Dani Devesa
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dadederk.bsky.social
Dani Devesa
@dadederk.bsky.social
380 followers 150 following 260 posts
#iOS @ Yoto. Previously: Apple (contractor), Spotify, Skyscanner & BCC. #365DaysIOSAccessibility. http://accessibilityUpTo11.com
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dadederk.bsky.social
So great to meet you!

And I can prove we did meet! 😁
A gray MacBook covered in stickers, including SwiftLeeds, a grumpy blue rain cloud (“please don’t rain” icon), a holographic ice-lollipop shaped like a book (“study snacks”), a colorful mandarin duck (“the art of fauna”), an ARCTIC conference logo, and an Apple logo. In the blurred background, a child’s colorful painting with red, green, blue, yellow, and brown brushstrokes is visible on the wall.
October 9, 2025 at 6:45 PM
dadederk.bsky.social
Don’t think it’ll be ready by Monday. And am I ready? Probably not… 😅

But here we go! Version 1.0 is officially submitted for review.
This is the worst it’s ever going to be. From here it only gets better.

Hope you enjoy using it as much as I’ve enjoyed building it!

#BuildInPublic
iPhone lock screen. Two App Store Connect notifications are shown for Xarra (iOS): one says “The status of version 1.0 has changed to Waiting for Review,” and the next says “The status of version 1.0 has changed to Ready for Review.”
September 13, 2025 at 11:49 AM
dadederk.bsky.social
Creating adaptive apps that feel great across devices and configurations is easier than ever!

Next: giving some love to the iPadOS version.

Switch from a List to a NavigationSplitView that holds the List and displays the Transcript in the Detail pane... and voilà, magic!

#BuildInPublic
Screenshot of Xarra running on iPad in landscape orientation. On the left, a sidebar list shows audio documents with titles and progress bars. On the right, the transcript view is open for a sample document titled “Welcome to Xarra,” with the current line highlighted in indigo and playback controls floating at the bottom.
September 13, 2025 at 9:30 AM
dadederk.bsky.social
I’ve added some sample content to Xarra, so the app isn’t empty on first launch, but also to serve as a little onboarding that shows what it does and how to use it.

Let’s play a game! Can you guess where I got the inspiration for the first few lines? 👀

#BuildInPublic #iOSDev
September 10, 2025 at 11:12 PM
dadederk.bsky.social
This isn’t the typical implementation of Reduce Motion, but I think I like it!

Normally, when scrubbing the slider to jump around an audio document, the transcript view scrolls in real time, which can feel useful, but also a bit overwhelming with so much movement on screen.
August 26, 2025 at 11:03 PM
dadederk.bsky.social
First, I tried a split-screen approach (transcript on one side, controls on the other). But with Dynamic Type, that left very little room for text.

In the end: when in landscape, there’s now a button in the navigation bar to show/hide a floating playback control panel.

#BuildInPublic #iOSDev
Collage showing the Xarra app in landscape orientation. The top screenshot displays the transcript view with a new playback controls button in the navigation bar. An orange arrow points from that button to the bottom screenshot, which shows the floating playback control panel overlay with play, skip, progress slider, and speed controls.
August 23, 2025 at 8:20 PM
dadederk.bsky.social
I’ve just promoted Xarra from Alpha to Beta! 🚀

The tint color is now Indigo. Orange felt a bit distracting, and Indigo has a calmer vibe. I’m surprised it’s not used more often; it’s one of the system colors with the best overall contrast.

Also, updated the placeholder icon.
Collage of three iPhone screenshots showing Xarra in action. The first screenshot displays the app reading an article with the current line highlighted in Indigo and playback controls at the bottom. The second shows the Lock Screen media player with Xarra’s new placeholder app icon (a speech bubble with a waveform inside and a red “BETA” ribbon) and playback controls. The third shows Control Center with Xarra’s media playback controls integrated at the top.
August 22, 2025 at 11:41 PM
dadederk.bsky.social
I think I can already call Xarra a success! I haven’t even shipped it yet, but it’s become part of my morning walk routine.

If I’m finding it this useful, I’m sure others will too.

