If you follow me on twitter, you might have about my latest side project: Tamera, a 24-hour camera roll.
I’ve talked about the origin story on that thread already but I want to give an in-depth look at what went on behind the scenes.
The idea
My niece was ranting about having to deal with unwanted photos when she used the iOS camera. She felt more comfortable using Instagram, taking multiple pictures and only keeping the good ones by default.
So I made Tamera (Temporary Camera) to be just that: A camera app that deletes its content every 24 hours.
The execution
Once the idea grew in my head and with more free time this past December, I started approaching the iOS camera space.
I’ve never went deep into that area before, and it was, as you might expect, a deep sea of knowledge.
I started by designing the camera screen. Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok were good sources of inspiration since they feel intuitive and they’re trend setters in Camera UI.
Then I moved into file management and here I was thinking I knew everything about the iOS FileManager and file URLs. I stumbled upon some deep undocumented FileManager features that allowed me to avoid having a database of files and resources.
All in all, V1.0 was done in over 3 weekends. If you’ve tried it, the lack of features showed. But I wanted to ship it as fast as possible and avoid the side project graveyard.
Even though I’d have liked a polished UI and more features, cutting corners allowed me to get it into a releasable beta state.
The Release
On December 30th I pushed the release button, posted about it on twitter and Reddit then moved on.
I came back to a considerable amount of feedback and most of it was really useful!
Someone on r/minimalist even used Tamera as their default camera for a week!
The next weekend I consolidated the feedback with what I already had, made a backlog and started knocking down features.
- First, the ability to set a custom deletion range. For many 24 hours was too aggressive.
- Then, a proper photos and videos browser like the iOS one. I’ve added common features like zooming and swipe to dismiss
- And lastly I’ve lifted the paywall for the multiple selection: I realized I’d rather have a useful free app than a useless paid one. So now users can select multiple items and save, share or delete them.
- A Settings screen presents the app and offers the typical options I include in all my apps: Share, Rate, Send feedback
- From that screen Pro users can hide Ads and set a custom deletion period.
All that and of course many bug fixes are now live as part of Tamera v1.0.1.
As always I’m open to all kinds of feedback and suggestions. And if you like Tamera I’d appreciate a rating or a review in the App Store. It helps other users find it.