Ep 40: Releasing Gogomi to the App Store

Guess what? Gogomi just landed on the Canadian App Store! Starting with Metro Vancouver for now—got to keep things small and manageable, you know?

Getting here involved a good journey in all things TestFlight and App Store releases. Had to figure out the different aspects of internal vs external testing, build version mismatching, and how to get feedback from testers (for now, I've kept it simple with an iMessage group chat).

The App Store submission process was…interesting. Beyond just submitting the app binary, I needed to:

• Build a promo website (because apparently “just download it” isn't enough)
• Figure out how to showcase Gogomi through screenshots and descriptions (harder than it sounds when you're trying to explain a walking app!)
• Fire up my graphics program to create all the App Store assets: icons, screenshots, promo images. App Store was strict about those image dimensions
• Properly credit all the other third-parties I got help from to make this possible (OpenStreetMap, iOS libraries, and even tiny icons and assets)
• Learn more about privacy policies and server security than I'd planned to

So here we are—Gogomi's live for Metro Vancouver area! Starting small and focused feels right. Let's me test things in a controlled environment and listen to what early users have to say.

I have no idea where this journey's heading, but I'm just focusing on making something that people actually use (and hopefully makes their walks a bit more epic). We'll see how it goes!

Hey, if you're in Metro Vancouver and have an Apple Watch, I'd love for you to try Gogomi and tell me what you think!