Next: making it work with the system’s playback controls.

testflight.apple.com/join/sjk3n7y6

#BuildInPublic
Photo taken during a morning walk in Puebla de San Miguel, a rural village in Spain. The foreground shows a hand holding an iPhone with the Xarra app open, playing back text with the current line highlighted and playback controls at the bottom. Behind the phone, the village sits in the middle of a valley surrounded by mountains, under a perfectly blue morning sky with soft light.
August 22, 2025 at 4:42 PM
dadederk.bsky.social
Vibe-coding can sometimes be:

You: Can you fix warning X in Y?
Vibe-coding tool: Sure! I’ve deleted the code, so no more warnings. Also, I changed the button styles, moved things around, and decided the context menu should live in its own modal for no reason.

True story.

#VibeCoding
August 19, 2025 at 12:30 PM
dadederk.bsky.social
Two problems though: When popping the view, the sheet stays for a couple of seconds before disappearing abruptly. The Large Content Viewer appears in the middle of the sheet (instead of the screen), which makes it not very useful.

Am I holding it wrong? Or should I file a Radar?
August 17, 2025 at 8:11 AM
dadederk.bsky.social
I’ll always use a native component over building my own if I can avoid it. But I’m struggling with this one!

I’m presenting the playback controls in a sheet with presentation detents: one small for basic controls, one larger for extra options. On paper, it seemed perfect.
Screenshot of Swift code showing a SwiftUI .sheet presentation. The sheet displays a PlaybackControlsSheet view with two custom detents at 100 and 250 points in height. The selected detent is bound to a Boolean isSheetExpanded property on the audio manager. The sheet also has a visible drag indicator and disables interactive dismissal.
August 17, 2025 at 8:11 AM
dadederk.bsky.social
New feature! I’ve added a very basic Share Extension so you can easily export content to Xarra: Share a URL from Safari and the app will extract the content. Or share text from Notes (or any other app that supports text sharing).
August 17, 2025 at 6:55 AM
dadederk.bsky.social
It’s such a joy when these App Store Connect notifications pop up with tester feedback! 🙌 Every little comment helps shape the app into something better.

Please keep them coming!

And if you haven’t tried it yet, you can download the app from TestFlight:
testflight.apple.com/join/sjk3n7y6
Screenshot of an iPhone lock screen showing a notification from App Store Connect: “Feedback Received — A tester submitted feedback for iOS 1.0 (3).”
August 16, 2025 at 8:37 PM
dadederk.bsky.social
New settings screen in Xarra! 🎉

Toggle (on by default) to respect your assistive technology voice settings.
Voice selector to choose a different voice manually.
Custom number of lines to skip (5, 10, or 15).
Option to highlight the current word being spoken.

And more...
Screenshot of the Xarra app’s new Settings screen in Dark Mode. The top section, “Accessibility,” has a toggle labeled “Respect Assistive Technology Settings” with its description underneath. Below is the “Voice” section, showing the selected voice “Samantha (Enhanced)” and a tip on how to download more voices via iOS Settings. The “Audio” section lists options for “Playback Speed” set to 1x and “Skip Lines” set to 5, with a description explaining their function. The “Display” section has a toggle for “Highlight Word” with an explanation beneath. The save button in the top-right corner is an orange checkmark inside a circle.
August 14, 2025 at 9:06 PM
dadederk.bsky.social
One thing I’ve been thinking about during this process is how to make the app accessible.

Dynamic Type can be challenging, but it’s also a lot of fun. Pixel-perfect is dead, long live adaptive and accessible iOS apps.

#BuildInPublic
Screenshot of the Xarra app showing large Dynamic Type text and Dark Mode. The screen displays the title “Think Different” at the top, with the current highlighted line “Here’s to the crazy ones” in an orange box. Below, other lines of text are shown in large white font on a black background. In the middle of the screen, a floating Large Content Viewer with an “Edit” text and icon appears, triggered by a long press on the Edit button in the navigation bar.
August 12, 2025 at 3:32 PM
dadederk.bsky.social
I know I said I’d pause development for a bit… but I’ve been using Xarra myself (and actually finding it useful! 😊) and realised there was a feature I really missed.

The app now remembers your progress when listening to Audio Documents.
August 12, 2025 at 9:24 AM
dadederk.bsky.social
If you’ve missed my last posts… meet Xarra!

