Plumerie is on the App Store
Plumerie's been living in my head for a year already. Today it's on the App Store.
I never planned on building it as a native app. This was meant to be a tool for my family and me.
But then, people loved the idea, connected with the reasons why I built it. So I made it available online.
And people loved it even more than I expected. I still wasn't going to build a native app. I still don't think of myself as a developer.
"It's on the App Store" is a strange milestone when the app has been live on the web and in people's hands for months. The iOS launch isn't the beginning. It's more like the app finally showing up where people expect to find it.
So: Plumerie is now available on iOS. Free to download. Everything that was on the web is there. Everything you've already added to your library is there too.
What Plumerie does
You catalog your books. You see what you own, where it is, who's borrowed it. You track what you want to read next and check whether someone you know already owns it before you buy another copy.
That's most of it.
There's also family sharing — one library across multiple people, with individual reading histories. An AI shelf scanner that can add a whole bookcase from a single photo. Loan tracking with email invites so your friends don't need an account to accept a book. And support for 45 languages, because not everyone's library is in English and no other app handles that well.
None of it requires a subscription. The free plan covers 100 books and everything I just described. Plus exists if you want more. (Or want to support an independant developer building intentional apps)
What took so long
Okay, maybe not that long. The web version went live 2 months ago. And I started the iOS building process less than 2 weeks ago.
But why did it take almost 2 weeks to get approved...
Apple's review process is pretty strict.
No complaining — the review process exists for good reasons. But the back-and-forth of submission, rejection, fix, resubmit takes time when you're one person doing everything.
The rejections were fair. The fixes were worth making. The app is better for them.
What's different on iOS
Mostly nothing, which is intentional.
I built Plumerie as a PWA so the experience would be the same on every device. The iOS app is that same experience, running natively, with native camera access for scanning, native push notifications, and native Apple Pay for subscriptions.
If you've been using Plumerie on the web or Android, you'll recognize everything. Your library is already there.
What comes next
Android is already in closed testing. The play store listing will follow once the testing period closes.
After that: the features I've been sitting on while the app store work took over. Board and card game support. Better stats. A few things for the lending flow that I've been thinking about. Community features.
If you want to follow along, the blog will have updates. No newsletter yet — just come back.
Plumerie is free on the App Store. If you try it and something feels wrong, the feedback button in the app goes directly to me.