It's been quiet on the blog...too quiet. But now I'm back to tell you about what I've been working on for the past few weeks...

Swirly wallpapers and dodgy websites

I like using gradients as background wallpaper for my phone. Recently Apple introduced the ability to generate custom gradient backgrounds to use as wallpaper but it's limited to linear gradients and just a couple of colours. My preference is for multi-coloured and 'swirly' wallpapers, which I recently learned are called mesh gradients.

Up until now I'd just go browsing Reddit or randomly Google for new mesh gradients to download and use as a wallpaper. But I find that a pretty hit-or-miss process that often leads me to crappy ad-filled websites that require account creation or whatever...surely there must be a better way?

Enter Meshy

Well, there is! I discovered that SwiftUI has a native way of generating a mesh gradient, so I decided to try and build a mesh gradient wallpaper generator app for iOS around that ability. And so Meshy was born.

My original intention was for this to be for me and me alone - Xcode lets you build and run apps on your own devices without needing to pay for anything. But I've since shown a few people the app and they asked whether it was available for them to download so I'm considering joining the Apple Developer Program to make it available for download on the App Store.

The app itself is super simple. There are some settings to play with that let you mix up the gradient colour palette, shape and grain, there's a button to generate a new gradient and one to save the current gradient to your photo library so it can be set as your wallpaper. And that's it.

I'm still on the fence about releasing it to the public. Apple charge £80 to let you distribute your app, plus I've seen so many horror stories about people unable to get past app review and into the store. I might give it a shot, though, just so I can say I've done it.

And who knows, if it goes well I have some other ideas that might make good apps in the future!