Notes from building small SwiftUI products
Small apps are useful laboratories for product taste, state management, and the parts of SwiftUI that only become obvious through use.
Small SwiftUI products are a useful counterweight to large production codebases. The feedback loop is shorter, the product decisions are closer to the implementation, and every rough edge is easier to feel.
That makes them good laboratories. Not because they are simpler in every way, but because they make tradeoffs visible. You notice when state is modeled poorly. You notice when navigation is fighting the user. You notice when a setting exists because it was easy to add, not because it improves the product.
Taste comes from use
The best small-product lessons usually come after the first working version. Once the app is usable, the important questions change: what feels heavy, what can disappear, what needs to be one tap closer, and what should be impossible to misread?
SwiftUI can make this kind of iteration fast, but only when the structure stays honest. Views need to be small enough to understand. State needs a clear owner. Styling should support the workflow instead of announcing itself.
Keep the surface calm
For personal tools, calm is a feature. A small app does not need to explain itself loudly. It needs to behave consistently, keep the important action close, and avoid making the user manage the tool more than the task.