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Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

2.2K followers 670 following 4.2K posts

iOS Dev Happy Hour & CommunityKit organizer

Swift Leeds 2025 Speaker 🇬🇧

My latest app is Please Don’t Rain (2023 AppleVis Golden Apple nominee for its accessibility support)

he/him

#accessibility

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Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

I added an App Store description for Dutch and it's making make enter a marketing URL even though that's listed as optional. 🤔

A screenshot of App Store Connect that says the following:

Marketing URL
http://example.com (optional)

January 9, 2026 at 5:51 PM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

This is how you get me to disable notifications for your app.

A pop-up message from Ticketmaster that reads “the weekend is almost here. You deserve to make it a good one – get tickets to events near you!“

January 9, 2026 at 12:17 AM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

I wrote about it in this blog post.

In the past if you forgot to include a TestFlight you would need to completely fill out the entire form again. Now you can just edit the field you forgot to populate.

chriswu.com/posts/appsto...

Just had a great #WWDC22 lab with Cyrille from the App Store team. I wanted advice on what I should be doing if my goal is to launch a new app that uses the newest features when iOS 16 launches. Thanks to my labs from last year I knew about the form at https://appstore.com/promote.

BUT what I didn’t know is how he told me I should use it. Start playing around with the new features and when you’re happy with how things are going use the form to let the editors know you’re working on something that uses new features. A TestFlight link is really helpful.

Then when the release date of iOS 16 is announced fill out the form AGAIN letting them know that you’re using the latest features and you’re targeting the iOS 16 release date for your release. I absolutely would not have done this without his advice.

Thanks Cyrille!

January 6, 2026 at 8:03 PM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

While nominating my app to the App Store editors has never done anything for me I really appreciate how much easier the process is now.

I forgot to include a TestFlight and previously that would have meant that I needed to completely fill out the entire form again. That's no longer the case!

Featuring Nominations
Nominations
You can edit drafts or parts of your submitted nominations below. Or, if you're launching another noteworthy app create a new nomination that our editorial team will consider for featuring opportunities.

PUBLISH DATE TYPE TITLE
Jan 12, 2026, EST, App Enhancements, New Year 2026
Related Apps: Please Don't Rain

January 6, 2026 at 3:26 PM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

I finally got around to adding some helpful new weather data that was added with iOS 18 to my weather app @pleasedontrain.com .

I can now show upcoming changes and how the current day deviates from the recorded averages.

Please Don’t Rain showing the forecast with a description that says “the high and low temperatures for both decreased the next day“. Also below that is a section that says historical changes that show how far high and low temperatures deviate from the statistical averages.

January 5, 2026 at 12:04 AM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

Don't forget TipKit for your new buttons!

A tip that is appearing above the button labeled °F. The title is "Quick Temperature Change" and the body reads "Tap to quickly switch between Fahrenheit and Celsius."

January 4, 2026 at 4:16 AM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

All it took was this one line I learned from a new blog post from @natpanferova.bsky.social to make the transition animate nicely (when reduce motion is off, of course).

nilcoalescing.com/blog/Animati...

.contentTransition(reduceMotion ? .identity : .symbolEffect)

January 3, 2026 at 8:08 PM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

I got a request from a user to add a way to quickly change between Fahrenheit and Celsius in Please Don't Rain.

A toolbar button seems perfect for this and there's even SF Symbols for °F and °C!

January 3, 2026 at 8:00 PM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

Oops! Let me fix that. 🤗

- Line 141: Never use hardcoded time intervals like 86400 seconds - use Calendar date math instead

I notice I violated line 141 in the code I just wrote. Let me fix that:

January 2, 2026 at 6:50 PM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

I'm looking at some AI generated code and very very naughty for assuming a day is always 86400 seconds.

let expirationValue = now.addingTimeInterval(86400).timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate // +1 day

January 2, 2026 at 6:25 PM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

Fun digital watch faces with the (horizontal) digital time in the center of the watch face. What a concept!

One day we’ll have this on the regular Apple Watch? 😑

A photo of a Pebble watch on a wrist. The watch face shows the digit time in the center with the date on top and weather on bottom in a cute, cartoon style.

January 2, 2026 at 4:39 PM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

It always amuses me when I find old comments from when I was so confused about what was going on with dates I was seeing.

I was neck deep in time zone hell but didn't realize it yet. ⏰

The comment for a function says "i have no idea why, but chicago is returning its start of hourly forecasts as 12AM ET, but that's 11PM the previous day for them."

January 1, 2026 at 8:58 PM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

This is embarrassing, but I had no idea that you could run Xcode SwiftUI previews on device.

So nice for my VoiceOver testing!

December 30, 2025 at 4:16 AM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

I've been experimenting with accessibilityRepresentation for this use case and it seems to be working well.

.accessibilityRepresentation {
switch voVerbosity {
case .moreVerbose:
// use verbose string
case .lessVerbose:
// use less verbose string
}
}

December 29, 2025 at 10:29 PM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

I've been debating how to have VoiceOver read the data points for a new section I'm adding to Please Don't Rain for sun events.

I asked on @[email protected] and a couple of users suggesting a setting for more/less verbose.

I'm experimenting with adding it.

#accessibility

VoiceOver Verbosity section in the settings menu for Please Don't Rain.

First example (more verbose) says "Sunrise at 6:30 AM and Sunset at7:01PM for a duration of 12 hours 31 minutes."

Second example (less verbose) says "sunrise 6:30AM, sunset 7:01PM,
duration 12 hours 31 minutes".

December 29, 2025 at 8:33 PM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

Dutch exposing more of my crimes.

A data table for precipitation. "Winterse neerslag" is left justified but "sneeuw" is right justified.

December 28, 2025 at 5:27 PM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

Someone didn't handle their buttons with lots of text properly. 🫣

Fixed it with a .buttonBorderShape of .roundedRectangle when accessibility text sizes are in use and .automatic otherwise.

A red button with the text "Dense fog advisory and" in white text. The top version has text cut off because of rounded corners.

December 28, 2025 at 12:52 AM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

Apple Music gets me.

2000s Australian Electronic Essentials

The 2000s was a revolutionary time for Australian electronic music:
Revisit the hits, album cuts, and iconic tracks of the decade. Our editors
regularly update this playlist

December 27, 2025 at 6:09 PM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

German was already my go to language for testing long words but now that I'm adding support for Dutch....

(yes I know about Double Length Pseudolanguage)

Please Don't Rain showing sun and moon events and their times in Dutch.

December 27, 2025 at 1:27 AM

Chris Wu 🪐

@chriswu.com

Because I have @fireatwill12.bsky.social in my contacts sometimes iOS swipe typing refuses to use “will” and won’t even offer it as a suggestion.

But it suggests “Weill” even though there’s nobody named that in my contacts. 😵‍💫