Designing WidgetKit Timelines Around the Refresh Budget: Why My Wallpaper Widgets Stopped
Why does a home screen widget stop updating after the evening? A clear look at WidgetKit timeline design through three lenses: the refresh budget, the reload policy, and entry density. With a working TimelineProvider, an entry design that does not burn through the budget, and relevance-based prioritization, drawn from running six wallpaper apps solo.
Updating Live Activities Remotely: Putting Live Lock Screen Info on a Rork App
A practical design for updating Live Activities remotely through APNs so the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island stay current even when your app is closed. Covers push-to-start vs update tokens, the content-state payload, stale-date and the update budget, and bridging from Expo, with working code and the issues I hit in production.
Adding a Home Screen Widget to a Rork App — Making WidgetKit Work Within Expo's Constraints
Rork generates Expo apps, and home screen widgets can't be written in React Native. Here's how to wire up WidgetKit with a config plugin and App Groups — including the parts that tripped me up.
Your Rork iOS App Won't Build After Adding AdMob Mediation — Untangling Linker Errors and No-Fill Ads
Added Unity Ads, Liftoff, or InMobi mediation adapters to your Rork/Expo iOS app and suddenly hit ld linker errors or ads that never fill? Here's how to isolate the cause by symptom and fix each layer.
Fixing 'No bundle URL present' on a Release Build to a Real iOS Device
How to read the 'No bundle URL present' error that shows up when you build a Rork-exported app locally in Xcode. We separate the Metro-connection case from the missing-embedded-bundle case, and walk through generating an offline bundle by hand with working commands.
Getting Users All the Way to 'Set as Wallpaper' on iOS — Save-to-Photos Permissions and Shortcuts
iOS apps cannot set the wallpaper directly. Here is how I handle add-only photo permissions, Live Photo saving, guiding users to Settings, and Shortcuts automation, with real numbers from running six wallpaper apps.
Killing Thumbnail Scroll Jank in an iOS Wallpaper App — Notes on ImageIO Downsampling
Lay out a lot of thumbnails and scrolling stutters while memory balloons. The culprit was full-size image decoding on the main thread. Here is how ImageIO downsampling and prefetching cut measured memory dramatically.
Bringing ProMotion 120Hz to a Wallpaper App — Implementation Notes on CADisableMinimumFrameDurationOnPhone and Reanimated v3
Implementation notes from making a Rork-generated wallpaper app run at 120Hz on ProMotion devices. Covers Info.plist setup, Expo config plugins, Reanimated v3 worklets, FlashList scroll gotchas, and AdMob eCPM lift measured across six wallpaper apps.
Tracking Down BGTaskScheduler.submit Error Code=1 (Unavailable) in Rork iOS Apps
When BGTaskScheduler.submit returns Error Code=1, the cause space is finite — six of them. Includes the identifier trap specific to Expo-based Rork apps and a getPendingTaskRequests self-check, ordered the way I actually hit them.
Three-Layer StoreKit 2 Entitlement Sync for Rork Apps: Launch, Background Refresh, and Restore
When you wire StoreKit 2 subscriptions into a Rork-generated app, Transaction.updates alone leaves gaps. Here is the three-layer sync I run across six wallpaper apps — launch-time re-evaluation, Background App Refresh, and Restore Purchase — including measured refresh rates and the AdMob revenue I recovered.
Killing the Recurring iOS Missing Compliance Warning in Rork with One Info.plist Key
Walks through why every Rork-built iOS upload shows a yellow Missing Compliance flag on TestFlight, and how a single ITSAppUsesNonExemptEncryption key in your app.json removes it for good. Written from the perspective of an indie developer shipping six wallpaper apps in parallel.
Supporting iPhone Air and 17 Pro Max New Resolutions Across Six Apps in Parallel
How I added iPhone Air (420×912), 17 Pro (402×874), and 17 Pro Max (440×956) support across six apps in parallel — 29 ternary branches, a 6-app diff script, and a phased rollout that landed at zero resolution-related crashes in 14 days.