From Deep Dives to Side Projects: What I’ve Been Building Lately
One of my favorite times of year is right after WWDC. The flood of new features and APIs is like a playground for developers, and I love diving deep into each one. That’s why many of my videos run longer than most as I aim to thoroughly explore these new capabilities and get real hands-on experience. Creating these tutorials helps me understand the tools better, and in turn, I hope they help you do the same.
To support this, I build a starter project for every video I release. I keep the completed versions grouped on my iPhone so I can quickly revisit them, and trust me, I do that often. Even if I created a video just last month, I frequently need to refresh my memory when applying those techniques to a new project.
The Evolving “TripMapper” App
A perfect example of this is TripMapper, a side project that originated from my MapKit series on YouTube a couple of years ago. My friend and I now use it regularly to plan our travels. It’s not on the App Store. It is just a personal app that’s been growing over time.
This summer, I’ve been giving it a major refresh. I’m integrating the new Liquid Glass layout and the updated TabView with built-in search support introduced in iOS 26. There have also been notable changes in MapKit — for instance, placemarks have been deprecated, so I’m refactoring large sections of the codebase.
I’ve also been exploring how I might integrate Apple’s Foundation Models framework into the app to enhance the experience. Since my friend uses a standard iPhone 16 (non-Pro), I’m building in compatibility checks to ensure it still works seamlessly. You’ll hear more about this in my Foundation Models series coming later in October.
The SF Symbols Browser App and a Contribution to Open Source
I’ve also been steadily working on my SF Symbols Browser app for macOS and iOS/iPadOS. I use it daily, and while the iOS version is solid, the macOS version has a nagging issue. The menubar app freezes every few days. That bug is holding up my App Store release (it’ll be free when it launches), and unfortunately, it’ll have to wait until I’m back from my travels.
On a related note, I recently found an open-source project called Copy-Symbol, which allows you to copy an SF Symbol image to the clipboard. However, it didn’t support pasting directly into the Finder. I figured out how to add that functionality and submitted a pull request to the project. I’ll also be incorporating this enhancement into my own app once it ships.
Don’t Miss the Upcoming Videos
I hope you get a chance to enjoy the upcoming video content while I’m away. Remember, you can browse all my videos easily using the web app which isinstallable on iPhone or iPad, or via my free Mac app on Gumroad.
Stay tuned — there’s plenty more coming.
