Rebuilt the app while it stayed live
Moved to Riverpod 3 and Drift screen by screen in both stores, then deleted the legacy services, models and DAOs.
Case study · 2024 – now
The Days We Keep
A private place for families to keep the ordinary days: photos, voice notes, letters and milestones, shared only with the people they choose.
- Role
- Founder and sole developer
- Platforms
- iPhone, iPad, Android
- Languages
- English, Spanish, Portuguese
- Business
- Subscriptions, 7-day trial
[Screenshot: Whole Family view]
[Screenshot: adding a voice memory]
[Screenshot: per-memory privacy]
[Screenshot: Time Capsule]
01 · The product
One private home for a family's story
Nothing is public and there is no feed. Parents invite a partner, grandparents and relatives, and choose who sees each memory. Over the years the app turns those moments into a timeline, growth charts and printable yearbooks.
- Seven memory typesPhoto, voice, letter, reflection, feeling, milestone and Canvas scrapbook pages.
- Per-memory privacyOnly me, parents, grandparents, everyone or a custom group.
- Time CapsulesSealed letters, photos and voice notes that open on a chosen date or event.
- Works offlineEverything saves locally first and syncs when the phone is back online.
02 · Architecture
Every read and write goes through a repository
That single boundary keeps the local database and Firestore in step, so the app works offline. Purchases are verified on the server before a plan unlocks.
Flutter app · iOS, iPadOS, Android
ScreensKeepsake design, GoRouter, 3 languages
Riverpod 3 stateProviders for each feature
RepositoriesOne boundary for all data access
Drift (SQLite)Offline-first local database
sync
Firebase backend
AuthSign-in and family accounts
Firestore and Cloud StorageFamilies, memories, photos, voice notes
Cloud Functions (TypeScript)Purchase verification, invites, renewals
FCM and CrashlyticsNotifications and crash reports
App Store and Google Play receipts are verified here before a plan unlocks.
03 · Hard problems
What I solved along the way
Made family sync reliable
Fixed new-device logins that pulled no data, comments that never synced in real time, and a re-entrancy bug that dropped sync passes.
Billing that can be trusted
Server-side verification for Apple and Google, the Play subscriptions v2 migration, Billing Library 8 before Google's deadline, and a fail-closed bug fixed.
Faster first open
Removed an N+1 query on the memories screen, made photos load lazily and split large screens into small widgets.
Privacy enforced in two places
Firestore and Storage rules scoped to each family, plus per-memory visibility in the data layer.
Release quality
Crashlytics with obfuscated builds and symbol upload on both platforms, and a fix for an iPad freeze caused by the system password prompt.
04 · Beyond the code
I ran the whole launch
Product, UX and the warm "keepsake" paper visual style, store listings and screenshots in three languages, the Next.js marketing site, and the brand's social media, published with tools I built myself.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Essentials | $4.99/mo or $34.99/yr | Up to 3 family members, all memory types, cloud backup |
| Unlimited | $9.99/mo or $59.99/yr | Time Capsules, up to 10 members, yearbooks and keepsakes |
Stack
Flutter · Dart · Riverpod 3 · Drift · Firebase Auth, Firestore, Storage, Cloud Functions, FCM, Crashlytics · GoRouter · Next.js