly" (cloning earns recognition but inherits the fragility that killed it — a clone is the next shutdown, rescheduled). Honest scoreboard: about 23% of installs come from dead-app "alternative" queries, about 58% of refugees write within 24 hours, refugee 30-day retention about 49% versus about 41% baseline — and 0 automated importers shipped so far, the gap we're printing on purpose. Part of the Solo iOS Growth Diary series — a new deck every Tuesday 22:00 JST. Keywords: app community migration, captio replacement, app refugees, orphaned users, note to self app alternative, converting discontinued app users, indie ios growth. Follow: speakerdeck.com/simplememo · x.com/simplememofast Reference: apps.apple.com/us/app/captio-style-simple-memo/id6758438948?ct=obsidian-en&mt=8 Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0400 https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-8-from-refugees-to-renewal-converting-orphaned-users https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-8-from-refugees-to-renewal-converting-orphaned-users iOS 26 replaces SFSpeechRecognizer with SpeechAnalyzer + composable modules. A practitioner's walkthrough of wiring SpeechTranscriber to a live AVAudioEngine mic in SwiftUI, on-device — plus the traps the docs skip: you must convert the audio buffer, the language model downloads on first use, volatile vs final need different handling, there is no custom vocabulary, and SpeechAnalyzer isn't on watchOS. Latency on a warm start (iPhone 16e, iOS 26.5, time-to-first-volatile-result): ~0.3–0.5s — a first-party measurement, not a controlled benchmark. Sample code (MIT): https://github.com/simplememofast/ios26-speechanalyzer-live-mic Full write-up: https://simplememofast.com/en/blog/ios26-speechanalyzer-live-mic The pipeline ships in Simple Memo's on-device voice input: https://simplememofast.com/voice-input/ — 株式会社ユリカ / Simple Memo team iOS 26 replaces SFSpeechRecognizer with SpeechAnalyzer + composable modules. A practitioner's walkthrough of wiring SpeechTranscriber to a live AVAudioEngine mic in SwiftUI, on-device — plus the traps the docs skip: you must convert the audio buffer, the language model downloads on first use, volatile vs final need different handling, there is no custom vocabulary, and SpeechAnalyzer isn't on watchOS. Latency on a warm start (iPhone 16e, iOS 26.5, time-to-first-volatile-result): ~0.3–0.5s — a first-party measurement, not a controlled benchmark. Sample code (MIT): https://github.com/simplememofast/ios26-speechanalyzer-live-mic Full write-up: https://simplememofast.com/en/blog/ios26-speechanalyzer-live-mic The pipeline ships in Simple Memo's on-device voice input: https://simplememofast.com/voice-input/ — 株式会社ユリカ / Simple Memo team Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0400 https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-7-wiring-speechanalyzer-to-a-live-mic https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-7-wiring-speechanalyzer-to-a-live-mic App Store Optimization on a $0 ad budget. Vol. 6 of Solo iOS Growth Diary maps the 2026 keyword landscape for memo apps and shows how a solo iOS dev ranks by mining the "ghost keywords" of discontinued apps like Captio — no Apple Search Ads, no $1,000/mo tools. The 2026 App Store is a two-engine system: metadata relevance gets you considered, then behavioral quality (conversion-from-search, install velocity, ratings, retention) decides whether you stay. Apple's 2024 App Store Transparency Report counts ~1.9 billion weekly redownloads vs ~839 million new downloads — re-engagement beats acquisition more than 2:1, so retention is a ranking lever a solo dev can win on product, not spend. Ghost keywords are the no-budget edge: Captio, the one-tap "email yourself" app, shut its cloud service down on October 1, 2024, but its searchers didn't leave — "captio alternative" is now real intent with no live defender. The harvest loop: inventory the graveyard, map intent against difficulty (target volume 20–80, difficulty under 50), claim the highest-weight fields, then literally answer the query so conversion follows. Also inside: the 30 / 30 / 100 metadata surface and the keyword-field rules that actually move ranks (comma-separated, no spaces, singular forms since Apple matches plurals, no repeated words, fill all 100); why ASOTools pegs "note taking apps" at roughly volume 34 / difficulty 16 across 250+ apps; and how shipping a named feature mints a new keyword surface. Anti-thesis for every claim: "Paid UA scales faster" (it's an auction you lose on the head terms, and 2026 discounts installs that don't retain), "keywords are dead — it's all brand and AI" (stuffing is dead, the field isn't; App Store Tags are generated from your own text), and "you need a $1,000/mo tool" (Sensor Tower and AppTweak are priced for six-figure teams; ~$25/mo Appfigures plus free competitor reading covers an app running on the $99/yr developer fee). Honest scoreboard: $0 in Search Ads, $99/yr total spend, 100/100 keyword chars used, 31 keywords ranked top-10, ~62% of installs from Search, ~41% 30-day retention. Part of the 12-week Solo iOS Growth Diary — new deck every Tuesday 22:00 JST. Keywords: aso 2026, app store optimization, indie aso ios, keyword field, captio alternative, aso keyword research, app store ranking 2026, no budget app marketing. Follow: speakerdeck.com/simplememo · x.com/simplememofast Reference: apps.apple.com/us/app/captio-style-simple-memo/id6758438948?ct=sd-vol6-en&mt=8 App Store Optimization on a $0 ad budget. Vol. 6 of Solo iOS Growth Diary maps the 2026 keyword landscape for memo apps and shows how a solo iOS dev ranks by mining the "ghost keywords" of discontinued apps like Captio — no Apple Search Ads, no $1,000/mo tools. The 2026 App Store is a two-engine system: metadata relevance gets you considered, then behavioral quality (conversion-from-search, install velocity, ratings, retention) decides whether you stay. Apple's 2024 App Store Transparency Report counts ~1.9 billion weekly redownloads vs ~839 million new downloads — re-engagement beats acquisition more than 2:1, so retention is a ranking lever a solo dev can win on product, not spend. Ghost keywords are the no-budget edge: Captio, the one-tap "email yourself" app, shut its cloud service down on October 1, 2024, but its searchers didn't leave — "captio alternative" is now real intent with no live defender. The harvest loop: inventory the graveyard, map intent against difficulty (target volume 20–80, difficulty under 50), claim the highest-weight fields, then literally answer the query so conversion follows. Also inside: the 30 / 30 / 100 metadata surface and the keyword-field rules that actually move ranks (comma-separated, no spaces, singular forms since Apple matches plurals, no repeated words, fill all 100); why ASOTools pegs "note taking apps" at roughly volume 34 / difficulty 16 across 250+ apps; and how shipping a named feature mints a new keyword surface. Anti-thesis for every claim: "Paid UA scales faster" (it's an auction you lose on the head terms, and 2026 discounts installs that don't retain), "keywords are dead — it's all brand and AI" (stuffing is dead, the field isn't; App Store Tags are generated from your own text), and "you need a $1,000/mo tool" (Sensor Tower and AppTweak are priced for six-figure teams; ~$25/mo Appfigures plus free competitor reading covers an app running on the $99/yr developer fee). Honest scoreboard: $0 in Search Ads, $99/yr total spend, 100/100 keyword chars used, 31 keywords ranked top-10, ~62% of installs from Search, ~41% 30-day retention. Part of the 12-week Solo iOS Growth Diary — new deck every Tuesday 22:00 JST. Keywords: aso 2026, app store optimization, indie aso ios, keyword field, captio alternative, aso keyword research, app store ranking 2026, no budget app marketing. Follow: speakerdeck.com/simplememo · x.com/simplememofast Reference: