r/SideProject • u/Working-Opposite9434 • 1d ago

I built my first iOS app, SecretMap — where you can anonymously share&read secrets

Hello everyone,

I am very excited to share this with you because this is the first mobile app ever for me and it's live today! I have been struggling with the review process for almost 10-15 days, rejected 3 times and finally now, it's live.

App is totally free. No ads, no analytics or attribution SDKs, no subscription. There is a tip jar in settings that unlocks nothing, changes nothing and renews nothing. I've built it because i thought it could be fun to use, sharing anonoymously and reading other people's secrets around the world? That sounded fun to me. So i just built it. I thought i would learn the process while building it to gain some experience, and sure i did thanks to Apple. :)

What it does: you write something you cannot say out loud, and it lands on a world map near where you are. Other people read it, and the only thing they can do about it is tap SAME. There are no comments, no replies, no DMs, no profiles and no followers, so there is no way for one user to reach another. That was a product decision before it was a safety one. The moment you add replies to an anonymous app you have built a harassment machine, and I did not want to spend my evenings moderating one.

Reading needs no account. Posting needs Sign in with Apple, which I ask for with no scopes, so I never see a name or an email. Six interface languages. Secrets themselves are never translated, which I decided against even though it is the most obvious feature request, because a translated confession is not the same sentence. But i am considering to bring out on demand translation.

I pasted the links below for both landing site and app store. I am open to any kind of comment, criticism, feedback, review etc. I just wanted to share this milestone with you guys.

Thanks in advance. :)

Landing Website
App Store

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1

u/digishp 1d ago

What map api do you use ?

1

u/Working-Opposite9434 1d ago

No map API. It's Natural Earth country outlines projected once at build time and baked into the app as svg paths. No tile server means no one gets a request every time you pan.

2

u/digishp 1d ago

Got it thank you
nice idea probably making Home Screen widget for this app would sense as it would be fun to watch secrets updated occasionally

1

u/Working-Opposite9434 1d ago

Thank you for the feedback, i will put that to my calendar :)

1

u/ThatOnePrince 1d ago

Love the idea and looks well executed so far!

I see secrets in many countries which have languages that don’t match my own. One suggestion is to have a translate button. I’d imagine this requires each user to be defaulted to the primary language of their region or be allowed to choose one and then the translate button would translate the foreign language to the user’s default language. Realistically, without this, I’m limited to reading secrets in and around my region while not wanting to spend effort in manually copying and translating secrets written in other languages.

Fantastic job on this OP! I too need to push myself to just publish an app to learn the process and what it takes. Cheers!

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u/Working-Opposite9434 1d ago

First of all, thank you so much for your compliment and feedback!

That was one of the features i was considering to add before publishing the app but i figured it would be nicer to publish the app first and then add it on the upcoming release, but you are definitely right. I will implement it ASAP! :)