The Blog

A Simpler, More Inclusive Subscription Plan for Everyone

I’m thrilled to share some exciting updates I’ve been working on to make your Sofa experience even better. I’m combining the old Personal and Family plans into a single, all-in-one subscription plan.

Sofa 3.4.2 - Quality-of-Life Update

This release has lots of little features, improvements, and a healthy amount of bug fixes.

Launched Podcast Interview

I was recently interviewed on the Launched podcast with Charlie Chapman about Sofa's origin story and how things work behind the scenes.

Sofa's 2022 Recap

2022 was Sofa's best year by every metric and the product has reached an important milestone in terms of usefulness.

Shared Lists, Shortcuts, and More

Today is a big day. I’ve been wanting to bring some of these features to Sofa since 2017 and I’m so pumped to finally launch them. I’m not going to beat around the bush, Sofa 3.4 is jammed packed with goodies.

Introducing Super Sofa Lifetime Billing

I’m happy to announce Sofa 2.10! This release brings full iPad support, iCloud syncing, and deeper personalization with 30+ themes.

Making Lists More Customizable

Hey gang, ready for a fun update? Sofa 3.3 enables you to make your lists even more personal and fun.

Sofa on Apple Silicon Macs

Sofa 3.2.4 has one significant new feature for M1 Mac owners and many more minor improvements and fixes. I hope you all enjoy it!

Closing the Sofa Forums

The Sofa Forums launched at the end of 2020, and a year later, it's time to shut them down.

Sofa’s Indie App Santa Promotion Results

The idea behind Indie App Santa is that for 24 hrs only, there needs to be a discount or promotion of some kind. Since Sofa is already free, I went with making all Winter themes free for the day. They are normally $0.99 each.

A Place to Discuss Sofa

I’m happy to announce the official Sofa forums! It’s a central place to meet other Sofa enthusiasts, discuss organization strategies, ways to enjoy your downtime, and things to read, watch, play, and listen to.

Sofa 2020 Year in Review

2020 has been one long shit show. Focusing on the good things in life has been difficult, to say the least. Sofa was a positive outlet for me this year and gave me a place to take a break from everything else going on. I’m thankful I have it.

The SwiftUI Detour

This iOS 14 update is big. I don’t like working on big releases. I prefer small iterations that I can ship out more frequently, but sometimes you need to dig in deep and power through.

Sofa’s iOS 14 Update

This iOS 14 update is big. I don’t like working on big releases. I prefer small iterations that I can ship out more frequently, but sometimes you need to dig in deep and power through.

Creators Campfire Podcast Interview

I was interviewed for the Creators Campfire podcast the other day and had a great time. We chatted about Sofa, app development, and more.

Thinking Through Custom Items in Sofa

This iOS 14 update is big. I don’t like working on big releases. I prefer small iterations that I can ship out more frequently, but sometimes you need to dig in deep and power through.

A More Well-Rounded Sofa Experience

I’m happy to announce Sofa 2.10! This release brings full iPad support, iCloud syncing, and deeper personalization with 30+ themes.

Sofa Year in Review 2019

I’m a fan of doing a “year in review” exercise. It’s easy to forget all the work that’s been done, which results in me feeling like I haven’t made enough progress. In fact, a lot of work has been done, which makes me feel good!

Making it Easy to Leave Sofa

I just implemented the ability to export your data in Sofa. It’s a feature that probably should’ve been there earlier, but, you know, that’s life.

Updates for iOS 13

There are a bunch of new features in iOS 13. To bring Sofa up to date, I focused on three things: dark mode, context menus, and bug fixes.

Implementing iOS 13 Dark Mode Settings in Sofa

In iOS 13, people will be able to choose a light or dark “theme” that will apply system wide. Regardless of what you think about dark mode, apps that don’t adopt this will stick out like a sore thumb.

Reorder Sections, Lists, and List Items

Reordering of sections, lists, and list items has been the most requested feature for a while now.

Sofa 2.8: Introducing Themes

Sofa 2.8 introduces themes! Woot! You can choose between Classic, Dark, and Black.

Fixing Sofa’s Tight-Coupling Problem with Coordinators

Sofa was suffering from a tight-coupling problem between view controllers. I discovered this while trying to refactor my massive controllers. I stumbled upon the coordinator pattern, which ended up being a great solution.

Sofa 2.7: Adding More To Your Lists

There are an enormous amount of ways that you can spend your downtime. So far, Sofa has been able to help you with a few of those: books, movies & TV, and podcasts. Today we are adding a few more to that list.

Sofa 2018: Year In Review

I’m excited to announce that you can now save podcasts to Sofa 2.4. This is another step towards making Sofa the place for remembering things to do later.

Sofa 2.6: Sections and Siri Shortcuts

You can now group lists together into Sections. For example, create a section called “Movies” to group all movie lists. You can do the same for books, podcasts, and tv shows.

Why I Made Sofa FREE

I go over the reasons for making Sofa a free app.

The Story of a PITA Button

I try to get a button working. Yes. A button.

What’s New in Sofa 2.5

This update addresses a lot of issues I’ve been hearing over of the past few months. Some of the issues I’ve been aware of for a while, and needed time to think them through.

Researching the Sofa App Store Page

I conducted research on the Sofa App Store page. I also discuss the process & tools used to conduct the research.

Bringing Podcasts to Sofa

I’m excited to announce that you can now save podcasts to Sofa 2.4. This is another step towards making Sofa the place for remembering things to do later.

From Free to Paid

Today I’m changing Sofa’s price from Free to $4.99. In a world were people don’t pay for apps, you may think that I’m an idiot. While very possible, there are a few good reasons to do this.

Let's Design Quick Add

A video showing you the process he went through to design Quick Add in Sofa.

New in Sofa: Quick Add, 3D Touch, and Peek and Pop

We were hearing from people that sometimes they wanted to search for a book, movie or tv show before deciding which list it should be in.

How a Designer Built and Shipped an iOS App in 6 Months

When we started working on Sofa, it was very different from what you see today. In fact, it wasn’t even called Sofa. It was called many things: Movie Night, Movie List, and Movie Pal just to name a few. I wanted to share a little bit of the story about how we got to Sofa 1.0.

Announcing Sofa 2.0

2.0 is a completely new app. When we first launched Sofa back in 2015 our only focus was movies. We learned a lot about how and why people watch and discover movies, and that drove our new direction.

Sofa with 3D Touch

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The Road to Sofa 1.0

When we started working on Sofa, it was very different from what you see today. In fact, it wasn’t even called Sofa. It was called many things: Movie Night, Movie List, and Movie Pal just to name a few. I wanted to share a little bit of the story about how we got to Sofa 1.0.

Sofa 1.0 is Here

If you love movies and have an iPhone, then today is a good day.