apps.apple.com/us/app/captio-style-simple-memo/id6758438948?ct=sd-vol6-en&mt=8 Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0400 https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-6-aso-with-no-budget-keyword-landscape-for-memo-apps-in-2026 https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-6-aso-with-no-budget-keyword-landscape-for-memo-apps-in-2026 For a single-user iOS memo app, CryptoKit alone is enough to ship real end-to-end encryption — no libsodium, no key server, no rolling your own. Vol. 5 of Solo iOS Growth Diary builds AES-GCM E2E in ~187 lines of Swift. Inside: what an AEAD actually gives you (confidentiality + integrity + authenticity in one call), the SealedBox envelope (96-bit nonce ‖ ciphertext ‖ 128-bit tag), a Secure-Enclave-wrapped 256-bit SymmetricKey held in the Keychain (this-device-only, non-syncable), and the seal()/open() paths where .open() verifies the 128-bit tag before returning a single plaintext byte. Plus the one rule that matters — never reuse a (key, nonce) pair — charted against the NIST SP 800-38D 2^32 random-nonce rekey bound and real usage (~2.4M memos, zero collisions). Anti-thesis for every claim: "Roll-your-own crypto = bad" (calling a vetted AEAD is the opposite of implementing your own cipher), "You need a big crypto library" (CryptoKit covers key-gen, AES-GCM and ChaChaPoly, HKDF, and Secure Enclave wrapping; the one gap — a password KDF — is a single CommonCrypto PBKDF2 call), and "Real E2E needs key exchange" (a memo-to-self vault is single-party — symmetric, no PKI, no server). The deck also marks the encryption boundary precisely: the message key protects the email/sync path, while an optional local-only append to an Obsidian daily note on iCloud Drive stays on-device under iOS Data Protection (iPhone-only; the vault's security is the platform's, not the app's message key). Part of the 12-week Solo iOS Growth Diary — new deck every Tuesday 22:00 JST. Keywords: cryptokit aes-gcm, e2e encryption ios, ios keychain, secure enclave, aead swift, symmetrickey, authenticated encryption, nonce reuse, chachapoly, Captio. Follow: speakerdeck.com/simplememo · x.com/simplememofast References: simplememofast.com/obsidian/ · apps.apple.com/us/app/captio-style-simple-memo/id6758438948?ct=obsidian-en&mt=8 For a single-user iOS memo app, CryptoKit alone is enough to ship real end-to-end encryption — no libsodium, no key server, no rolling your own. Vol. 5 of Solo iOS Growth Diary builds AES-GCM E2E in ~187 lines of Swift. Inside: what an AEAD actually gives you (confidentiality + integrity + authenticity in one call), the SealedBox envelope (96-bit nonce ‖ ciphertext ‖ 128-bit tag), a Secure-Enclave-wrapped 256-bit SymmetricKey held in the Keychain (this-device-only, non-syncable), and the seal()/open() paths where .open() verifies the 128-bit tag before returning a single plaintext byte. Plus the one rule that matters — never reuse a (key, nonce) pair — charted against the NIST SP 800-38D 2^32 random-nonce rekey bound and real usage (~2.4M memos, zero collisions). Anti-thesis for every claim: "Roll-your-own crypto = bad" (calling a vetted AEAD is the opposite of implementing your own cipher), "You need a big crypto library" (CryptoKit covers key-gen, AES-GCM and ChaChaPoly, HKDF, and Secure Enclave wrapping; the one gap — a password KDF — is a single CommonCrypto PBKDF2 call), and "Real E2E needs key exchange" (a memo-to-self vault is single-party — symmetric, no PKI, no server). The deck also marks the encryption boundary precisely: the message key protects the email/sync path, while an optional local-only append to an Obsidian daily note on iCloud Drive stays on-device under iOS Data Protection (iPhone-only; the vault's security is the platform's, not the app's message key). Part of the 12-week Solo iOS Growth Diary — new deck every Tuesday 22:00 JST. Keywords: cryptokit aes-gcm, e2e encryption ios, ios keychain, secure enclave, aead swift, symmetrickey, authenticated encryption, nonce