All Articles
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.
When Your Finance App's AI Keeps Dumping Everything Into 'Other' — Field Notes on Catching Silent Classification Drift
An AI expense classifier in a Rork finance app can be accurate at launch and quietly decay over months until the monthly advice goes wrong. Here is how I instrumented confidence and category distribution to get ahead of the drift, with working code.
Your Rork Max App Loses the Photos a User Picked After Relaunch — The Trap of Holding Onto URLs Under Limited Photo Access
In a native Swift app generated by Rork Max, photos picked via PHPickerViewController become unreadable after relaunch — because holding onto a URL or PHAsset no longer works in the age of limited access. Here's a design that copies the actual bytes into your own storage the instant they're picked.
Start a Live Activity Without Launching Your Rork Max App — Designing Around a push-to-start Token That Never Arrives
In a native Swift app generated by Rork Max, you want to start a Live Activity from your server without the user ever opening the app. But the push-to-start token is never observed and it fails silently. Here's the cause and an observation layer that reliably captures the token.
Your Rork Max Health App Misses Overnight Steps — Designing Background Delivery When HKObserverQuery Dies Silently
In a native Swift health app generated by Rork Max, data recorded while the app is closed never arrives — and it's almost always because HKObserverQuery's background delivery stopped without a word. Here's how to isolate the layer that broke and an observation layer you can drop in as-is.
Direct Device-to-Device Sharing in Rork Max Apps — The Local Network Permission Trap That Makes MultipeerConnectivity Fail Silently
How to add serverless, nearby device-to-device sharing to a native Swift app generated by Rork Max. It works in the simulator but no peers ever appear on real devices — and the culprit is almost always a silent Local Network permission failure.
Should You Show a Read More Link? Let the Rendered Text Decide in Rork (Expo)
Clamping a product description to three lines and adding a Read more toggle sounds simple, until the toggle also appears under single-line text. This walks through measuring the real line count with onTextLayout so the toggle only shows when text actually overflows, covering iOS vs Android quirks, expand animation, and font scaling.
Building Your Second Rork App: How Much of the First One Should You Reuse?
Once your first app ships, the temptation is to clone it whole and swap the contents. But what you reuse and what you rebuild quietly decides how heavy your maintenance becomes. A look at where to draw the reuse line, from running several apps in parallel.