Indie Frame #3 — Roddy Munro, Söka, Classifier and Ceramispace
We’re travelling from the UK over to Canada for this week’s short interview with developer Roddy Munro. Roddy’s been using Shareshot since the first public beta.
Please introduce yourself, tell us how you became an indie iOS dev, and what you’re currently focused on making.
I’m Roddy, a Brit who’s been living on the East Coast of Canada for four years now!
I first played around with Xcode when I was in my last year of Sixth Form before going to university, back in 2014. I always struggled with the traditional way of studying for exams, so I created quiz apps for each of my subjects to help me study. I knew I was going to university to study Computer Science at that point too, so it was also a way for me to get some programming experience prior to starting. Since then, I’ve spent a large portion of my evenings and weekends working on various apps, usually scratching my own itch while trying to leverage Apple’s technologies.
Over the last few years, I’ve been focused primarily on my apps Söka, Classifier, and Ceramispace, though Söka has commanded the majority of my attention since launching it in June 2023.
Tell us about your journey with Söka!
Like several other apps I’ve created, Söka was created at the behest of my wife. She wanted a bucket list app that had a clean, easy-to-use interface with no ads, unlike some of the other apps she had tried. When I started work on Söka, ChatGPT was becoming increasingly popular, so finding a way to integrate that into a bucket list app interested me.
Söka was received quite well - within a couple of months of launching, it had a feature from MacStories which proclaimed that Söka had “one of the best integrations of artificial intelligence that I’ve seen in an app”, and this resulted in a large uptick in downloads. That same summer, I partnered with a small handful of social media influencers to create content that promoted Söka, including one TikTok which had over 40,000 views.
Other than the social media influencers, I’ve not spent any money on marketing for Söka. The vast majority of users came naturally via App Store search, which is nice because I have invested quite a bit of time in optimising the app’s ASO.
At the beginning of 2024, Söka was selected by Apple as one of their “24 Apps for 2024”, which prompted a reasonable surge in downloads and revenue. I haven’t replicated that since, though I’m quietly hopeful that I’ll get a feature or two when iOS 18 rolls around!
I noticed that Söka has been localised into a lot of languages. Can you share anything about that experience — has it been worth the investment?
The reason I had generally stayed away from localising any of my apps before was because of the extra overhead in terms of creating App Store screenshots, and keeping those translations up-to-date. It wasn’t until Xcode’s String Catalogs came out last year that I re-considered localising my apps, but the aforementioned overhead still remained.
Earlier this year, there was an Indie App Sale which featured two apps - Picasso and TranslateKit. Picasso lets me create screenshots for any number of localisations, whereas TranslateKit lets me feed in my String Catalog files and uses third-party services like DeepL to translate them. These, paired with some UI Tests to take the actual screenshots, means I can easily localise Söka for 25 languages and have a localised App Store listing for each one.
Since localising, I have seen a small uptick in downloads from non-English speaking countries, but nothing huge. However, after speaking to the App Store Editorial team during WWDC, localising an app for a given language increases your chance of being featured in countries that speak that language. So here’s hoping!
So as far as Shareshot goes, how are you using it?
I’m currently working on a huge 2.0 update for Söka, timed to launch with iOS 18 this month. To showcase the new design and the features I’ve been working on, I’ve been using Shareshot to quickly create social media-worthy posts.
I love how easy it is to find screenshots in my photo library, as well framing the screenshots using the correct device. My favourite thing is using the blurred screenshot background, as that would take me a while to perfect if I were doing it myself!
Are there any features or pain points you’d like us to address in Shareshot?
I think the only thing that I’d love to see is a ‘lifetime’ option for upgrading to Pro. I’ve always been somebody who prefers to minimise recurring costs - even if it’s several times more expensive than the annual option - especially now that my indie app development is under my business.
Other than that, the app is incredibly solid and beautifully designed. I’m also a big fan of the alternative app icons!
We’re grateful for Roddy spending some time with us!
Söka 2.0 will launch the same day as iOS 18, on September 16th, 2024.
If you are an indie who enjoys using Shareshot and fancy being featured in a future instalment of “Indie Frame”, please contact me. We love to share the love!