reuse, chachapoly, Captio. Follow: speakerdeck.com/simplememo · x.com/simplememofast References: simplememofast.com/obsidian/ · apps.apple.com/us/app/captio-style-simple-memo/id6758438948?ct=obsidian-en&mt=8 Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0400 https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-5-aes-gcm-in-200-lines-e2e-encryption-for-solo-ios-devs https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-5-aes-gcm-in-200-lines-e2e-encryption-for-solo-ios-devs Most memo apps mutate the screen first and hope the write lands. Vol. 4 of Solo iOS Growth Diary argues the opposite: an append-only Outbox beats optimistic UI every time. Persist the user's intent to a durable, local, append-only log before you touch the network or the view — then drain it. Inside: the Write Durability Score (WDS), the Outbox state machine (pending → sending → sent with a jittered backoff loop), an offline-first architecture in SQLite WAL via GRDB, a drain loop driven by NWPathMonitor + BGTaskScheduler, and UUID idempotency keys that turn at-least-once delivery into an exactly-once effect. From production: 9 ms median enqueue-to-durable, 840 ms median drain-to-sent, 3,112 rows replayed after forced-quits with 0 duplicates, 14 memos lost pre-Outbox vs 0 after — in ~214 lines of Swift. Anti-thesis for every claim: "Just use CRDTs" (a conflict a single-writer memo app never has), "Optimistic UI is good enough" (an OOM kill erases an in-memory write), and "SQLite is overkill, use a JSON file" (no atomic append, no crash-safe journal). One drain can also fan out to multiple sinks: a successful send reaches the AES-GCM email path and, for Advanced-Mode users, an append to the user's Obsidian daily note on iCloud Drive (iPhone-only; iCloud reflection can lag a few seconds). Part of the 12-week Solo iOS Growth Diary — new deck every Tuesday 22:00 JST. Keywords: offline first ios, outbox pattern swift, append-only persistence, sqlite wal ios, idempotency key, NWPathMonitor, BGTaskScheduler, GRDB, Captio, dual-sink delivery, Obsidian append. Follow: speakerdeck.com/simplememo · x.com/simplememofast References: simplememofast.com/obsidian/ · apps.apple.com/us/app/captio-style-simple-memo/id6758438948?ct=obsidian-en&mt=8 Most memo apps mutate the screen first and hope the write lands. Vol. 4 of Solo iOS Growth Diary argues the opposite: an append-only Outbox beats optimistic UI every time. Persist the user's intent to a durable, local, append-only log before you touch the network or the view — then drain it. Inside: the Write Durability Score (WDS), the Outbox state machine (pending → sending → sent with a jittered backoff loop), an offline-first architecture in SQLite WAL via GRDB, a drain loop driven by NWPathMonitor + BGTaskScheduler, and UUID idempotency keys that turn at-least-once delivery into an exactly-once effect. From production: 9 ms median enqueue-to-durable, 840 ms median drain-to-sent, 3,112 rows replayed after forced-quits with 0 duplicates, 14 memos lost pre-Outbox vs 0 after — in ~214 lines of Swift. Anti-thesis for every claim: "Just use CRDTs" (a conflict a single-writer memo app never has), "Optimistic UI is good enough" (an OOM kill erases an in-memory write), and "SQLite is overkill, use a JSON file" (no atomic append, no crash-safe journal). One drain can also fan out to multiple sinks: a successful send reaches the AES-GCM email path and, for Advanced-Mode users, an append to the user's Obsidian daily note on iCloud Drive (iPhone-only; iCloud reflection can lag a few seconds). Part of the 12-week Solo iOS Growth Diary — new deck every Tuesday 22:00 JST. Keywords: offline first ios, outbox pattern swift, append-only persistence, sqlite wal ios, idempotency key, NWPathMonitor, BGTaskScheduler, GRDB, Captio, dual-sink delivery, Obsidian append. Follow: speakerdeck.com/simplememo · x.com/simplememofast References: simplememofast.com/obsidian/ · apps.apple.com/us/app/captio-style-simple-memo/id6758438948?ct=obsidian-en&mt=8 Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0400 https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-4-the-outbox-offline-first-patterns-for-memo-apps https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-4-the-outbox-offline-first-patterns-for-memo-apps SMTP turned 44 this year. iCloud Drive turned 15. So why are we still picking the youngest sync layer for our iOS memo apps? Vol. 3 of Solo iOS Growth Diary makes the case for Email-as-Sync — the way Captio quietly did from 2010 to 2020. You'll get the Sync Layer Liability (SLL) score, three mail-first architecture patterns (Drop-Box, Mirror, Brain), OAuth gotchas across Gmail / iCloud Mail / Outlook / Yahoo, IMAP IDLE latency benchmarks from SimpleMemo's 2026-Q1 telemetry (312 ms median push vs. APNs at 1.8 s), the cost math at 1,000 paying users ($0 infra vs. $54 Firebase), and a 7-step playbook to ship mail-as-sync inside one week. Anti-thesis for every claim: "Email is dead in 2026" (4.4 B users, 376 B emails/day disagrees); "Users want real-time" (Nielsen 1993 disagrees); "OAuth is too hard" (amortized cost math disagrees). Plus the honest scoreboard from 11 months in production: 0 lines of server code, 0 "I lost my memos" complaints across 4,318 users, 0 bytes lost during the App Store outage on 2026-02-08. Part of the 12-week Solo iOS Growth Diary series — new deck every Tuesday 22:00 JST. Tech keywords: email memo app, mail-based notes, smtp sync ios, captio alternative, imap idle ios, MFMailComposeViewController, swift-smtp, SQLite FTS5, OAuth Gmail iOS, GIDSignIn, MailCore2, X-GM-RAW. Follow: speakerdeck.com/simplememo · x.com/simplememofast SMTP turned 44 this year. iCloud Drive turned 15. So why are we still picking the youngest sync layer for our iOS memo apps? Vol. 3 of Solo iOS Growth Diary makes the case for Email-as-Sync — the way Captio quietly did from 2010 to 2020. You'll get the Sync Layer Liability (SLL) score, three mail-first architecture patterns (Drop-Box, Mirror, Brain), OAuth gotchas across Gmail / iCloud Mail / Outlook / Yahoo, IMAP IDLE latency benchmarks from SimpleMemo's 2026-Q1 telemetry (312 ms median push vs. APNs at 1.8 s), the cost math at 1,000 paying users ($0 infra vs. $54 Firebase), and a 7-step playbook to ship mail-as-sync inside one week. Anti-thesis for every claim: "Email is dead in 2026" (4.4 B users, 376 B emails/day disagrees); "Users want real-time" (Nielsen 1993 disagrees); "OAuth is too hard" (amortized cost math disagrees). Plus the honest scoreboard from 11 months in production: 0 lines of server code, 0 "I lost my memos" complaints across 4,318 users, 0 bytes lost during the App Store outage on 2026-02-08. Part of the 12-week Solo iOS Growth Diary series — new deck every Tuesday 22:00 JST. Tech keywords: email memo app, mail-based notes, smtp sync ios, captio alternative, imap idle ios, MFMailComposeViewController, swift-smtp, SQLite FTS5, OAuth Gmail iOS, GIDSignIn, MailCore2, X-GM-RAW. Follow: speakerdeck.com/simplememo · x.com/simplememofast Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 -0400 https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-3-email-as-sync-why-smtp-outlives-icloud https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-3-email-as-sync-why-smtp-outlives-icloud Cold start is the quietest retention lever an iOS app has. We cut ours from 1,240ms to 310ms in seven moves — no rewrites, nine evenings, zero new dependencies — and day-30 retention almost doubled. Vol. 2 of the Captio Revival Notes series for solo iOS founders. Inside: how to measure cold start with MetricKit (the histogram bins Apple gives you, and the per-launch timer that fills the gap), the seven specific moves that delivered 930ms of savings (drop the default scene, lazy-load fonts, JSON→Plist, strip ViewInspector & Lottie, pre-warm Keychain, defer first network call ≥500ms, move Core Data setup off main thread), three counter-arguments and their honest answers, and a 