It’s an app that lets you: Write or paste some text; or Attach a document; or Import content from a website… and then listen to it.

If you’re often on the go and want to go through some reading without staring at a screen, I hope you’ll find this useful.
Screenshot of the Xarra app reading an article titled “iOS 14: Custom Accessibility Content.” The scrollable transcript displays segments with light gray backgrounds for played content and white for upcoming content. An orange-highlighted section marks “Chapter 1: VoiceOver Noise.” At the bottom, the playback bar shows a large orange pause button in the center, with skip-backward 5 seconds on the left and skip-forward 5 seconds on the right.
August 11, 2025 at 6:54 AM
dadederk.bsky.social
Svetlana's comment on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

And a quick snipped of the code with the prompt that produced that result.

#BuildInPublic
Screenshot of Swift code using Apple’s Foundation Models framework to generate a natural language explanation of source code. The function generateCodeExplanation takes code and an optional language, constructs a prompt, and returns a concise explanation from the model.
August 10, 2025 at 9:54 AM
dadederk.bsky.social
So I tried it… and I think I might be onto something here. Possibly one of the coolest applications of the framework! 😊

#BuildInPublic
August 10, 2025 at 9:54 AM
dadederk.bsky.social
Svetlana S. gave me a great idea: wouldn’t it be amazing if the app could read code in a way that’s easy to understand?

That would be super useful, and what a great challenge.

Then I thought: isn’t this the perfect use case for Foundation Models?

#BuildInPublic
A blog post from the site mobilea11y.com. There is a block with some code where it can partially be seen an extension for a custom view were the getters and setters for the accessibilityCustomContent property are implemented.
August 10, 2025 at 9:54 AM
dadederk.bsky.social
First pass at implementing a playback speed selector.

The menu currently offers: 2.0x, 1.5x, 1.25x, 1.0x, 0.75x, and 0.5x.

I might need to tweak which speeds to include, or consider a more flexible control for finer adjustments.

#BuildInPublic
August 8, 2025 at 1:08 PM
dadederk.bsky.social
This is starting to take shape! Still needs polish, but it answers the main question: is this viable? It seems like it is! In this video: It starts playing a few lines; I use the slider to jump ahead; Test the skip buttons: 5 lines forward and 5 lines backward.

#BuildInPublic
August 8, 2025 at 12:16 PM
dadederk.bsky.social
Solution: NaturalLanguage framework! I’ve used it before for things like lemmatization (reducing words like “running” to “run”), but it can do a lot more: Detect the language of a string; Identify people, places, etc. in a sentence.

And in my case: split text into sentences reliably!
Screenshot of a Swift code snippet using Apple’s NaturalLanguage framework. It shows how to split text into sentences using NLTokenizer. The code creates a sentence tokenizer, assigns the input string, then maps each token to a trimmed string and filters out empty ones.
August 8, 2025 at 9:59 AM
dadederk.bsky.social
The second screen is coming together nicely! This is the first version of the playback view: Displays a list of lines to be read aloud. Highlights the active one in real-time. Includes a bottom panel with basic controls. Still needs work, but quite happy with where it’s going.

#BuildInPublic
Screenshot of an iOS app showing a playback screen titled “Think Different.” The screen displays a list of short text lines. One line (“The ones who see things differently.”) is highlighted in orange to indicate it is being read. A bottom panel shows a progress slider labeled “Line 6 of 14” with controls for rewind 15s, play, and skip 15s.
August 7, 2025 at 9:31 PM
dadederk.bsky.social
For the next screen, I'll to borrow some inspiration from Spotify’s lyrics view.

I love how it makes reading along with audio feel effortless.

Planning something similar: the text being read highlighted in real-time. Playback controls will sit at the bottom (play, skip...).

#BuildInPublic
Screenshot of Spotify’s lyrics view showing lyrics from the “Ted Lasso Theme” by Marcus Mumford. The screen has a bright blue background. Two selected lines are shown with black backgrounds and blue text. The top of the screen says “Select lyrics – 2 lines selected.” A white “Continue” button is visible at the bottom.
August 7, 2025 at 12:13 AM