Manuel Kehl
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manuelkehl.bsky.social
Manuel Kehl
@manuelkehl.bsky.social
2.1K followers 890 following 250 posts
iOS/macOS/watchOS indie dev currently building @zenitizer.bsky.social

Previously worked at a Cupertino-based fruit supplier 🍎
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manuelkehl.bsky.social
📣 PSA: if you're migrating from #Affinity Designer, the "Export Persona" features are now in the "Slices Studio".

Was happy to find this as I need it to export layers for iOS 26 Icon Composer app icons 🤓

(Btw. you can show which "studios" should be visible and hide the Canva AI stuff altogether 😏)
A screenshot of the new affinity app with the “Slices” studio selected. It offers complex exporting logic that used to be under the export persona in Affinity Designer.
October 31, 2025 at 10:33 AM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
Such an honor to give my first conference talk at @swiftconnection.bsky.social yesterday - an amazing conference in a beautiful city!

Thanks to the organizers and helpers who made this possible and to the #iOS community as a whole for being so supportive and welcoming ☺️
Me on stage presenting my talk. There is a banner saying “Swift Connection 25” in front. A conference badge with the Swift Connection logo, my name and the word “Speaker” underneath. A snippet of the conference schedule showing my talk right after the coffee break. The title is “SwiftUI Apps that Effortlessly Scale from your Smallest to your Biggest Screen”
October 8, 2025 at 9:43 AM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
On the train to Paris for #SwiftConnection 🚄
First time speaking at a conference! Little nervous tbh… 😳

Oh and of course I'm not just wrapping up the final polish of my slides on the literal train there - who would do such a thing? 😅

Looking forward to meeting many fellow iOS folks again soon ☺️
A screenshot showing my plan for the day with the Eurostar train ride from Cologne to Paris and a focus timer that is nested DURING that time… :)
October 3, 2025 at 11:07 AM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
Happy to report that we made it there exactly on time 🚴‍♂️💨
(One minute early, actually 😁)

Everyone who knows me in real life, knows what a testament to the effectiveness of @daylish.bsky.social this is 😅 🙈

#TimeManagement #Productivity #BikeCommuting #Cycling #Planning
A photo of my bike with the toddler chariot and two helmets in tow. I’m holding my Apple Watch which shows that I arrived one minute before the planned time. A screenshot showing my daily timeline at the same time
September 29, 2025 at 8:04 AM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
☕️ Good morning! My morning's all scheduled and if things go as planned I should get a nice bike ride in AND finally wrap up recording my @daylish.bsky.social demo video for the @@revenuecat.com shipaton (last minute, I know - been a busy couple months 😅)

#BuildInPublic
A screenshot of Daylish with my morning schedule. It shows a current focus timer with the task of finalizing the demo video script, followed by preparation and bike ride to day care drop off and then bike ride back from there. After that until lunch I scheduled a time block to actually record the demo video.
September 29, 2025 at 5:41 AM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
Oooooh nice, iTerm2 got the Liquid Glass treatment on #macOS26 and I think it's looking really cool 😎

That tab bar is 😙🤌
A screenshot of item 2 running in drop down terminal mode on my Mac. There are two tabs open for each of my main app projects: Daylish and Zenitizer. The tab bar has a nice, modern Liquid Glass appearance with a matching plus button in the top right corner.
September 19, 2025 at 7:25 AM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
One of my favorite traditions after  OS updates is taking some time during all the excitement to read the super thorough @macstories.net reviews - always a great read 🤓☕️

This year, I was excited to see @daylish.bsky.social in the AlarmKit section of the #iOS26 review. Thank you @viticci.macstories
A screenshot showing an excerpt from the article where Daylish is mentioned and depicted in two iPhone frames. One shows Daylish’s main timeline view and the other shows a popover with an alarm configured for one of the timeline items.
September 17, 2025 at 3:57 PM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
After working on @daylish.bsky.social all summer it feels incredible to see it featured on its launch day 🤩 I'm so grateful 🥹

Big thanks to the App Store team for the feature and to @yanlu.chat for designing the beautiful promo artwork 🙌
A screenshot showing Daylish featured in the App Store on its launch day with Yannick Lung’s beautiful promo artwork. The artwork shows a lamp, a calendar and an alarm clock together on a surface.
September 16, 2025 at 12:13 PM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
All set to watch the #AppleEvent tomorrow 🍿📺
September 8, 2025 at 4:41 PM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
Finally added a placeholder view when the @Daylish timeline is empty. Makes such a difference IMO!

I really hated staring at that blank screen - now it fills me with delight to see I have nothing planned for the day ☺️ 🌅

Wanna try? TestFlight link in reply 👇

#iOS26 #buildinpublic
September 6, 2025 at 6:16 AM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
Been stuck like this for a while now... 🧐

Just that time of year, innit? 🤷‍♂️

#iOSDev #WaitingForReview #TestFlight
August 31, 2025 at 3:54 PM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
Taking a quick break from working on my “TestFlight prep” branch… 💤

#buildinpublic #recharge
August 28, 2025 at 12:17 PM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
Oh no, even Xcode's gotta go to Squircle Jail (™️ @siracusa.social ) sometimes, it seems 🫠

Luckily installing the latest Xcode beta and relaunching it fixed it - I don't think I could've gotten any work done today with that thing sitting in my dock 😅

#macOS26
A screenshot of the old Xcode logo with the hammer layered on top therefore breaking the squircle boundaries and being rendered with a sad gray squircle around it.
June 25, 2025 at 6:55 AM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
📣 #iOSDev PSA: new #Xcode26 projects default to Main Actor isolation, leading to errors with Sendable types ⚠️

