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Tell HN: 2 years building a kids audio app as a solo dev – lessons learned

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Re: Tell HN: 2 years building a kids audio app as a solo dev – lessons learned

#21

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

oliverjanssen wrote: post #12
Zigurd wrote: post #8

I'm currently using Flutter for a project. Considering I've been lead author or co-author on a few Android programming books, using a cross platform SDK was new for me. Dart is easy to learn, and Flutter makes attractive UI easy. I love to work on a big ambitious projects that really need platform specific implementations, but for the vast majority of cases a good cross platform SDK works well, and is a cost-efficien…

Makes sense. Flutter has a good reputation - I've heard mostly positive things. For me, I had bad experiences with React Native in the past and already built another iOS app in Swift. Knew the ecosystem, liked SwiftUI, so sticking with native felt right. Less context switching, and I can use Apple frameworks directly – MusicKit for Apple Music integration and native offline playback would've been painful to wrap. Cro…

Recently Skip got open source, so perhaps you can even make an android application out of it?

Thoughts?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46706906

Re: Tell HN: 2 years building a kids audio app as a solo dev – lessons learned

#22

Post by oliverjanssen »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #21
oliverjanssen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense. Flutter has a good reputation - I've heard mostly positive things. For me, I had bad experiences with React Native in the past and already built another iOS app in Swift. Knew the ecosystem, liked SwiftUI, so sticking with native felt right. Less context switching, and I can use Apple frameworks directly – MusicKit for Apple Music integration and native offline playback would've been painful to wrap. Cro…

Recently Skip got open source, so perhaps you can even make an android application out of it? Thoughts? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46706906

Interesting, hadn't seen Skip before. SwiftUI to Android sounds promising.

Bookmarked – will look into it. Still hoping native Swift for Android matures, but Skip could be a good middle ground. Thanks for the pointer!

Re: Tell HN: 2 years building a kids audio app as a solo dev – lessons learned

#23

Post by grantc »

Great idea. The things available to give parents controlled access to music aren't great. Echo (Dot) + Kids+ seems to be the closest to meh on the speakers--the kids devices like Yoto are too limited (or require downloads) and the other voice speakers are worse than Echo/Alexa/Kids+. Which is mind-boggling because the Echo setup is wildly bad. I was thinking about how to lock an old iPad down to nothing but this app -- will need some time looking at parental controls again. Adding respect for Explicit tags might be a good feature if you don't have it. I have playlists that I'd love to share to them, but 5% of the songs need the radio edit or need to be elided.

Re: Tell HN: 2 years building a kids audio app as a solo dev – lessons learned

#24

Post by oliverjanssen »

grantc wrote: post #23

Great idea. The things available to give parents controlled access to music aren't great. Echo (Dot) + Kids+ seems to be the closest to meh on the speakers--the kids devices like Yoto are too limited (or require downloads) and the other voice speakers are worse than Echo/Alexa/Kids+. Which is mind-boggling because the Echo setup is wildly bad. I was thinking about how to lock an old iPad down to nothing but this app…

Thanks! For locking down the iPad – check out Guided Access (Settings > Accessibility). Locks the device to a single app, you need a PIN to exit. Works great with Muky, that's the main setup I recommend.

For speakers, I just got my daughter the Wonderboom 4 – pairs via Bluetooth, sturdy, sounds good. Combined with an old iPad it's a solid setup.

Explicit tag filtering is a good idea. Right now parents manually curate playlists, so you control what goes in. But auto-filtering based on explicit flags could help. Adding it to the list - thanks for the suggestion!

Re: Tell HN: 2 years building a kids audio app as a solo dev – lessons learned

#26

Post by oliverjanssen »

potatowaffle wrote: post #25

Love the idea. If you don't mind sharing, besides producthunt launches, how have you promoted it?

Thanks!

Honestly, still figuring this out. Tried social media (Instagram, Threads, Bluesky) and reaching out to blogs/reviewers. Gets some traction but reach is limited. A German print magazine review helped, and the first HN post brought a spike.

What's funny – parent to parent word of mouth has been really helpful. I get lots of emails from parents with ideas or bug reports. They found the app through friends or family. That feels more sustainable than any marketing trick.

But I still need to find better channels with more reach. Most growth so far has been organic via App Store search. Open to suggestions if anyone has ideas! ;)

Re: Tell HN: 2 years building a kids audio app as a solo dev – lessons learned

#27

Post by aquariusDue »

Zigurd wrote: post #8

I'm currently using Flutter for a project. Considering I've been lead author or co-author on a few Android programming books, using a cross platform SDK was new for me. Dart is easy to learn, and Flutter makes attractive UI easy. I love to work on a big ambitious projects that really need platform specific implementations, but for the vast majority of cases a good cross platform SDK works well, and is a cost-efficien…

Same here, I've slept these past few years on Flutter even when someone recommended trying it out and was pretty enthused about it. Last month I got roped in a greenfield project and allowed to chose the stack, instead of the tried and true React Native I went for Flutter and I'm glad I did so.

Also shout-out to flutter_rust_bridge and a video[0] on YouTube from a conference explaining how to fit it in, I get to use Flutter and Dart for the UI parts and everything else in Rust. Another great thing because of Flutter's hot-reload I get to avoid the sucky parts of waiting for Rust code to compile to see UI changes. I've also had good (not great) success getting Gemini 3 Pro to sketch out the initial UI and the boilerplate and that also allowed me to move a bit faster than I would've otherwise.

[0] https://youtu.be/yZ0XHRfU7Ao?si=JQXHS61ycxVSq9GF

Re: Tell HN: 2 years building a kids audio app as a solo dev – lessons learned

#28

Post by oliverjanssen »

aquariusDue wrote: post #27
Zigurd wrote: post #8

I'm currently using Flutter for a project. Considering I've been lead author or co-author on a few Android programming books, using a cross platform SDK was new for me. Dart is easy to learn, and Flutter makes attractive UI easy. I love to work on a big ambitious projects that really need platform specific implementations, but for the vast majority of cases a good cross platform SDK works well, and is a cost-efficien…

Same here, I've slept these past few years on Flutter even when someone recommended trying it out and was pretty enthused about it. Last month I got roped in a greenfield project and allowed to chose the stack, instead of the tried and true React Native I went for Flutter and I'm glad I did so. Also shout-out to flutter_rust_bridge and a video[0] on YouTube from a conference explaining how to fit it in, I get to use…

Flutter + Rust sounds like a solid combo. A lot of colleagues swear by Rust – been meaning to dig deeper. Will check the video, thanks!

Hot-reload is something I miss in native – SwiftUI previews help but not the same. For my use case native made sense, but I can see why Flutter wins for greenfield projects with multi-platform needs.

Re: Tell HN: 2 years building a kids audio app as a solo dev – lessons learned

#30

Post by noAnswer »

oliverjanssen wrote: post #4
kreyenborgi wrote: post #3

Can you explain a bit more on how this is better than just using Spotify? Is the catalogue restricted somehow?

Good question. Same catalog - Muky uses your Apple Music or Spotify subscription underneath. The difference: Muky separates the audio player from the admin area. Kids get a locked-down player showing only playlists you created – big artwork, tap to play, nothing else. Parents manage everything in a separate admin area – create playlists, add content, adjust settings. Spotify means infinite browsing, algorithm recomme…

> Spotify means infinite browsing, algorithm recommendations, and "Dad, how do I get back to my song?"

I hope you are successful and eventually go after video content too. Imagine a Youtube app without infinite browsing or the algo and a "you can watch 3 videos this weekend"-counter/countdown.

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