5-rule speed budget any indie iOS dev can adopt this week. Includes Swift code snippets you can paste tonight (MXMetricManagerSubscriber + ProcessInfo.systemUptime time-to-first-frame), a per-device-class p50 dashboard, and the retention curve that proved every millisecond paid back. New volume every Tuesday. Vol. 1 (From EOL to Encore) sets the EOL Heir thesis. Vol. 3 (next week): why SMTP outlives iCloud — email-as-sync architecture in 2026. Follow: speakerdeck.com/simplememo · x.com/simplememofast Cold start is the quietest retention lever an iOS app has. We cut ours from 1,240ms to 310ms in seven moves — no rewrites, nine evenings, zero new dependencies — and day-30 retention almost doubled. Vol. 2 of the Captio Revival Notes series for solo iOS founders. Inside: how to measure cold start with MetricKit (the histogram bins Apple gives you, and the per-launch timer that fills the gap), the seven specific moves that delivered 930ms of savings (drop the default scene, lazy-load fonts, JSON→Plist, strip ViewInspector & Lottie, pre-warm Keychain, defer first network call ≥500ms, move Core Data setup off main thread), three counter-arguments and their honest answers, and a 5-rule speed budget any indie iOS dev can adopt this week. Includes Swift code snippets you can paste tonight (MXMetricManagerSubscriber + ProcessInfo.systemUptime time-to-first-frame), a per-device-class p50 dashboard, and the retention curve that proved every millisecond paid back. New volume every Tuesday. Vol. 1 (From EOL to Encore) sets the EOL Heir thesis. Vol. 3 (next week): why SMTP outlives iCloud — email-as-sync architecture in 2026. Follow: speakerdeck.com/simplememo · x.com/simplememofast Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 -0400 https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-2-speed-is-the-feature-instrumenting-ios-cold-start-with-metrickit https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-2-speed-is-the-feature-instrumenting-ios-cold-start-with-metrickit How a solo developer rebuilt a beloved 12-year-old iOS memo app (Captio) as Simple Memo — with a 0.3-second cold start, email-as-sync architecture, and zero third-party dependencies. Vol. 1 of a 12-week Captio Revival Notes series on indie iOS growth, ASO for orphaned audiences ("EOL Heir" positioning), retention via launch-speed, and shipping speed-as-feature in 2026. Includes anti-thesis honesty, real measured numbers (cold start 1,240ms → 310ms), the architecture of an email-based sync pipeline (Outbox → Cloudflare Workers → Resend, sub-600ms), and a 7-step EOL Heir checklist for any iOS founder building a 'spiritual successor' to a discontinued app. New volume every Tuesday. Built on Apple-only frameworks: SwiftUI, CryptoKit (AES-GCM), URLSession, Keychain, BackgroundTasks, StoreKit 2. Follow: speakerdeck.com/simplememo · x.com/simplememofast How a solo developer rebuilt a beloved 12-year-old iOS memo app (Captio) as Simple Memo — with a 0.3-second cold start, email-as-sync architecture, and zero third-party dependencies. Vol. 1 of a 12-week Captio Revival Notes series on indie iOS growth, ASO for orphaned audiences ("EOL Heir" positioning), retention via launch-speed, and shipping speed-as-feature in 2026. Includes anti-thesis honesty, real measured numbers (cold start 1,240ms → 310ms), the architecture of an email-based sync pipeline (Outbox → Cloudflare Workers → Resend, sub-600ms), and a 7-step EOL Heir checklist for any iOS founder building a 'spiritual successor' to a discontinued app. New volume every Tuesday. Built on Apple-only frameworks: SwiftUI, CryptoKit (AES-GCM), URLSession, Keychain, BackgroundTasks, StoreKit 2. Follow: speakerdeck.com/simplememo · x.com/simplememofast Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 -0400 https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-1-from-eol-to-encore-captio-revival-notes https://speakerdeck.com/simplememo/solo-ios-growth-diary-vol-1-from-eol-to-encore-captio-revival-notes