Possible Fixes:
1: Change default isolation
2: Mark type nonisolated
3: Ignore #SwiftConcurrency 🫣

💡 Check out @massicotte.org's awesome post:
www.massicotte.org/default-isol...
A screenshot showing a type that implements a protocol which includes sendable conformance. You can see that there is a compiler error due to the fact that Sendable cannot be main actor isolated. The type does not have an explicit main actor annotation, because in new projects this is the default. A screenshot showing Xcode's project settings and how to change the default actor isolation from main actor back to non-isolated. Another screenshot from the same type as in the problem scenario, showing that the compiler error is fixed by adding the non-isolated keyword to the type.
June 12, 2025 at 11:03 AM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
💡 If you're on #macOS26 and want to access the new clipboard manager built into Spotlight with a single keypress (instead of CMD+Space followed by CMD+4), you can use BetterTouchTool to automate this.

❓Does anyone know if there's a built-in way to accomplish this?

🤔

Screenshot of BetterTouchTool with three actions configured in a row: 1. Send keystroke: CMD + Space (summon Spotlight) 2. Wait 0.2 seconds 3. Send keystroke: CMD + 4 (switch to clipboard history in Spotlight)
June 10, 2025 at 8:48 PM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
Indie #iOSDevs let's all share what our apps look like when built for #iOS26 with #Xcode26 🧵👇

Out of the box screenshots only - tweaking is cheating 😁

@zenitizer.bsky.social needs a lot of work to blend in and take advantage of #LiquidGlass but at least it compiles and is usable 😅
Three screenshots showing Zenitizer’s main timer interface while interacting with various UI elements like the tab bar or the volume picker popup. Things look a bit out of place and you can tell which parts automatically adapt to the new system style and which parts need some updating and tweaking over the summer to blend in nicely.
June 9, 2025 at 9:29 PM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
Good morning ☕️

Such a nice surprise to see that our one-year-old prepared breakfast for the whole family today 😌
An open bag of Dinkel breakfast flakes with much of its content distributed evenly on our kitchen floor.
June 6, 2025 at 8:48 AM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
Recharge yourself while you're recharging your car! 🚘 🔋🧘

#EV charging breaks are such a great opportunity to do a quick #meditation during road trips!

Completed my daily @zenitizer goal and feeling ready to continue the journey now!
A photo of my wrist with my Apple watch running a Zenitizer meditation. There is a steering wheel of our car in the background as I'm currently taking a fast charging break.
May 30, 2025 at 11:39 AM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
Do you know the feeling of using a part of your app you really dislike but never get around to fixing it?

After wanting to redesign the @zenitizer sound picker for a really long time, I'm so happy to finally ship it in the next update!

#appdesign #iOSdev #ui #ux #buildinpublic #swiftui
A picture showing the old sound picker menu with multiple nested sub menus on the left and the redesigned sound picker UI element on the right.
May 25, 2025 at 12:53 AM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
Ship it, they said… 🚢

Wapping up my current @zenitizer.bsky.social update while waiting for the ferry to arrive 🤓

Could certainly get used to the view - but not the shaky environment 🥴

#indiehackers #buildinpublic
A picture of my laptop on a table in a ferry with the ocean in the background. Xcode is open on my laptop showing code of a feature I’m working on for Zenitizer.
May 16, 2025 at 10:51 AM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
While I wish I could've been at @deepdishswift.com in person again this year, it makes me happy to see @zenitizer.bsky.social there among the indie app sponsors 🤩

Feels like part of me is in Chicago right now 🥲

PS: If you want to try it out, use code DEEPDISH25 for a 25% discount 😉🍕

#DeepDishSwift
A photo of the live stream running on our TV with the Zenitizer page displayed among the indie app sponsors during a stream break.
April 27, 2025 at 8:34 PM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
Aaaand I already tricked myself into thinking that I managed to break my @zenitizer.bsky.social streak when, really, I just had the wrong instance of the app open haha 😅

Was a bit of a shock for a moment but a quick peek into the App Switcher reassured me haha 😮‍💨
A screenshot of the Zenitizer daily goal and showing a streak of just two, which wouldn’t mean I would’ve broken my existing streak. A screenshot showing the Zenitizer DEV app name and the construction style icon in the app switcher meaning that this was merely the development version of the app and my personal streak is still intact.
April 27, 2025 at 1:31 PM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
The separate icon may seem like a gimmick but it really helps to easily distinguish the two app instances at a glance 👀

And on watchOS it's absolutely necessary since there are no names in the app grid!

#watchOSDev
A screenshot showing both the Zenitizer development version installed straight from Xcode next to the production version installed via TestFlight on my personal Apple Watch. The development version has a little black and yellow construction site indicator in the bottom right corner.
April 27, 2025 at 1:31 PM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
Today, I finally changed the DEBUG build config for @zenitizer.bsky.social to have its own bundle ID, app group and CloudKit container to have a clean separation of data when running in-development test builds on my personal phone…

Are you using a similar strategy? 🤓#iOSDev
A screenshot showing both the Zenitizer development version installed straight from Xcode next to the production version installed via TestFlight on my personal phone. The development version has a little black and yellow construction site indicator in the bottom right corner.
April 27, 2025 at 1:31 PM
manuelkehl.bsky.social
The separate icon may seem like a gimmick but it really helps to easily distinguish the two app instances at a glance 👀

And on watchOS it's absolutely necessary since there are no names in the app grid!

#watchOSDev
A screenshot showing both the Zenitizer development version installed straight from Xcode next to the production version installed via TestFlight on my personal Apple Watch. The development version has a little black and yellow construction site indicator in the bottom right corner.
April 26, 2025 at 1:02 PM