Retuning AdMob Mediation Priorities: Notes From Trying to Lift My eCPM
A running log of how I manually revisited the network priorities in my AdMob mediation setup to lift eCPM on an indie wallpaper app, what changed compared to leaving it on auto-optimization, and what I noticed along the way.
Rork × EAS Update Runtime Version Strategy — Upgrading Expo SDK Across 6 Apps Without Breaking Existing Users
A complete record of how I migrated 6 Rork-generated apps from Expo SDK 50 to 51 in three weeks without a single user-visible incident — runtimeVersion policies, full eas.json, a safety-gated publish script, and a 30-minute incident recovery playbook.
One Month of Reading Xcode Organizer Hang Reports Only on Friday Afternoons
I switched to reading Xcode Organizer Hang Reports for only thirty minutes every Friday for a month. Here is how it compared with Crashlytics and what actually improved across my wallpaper apps.
Three Weeks Triaging Crashlytics Velocity Alerts With Claude in Chrome
I spent three weeks letting Claude in Chrome open Firebase and triage Crashlytics Velocity Alerts for my wallpaper app. Here is what actually got easier, and what still needs human judgment.
Minimal Customer Support Architecture for Solo Rork Devs — Running Inquiries for Multiple Apps Alone
The minimum-viable customer support stack I run as a solo developer maintaining a dozen apps with 50M cumulative downloads — in-app form with auto-attached diagnostics, Gmail filtering, reply templates, and the escalation rules that keep me under thirty minutes a day.
Putting AdMob Bidding into Production for a Rork App — Five Networks Bidding in Parallel, eCPM Trends, and Daily Operations
I moved the AdMob mediation layer of my Rork-generated apps from waterfall to bidding, with five ad networks bidding in parallel. Here are my real-world numbers after three weeks of production, the SDK pitfalls, and how I delegate daily monitoring to Claude in Chrome.
Is Rork's Generated Code Production-Ready? 3 Pitfalls I Found After 50M Downloads
After 50M cumulative app downloads, I tested Rork's generated code against real production scenarios and found 3 recurring crash patterns. Here's what to audit before shipping Rork-generated code, with concrete before/after examples.
Testing Rork Max SwiftUI Features on a Real Wallpaper App — What Worked, What Needed Fixes
I benchmarked Rork Max's SwiftUI generation against the production code of a wallpaper app I actually run. Here is what shipped as-is, what needed fixing, and what I ended up writing by hand — with working code and on-device measurements.
Why Nesting Your Android Ad Gate Logic Causes Hard-to-Debug Bugs — Fixing It with Parallel Structure
A nested ad gate bug in Beautiful HD Wallpapers v2.1.0 led me to rethink how ad-free logic should be structured in Android apps. The parallel structure pattern I use now also improves Rork-generated code.
Evaluating Rork Max SwiftUI Output After 12 Years of Native App Development
An honest review of Rork Max's SwiftUI generation quality from someone who has been shipping native wallpaper apps for 12 years and 50 million downloads. What worked, what didn't, and where I rewrote the code myself.
Rebuilding a Live Wallpaper App with Rork Max: Measured Hours and Post-Relaunch Metrics
I rebuilt a wallpaper app that was already live using Rork Max, timing every stage. Measured hours per phase, the spec details the generated code got wrong, how existing subscribers were migrated safely, and 30-day post-relaunch metrics.
AdMob Mediation Dropped My eCPM by 30% After I Set It Up — What Went Wrong and How I Fixed It
My eCPM dropped 30% the morning after enabling AdMob mediation. Drawing on years of indie monetization work, here are the pitfalls I found in Rork apps, how to verify adapters are actually alive, how to derive floors from real data, and how to decide whether mediation is worth it at all.