Why your Rork app shows a blank screen or loses state after returning from background
Your Rork app sits in the background overnight, you tap the icon the next morning, and the screen is blank — or your drafts have disappeared, or you have been silently logged out. iOS process reclamation, AsyncStorage rehydration timing, and Navigation state restoration each cause a different version of this bug. Notes from running wallpaper and wellness apps with 50M downloads as an indie developer.
Rolling Out Privacy Manifest to Six Wallpaper Apps in Parallel — Translating One Rejection into Five Clean Submissions
Operational notes from rolling out Privacy Manifest to six iOS wallpaper apps in parallel. How a single rejection on the first submission shaped the remaining five, and how phased release rings were designed for a UI-less update.
Enforcing AI Cost Ceilings at Runtime — A Budget-Guard Architecture for Rork Apps
How to stop runaway AI bills not by optimizing, but by physically enforcing budget at runtime. An indie developer's three-layer architecture using Cloudflare Durable Objects, with hard-won lessons from running 50M-download apps.
Staged migration of a Rork-generated RN project to the New Architecture — notes from running six wallpaper apps in parallel
An implementation log for incrementally enabling Fabric and TurboModules on a Rork-generated React Native project, validated in parallel across six wallpaper apps. Covers flag design, compatibility triage, and KPI comparison based on actual production data.
From a Rork-Built App to Monthly Break-Even at 100 Yen Subscription: Indie Numbers from May 2026
A small Rork-built utility app reached month-over-month break-even on a 100 yen subscription combined with AdMob. May 2026 numbers, decisions, and what I deliberately left out.
Rork-Specific 'expo start --offline forbidden': Four Causes in Rork's Template Config
When expo start --offline returns 'forbidden' specifically on a Rork-generated project, the cause is usually Rork template config: tsconfigPaths, an un-generated expo-router cache, native prebuild, or a lockfile mismatch. Four Rork-specific fixes; the generic Expo proxy and dependency-validation guide is covered separately.
Auditing Privacy Manifests for Rork-Generated Expo Apps — A One-Day Pre-Submission Workflow for Indie Developers
A pre-submission workflow for indie developers shipping Rork-generated Expo apps. Walks through how to enumerate every dependency, detect missing PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy files, and ship without ITMS-91053 rejections — based on twelve years of personal app development.
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.
Designing AdMob App Open Ad Frequency Without Hurting Retention — Operational Notes from Wallpaper Apps
Implementation notes from rebuilding the AdMob App Open Ad frequency design in a recent wallpaper app update. Minimum intervals, cold-start exceptions, and post-modal suppression are controlled dynamically through Remote Config, with Claude in Chrome handling the daily dashboard review.
Why FlatList's onEndReached Fires Multiple Times — and How to Stop It
After wiring up infinite scroll in a Rork-generated FlatList, you may notice the same paginated request hitting your API two or three times in a row. Here's why onEndReached fires more often than you expect and how to add a two-layer defense that survives production.
Rork iOS App Rejected with ITMS-90683 on TestFlight — How to Fix Missing Purpose Strings via app.json
If your Rork-built iOS app passes upload but gets an email titled ITMS-90683: Missing Purpose String in Info.plist, this guide walks through the real cause and the permanent fix via app.json, based on 12 years of shipping personal iOS apps with the same problem appearing across new SDK updates.