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Show HN: Whenish – Plan Group Events in iMessages
hey everyone! i built Whenish because it was always so difficult to figure out what date worked best with a bunch of friends in a group chat.
Whenish is an iMessage app that allows individuals to select multiple dates that work for them for an event attempting to be planned for.
i have more ideas for new features but wanted to get something out there that was usable. so far ive had good reception in my friend group chats of Whenish.
download it, give it a go, let me know what you think! this is my first app i felt ~good~ about releasing.
App size: 990.2 KB I don't think I have seen an iOS app under 1mb ever. Wow!
It’s possible to have small app sizes on iOS if you stick to the built in APIs and don’t use an excessive amount of media assets.
Not to brag, but my app is 368 KB. Granted, it’s a very simple app.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/countdownula/id6479545149
Nice app, have you thought about adding widget support?
Thanks! That and Apple Watch support are the biggest things I’d like to add in the future.
I like this execution! I created something similar, www.pigeon.ooo, with the intent of eventually adding some scheduling functionality but alas, my own schedule has filled up so have not had a chance yet.
beautiful domain name
"Probably not used by anyone at these companies" got me, lol
Nice.
The one big thing that’s missing on the App Store page is a video in the first screenshot slot showing the value in iMessage. The other screenshots don’t matter much, only that they are the screens between the “let’s do a thing” message and “we are all available on Thursday evening” message.
What is the planned business model here? I see that this is published by an LLC and also that it doesn’t collect any data (the latter is great to know).
On the app itself, I don’t understand why it allows selecting past dates in the current month (e.g., Why al I allowed to select May 1st?) I can understand allowing a day or so to account for time zone differences, but usually people across large time zones differences wouldn’t be the audience for this app since it doesn’t allow for availability by time of the day.
im toying with the idea of maybe releasing more features in a premium upsell (one time $0.99 purchase or something like that). still ironing that out.
i release ios apps under an LLC in hopes that one day an app will make money and i would rather that be associated with an LLC.
good question on past dates! i will fix that :)
It would be neat if premium features could be attached to a group message without all contributors being required to purchase. Sort of like apples new events app which requires iCloud+ to schedule events but anyone can attend.
Side note, your calendar is showing wrong dates if the user sets their main iOS calendar to start on Monday instead of Sunday - your day titles never shift to match the date table which is presumably supplied through iOS.
how does it look on someone's phone who doesn't have the app installed yet?
heyo! so it will show the Whenish thumbnail in the chat when it is sent. when the user without Whenish clicks on it they will be routed to the app store to download Whenish.
I get it, but that's a hurdle for a lot of people. If someone is using this just once, they don't want to download an app. This feels like it will take convincing.
Perhaps, but if one person in an iMessages thread has it installed, that user’s recommendation will go far towards installing.
oic. maybe add an ascii poll display until it's installed?
> Whenish is an iMessage app
Where can I read more about using iMessage as a medium for generic multi-player collaboration? Or if you can just share the right keywords, I will appreciate that!
https://developer.apple.com/imessage/
Looks compelling from the app store page! Because I might use it I have to ask - how do permission work around messages? I'd assume something like this:
* Install App
* App cannot passively READ messages
* When I need to use the app, like in a group chat where we are spontaneously planning an event, I can invite it into the chat so that the group can input their preferences
* Other group members (who may also need to install the app) can interact with the widget to submit their planning prefferences
* Widget then WRITES results back to the chat
Does it ever read my messages? Does it ever write messages to the chat? Does my entire group chat need to install it?
Great work. Seems well targeted and that it could help a lot of folks.
this app never reads any messages. the iMessage framework is very strict around privacy...so much so that you are unable to get user information of. This is why you will see Participate 1, 2, 3 instead of the person's name. There is no way to get this information of who the sender is! Kudos to apple for this.
The only message that is written to the chat is when you hit submit. There is no external service as all information is stored as metadata on the message itself. I did not want to have an external server (which has its own challenges, see in another message around collisions).
Your entire group can see the message but in order to interact with the poll they will need to download the app. They will be redirected to the app store if they do not have the app after clicking.
oh, this is cool. crossing my fingers apple buys you out for a fat payday (if that's something you want) cause this seems like a natural feature for imessage/ical!
<3
Hopefully, you don't get Sherlocked
Congrats on publishing!
It seems like a very polished and better integrated version of https://www.when2meet.com/.
You say you do not collect info. Are you saving the meeting details and availability in a database?
there is no external server! all meeting information is stored as metadata on the message.
this leads to some issues with potential collisions like if two people click the Whenish message at the same time and submit their message, there is no way to merge both that data. while this is an issue, i wanted to err on the side of privacy as much as possible and not rely on a server at all.
