A story behind building my first Mac app. It is a cute one too.
The idea
Back several weeks ago, while working in the office, I suddenly felt bored with my Mac. There are so many great apps and tools that I use every day, but it seemed that something lively and chill is missing.
Then, I got back home, and I remembered the old days when I was in middle and high school. While I was studying, my puppy usually slept around on the floor. Those were some of the peaceful moments that I had.
So an idea just sparked inside my head: “Can I have a pet sleeping on my Mac menu bar?”. This thought made me excited, and I jumped on Google to search if there is an app like that so I could use it.
A pet on my Mac menu bar? Searching.. searching... Oh. The best one that I could find is an app that shows CPU usage by an animated running cat. That is cool but what I want is different. I want an app that is more close to humans than computers, and a sleeping pet but not a running one.
It means, unfortunately, I can not have a sleeping pet immediately on my menu bar, but I can create my own. I have been building iOS apps, so I think that a Mac app is not so different.
The PoC
Like all previous projects, I was so excited to get started. First, I need to make a PoC (proof of concept) app that only needs to show an animated dog 🐶 on the menu bar.
It breaks down into two smaller tasks: learn how to show a static image on my Mac menu bar, then showing an animated image instead. Thankfully, there are many tutorials and guides on Google.
After one or two hours, “Aha, now I have a dog sleeping on the menu bar. Magical”. I got stunned. I keep watching it for a while.
The First Version
Several days passed, I had two questions came up.
- How about having a list of the tiny cute pets to choose from? My friends might love this app and want their favorite pets.
- Is there any way to make the app more interactive and more useful?
About the list of pets, definitely, that would be great. I can not design the whole list by myself, so I contacted a freelance designer for an icon pack. “Seriously? you ordered a design so quickly”. I am going to use this app every day, so I want it to be as best as possible.
The next challenge is how to make the app more interactive, especially useful. Because I usually forgot to take a break while working, so why not make a feature that my pet can remind me to take a break every 20 min. Besides, it is useful for people who are using Pomodoro techniques also. Now my sleeping pet can give me peaceful moments and remind me to take a break.
After clearing the two above questions in my mind, I started coding to implement all necessary features.
Then, I finished an MVP version with a pet icon pack from the designer. At this time, I shared the app with some of my friends who use macOS to get more feedback. Having them test the app was really useful, they helped me to discover the issues to fix and necessary features to add.
On Mac App Store
After several rounds of feedback-update, the final version was completed. I decided to publish it on App Store because I need this app, others might need it too. To publish on App Store, there are several things to do.
- Buy App Store Developer Membership (I already have one)
- Create the certificates for the app distribution
- Prepare the app icon, description, and screenshots
This process is similar to iOS app distribution, so I can quickly get them done. The more difficult thing to decide is the app price model. Should this be paid app or a freemium app?
To make it simple, I chose the first option like many Mac apps out there. And another reason is that I want to try this model because my previous ones are all free or freemium apps.
“But how much is reasonable? It should be not so cheap but not so expensive. How about $3.99? A Starbuck cup of coffee exchanges for a list of 12 sleeping pets on the Mac menu bar. It is not a bad deal., so let’s start with that”, I told myself.
All setups were done completely on App Store Connect, and I pressed the “Submit for review” button. Two hours later, I received an email telling me the app is approved and available on Mac App Store. Mission Completed! I got my first Mac app available on App.
Finally, thanks for reading, hope you enjoy peaceful moments, concentrate on your work, and take care of your health with a pet on your Mac menu bar.
