3weeks Dev Log #3 — July 25, 2019, 4:58 AM: First Launch

4:58 AM

July 25, 2019, 4:58 AM.

The App Store approval email arrived.

Any developer who's shipped their first app will recognize that moment. I was asleep when the notification came in. The feeling of reading it half-awake is still vivid.

Built Quickly

3weeks had a short development timeline. The features were simple: register habit, set notifications, check in daily, count to 21. No server, no complex UI.

Swift, UIKit, Realm Swift. The familiar stack for a solo iOS project. Prototype, refine the details, submit.

First Review Passed

This was before SMART LOTTO. I didn't yet know how unpredictable App Store review could be.

3weeks sailed through. A habit tracker with no sensitive category classifications, a simple feature set — reviewers had no objections. The wait was short.

Version 1.0 Was Genuinely Minimal

The first version had almost nothing:

Add / delete habits
Daily check-in
21-day consecutive counter
Notifications

That was it. The UI was rough by current standards. But it worked — and I immediately started using it to build actual habits.

Being your own first user is the best testing arrangement possible.

People Started Using It

A few weeks after launch, downloads started appearing.

No marketing, no promotion. People found it by searching — "21 days," "habit building," "3-week challenge." The keywords matched what people were actually looking for.

Then reviews came in.

"Has exactly the features I need, nothing extra." "Simple turns out to be better."

I hadn't expected this. I'd built it for myself. The fact that other people had the same frustration — no good tool for tracking daily habit consistency — hadn't fully registered until it showed up in reviews.

What This App Established

3weeks wasn't my first App Store release. But it was the first app I built to solve a real inconvenience in my own daily life.

SMART LOTTO was the same. Both apps started from the same place: "this is annoying — I could just build it."

That mindset became the foundation of how I approach app development.