All Articles
Laying Out Variable-Height Images in Two Columns: A Masonry Wallpaper Gallery in a Rork Expo App
From why numColumns cannot pack variable-aspect images cleanly, to a dependency-free column-balancing algorithm, to keeping virtualization with FlashList masonry and a pragmatic no-dependency fallback, building a wallpaper gallery with real code.
The App Icon Badge Still Says 3 — Rebuilding Expo Badge Counts Around a Single Source of Truth
Why an Expo app's icon badge drifts out of sync with real unread counts and refuses to clear — and how to rebuild it around a single source of truth, with working recompute-and-sync code and the production pitfalls that bite you.
When In-App Review Prompts Fire but Your Ratings Never Move — Field Notes on Measuring Display Opportunities and Timing
You wired expo-store-review into your Rork app, yet the star count won't grow. The OS silently suppresses the dialog, so calling it doesn't mean it shows. These are field notes on measuring display opportunities and redesigning timing.
Which Generation Introduced This Bug? Building Provenance Into Rork Apps
When you regenerate the same screen again and again with an AI builder, a bug that shows up one day becomes impossible to trace to a specific generation. This is a design for keeping generation provenance across three layers—build stamp, ledger, and telemetry—so you can narrow a regression down to a single generation in minutes.
Migrating Rork Max SwiftUI to @Observable: Narrowing the Re-renders ObservableObject Was Spreading
Rork Max tends to generate SwiftUI apps built on ObservableObject and @Published, where a single state change re-evaluates every subscribing view. Moving to the Observation framework's @Observable narrows invalidation to the property level. Here is the migration path, plus the view-body execution counts I measured in Instruments before and after.
Opening Your Rork Max App to Apple Intelligence — Designing App Intents Assistant Schemas and Handling What Doesn't Fit
How to make actions in a Rork Max-generated Swift app callable from Apple Intelligence using App Intents Assistant Schemas — mapping to the fixed schemas, routing what doesn't fit, availability fallbacks, and on-device testing.
Cloud-Synced Folders Break App Builds — Excluding Build Artifacts From Sync to Fix It for Good
A project living in Dropbox or iCloud Drive stopped building one morning. The cause was sync creating conflicted copies inside build artifacts. Here is how I excluded node_modules and Pods from sync to stop the recurrence, told as an indie developer's field notes.
Shipping a Rork App to a Real Device Without a Mac: What the Browser Simulator Covers, and Its Pitfalls
Rork's in-browser simulator lets you try an app without a Mac, but some bugs only appear on real hardware. Separate what the simulator can and cannot verify, and get past the real-device wall before you submit.
Building a One-Time Code Field in Expo — SMS Autofill and Segmented Display Together
A six-digit verification screen looks trivial, but once you account for SMS autofill, pasting, and deleting one digit at a time, it needs real care. Here is how to nail the iOS and Android autofill first, then build a segmented look on top of a single TextInput that does not break.
Changing a Table Without Wiping User Data in Rork's expo-sqlite — A PRAGMA user_version Migration Runner
A crash on launch, only for existing users: no such column. That is what happens when you ship a table-structure change to installs that still hold the old schema. Here is the expo-sqlite migration layer I put in every Rork app, built on PRAGMA user_version, with the full runner and the operational rules behind it.
When Your AdMob Earnings Suddenly Get Deducted: Preventing Invalid Traffic as a Solo Developer
Invalid traffic deductions in AdMob are unsettling because the cause is rarely obvious. From the perspective of running several apps solo, here is a minimal setup that prevents the most common accidents, plus how to respond when a deduction actually happens.
Rork Max (Swift) or the Standard Version (React Native): How to Decide as a Solo Developer
Stuck between Rork Max's native Swift and the standard React Native version? Here is a practical decision framework built from a solo developer's perspective, weighing cost, feature boundaries, and how easy each path is to migrate later.