Does it work on Android? We have to be realistic, 2/3 of the group is not on iOS or using iMessage :)
This isn't true in the US, where the vast majority of people (especially middle-class or wealthier) use iMessage as their primary messaging app.
And no, of course this iOS/iMessage app doesn't work on Android.
What happens to your friends on Android?
alas this is focused on iOS and i do not have plans to port to Android for the moment :(
You should be aware of the social impact this makes. iMessage is already partitioning Android and iPhone users socially. These products just make it worse and will exclude people from social groupa even more. There's also that lower income individuals who can't afford an iPhone and use Android devices for cost related reasons would lose out on event planning.
Given the amount of SMS spam and the lack of such on iMessage, I am, at this point, ready for iMessage-only life. The few friends I had who were not iPhone users, I gifted them iPhones. So far none switched back, and I get to ignore all non-iMessage incoming messages (and thus 100% of SMS spam)
Does iOS not have spam blocking in the SMS app? It all goes straight to the spam folder in Google Messages, haven't seen a spam SMS in years.
friends don't let friends android??
Hey this looks interesting! Too bad I can’t download it. Why prevent France from downloading?
let me take a look! iirc there was some compliance related documents Apple may have needed that freaked me out a bit? ill dig into it. apologies for this!
from a non-app developer, that's something I'd never even contemplated. I've only ever released websites, and I don't give a damn about compliance anything. I've spent time making something on my own, and now making it available for anyone else that comes across it to view. If the viewer lives in a country that has rules I'm never going to read, that's the viewer's problem. Luckily for the viewer, anything I make does not include any of the shit that has been attempted to be regulated. But if I did something offends those regulations, don't care.
These related documents you speak really makes me not want to app. I'm glad there are braver people than me. The only thing I can offer is "fly low and avoid the radar"
You might have missed the hubbub about websites shutting down or banning UK visitors due to concerns about complying with the Online Safety Act.
If the UK wants to force nationwide firewall rules to block my little ol' website, then bob's their uncle. I don't care if some Limey bastard can or cannot view my website. I mean censorship sucks and all, but I'm not going out of my way to ensure that I learn every single country's specific rules and find a way to ensure I comply with all of them. I am not doing business by accepting money in exchange for something. If my website states something that offends someone else because I said that chips is a dumb name for a fry when a chip is clearly a different thing entirely, then they need to get over themselves. Also, you put stuff in the trunk of the car, and you wear a boot on your foot. <insert_thumbs_in_ears_and_give_sloppy_raspberry> If someone feels unsafe about that, then good luck doing anything to me in another country about it.
Again, the main point is that I don't do shady shit that needs regulating. I don't use 3rd party libraries that hoover up data to be resold to anyone offering to buy. I roll my own JS to make something function. I write my own CSS to make it look "pretty". I know that nothing nefarious is happening because I didn't code anything nefarious to happen. My sites are about as lame as the people that think that regulations are going to solve anything
Whatever you do you need to comply with local regulations. Apple asking the documents straight up is actually _helpful_ because it’s stuff one HAVE TO DO anyways.
exactly. that doesn't "have to do" doesn't have to be done with a website. that's my point. reading about all of those forms that apple makes you fill out is just one more reason i don't app.
Just because you don’t do it doesn’t mean you don’t have to!
That's similar to what I say about doing shady stuff that regulations are trying to protect against. I don't do them, so I'm not violating anything.
It's a pretty simple philosophy. Don't do shady shit.
should be available in 24 hours...
if anyone knows about this (i remember i saw a warning by Apple) please let me know!
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I live in the US. The last time anyone messaged me in WhatsApp was six years ago when I was visiting Europe.
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Oh no, someone did a thing! I'd better demoralize him or her or else I'll be less of a human being.
Op, congrats on your work.
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"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
See also the Comments section of https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html, because your comment also broke those.
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You've broken both the Show HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html) and the overall site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) with this post.
Can you please take more care about this, especially in Show HN threads, where people are sharing their work and discussion is particularly vulnerable? It shouldn't be hard to make a comment about barriers to adoption that doesn't come across as a putdown.
(a) iPhones don’t cost $2,000
(b) Presumably this is meant for iMessage group chats where everyone is already, for better or worse, in Apple’s walled garden. Nobody is going to buy an iPhone just so they can use a Doodle clone with a nicer UI.
Yeah, Doodle was the site I was thinking of. In the few times I have used it, it was absolutely invaluable for finding the intersection of available times.
https://doodle.com/meeting/organize/groups
Uh huh. You don’t buy an iphone to use this app. You use this app on an iphone you already have. I think his goal was to be able to organise meetings with his iPhone friends , not encourage mass iPhone adoption ownership.
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By this logic every discord bot is also problematic
The thing is that Discord is much more multiplatform than iMessage. You don't have to pay for specialized Apple hardware to use Discord.