Creating a lean app without a server. 

Hey Everyone 👋🏻

AJ here again with another article for ZoZo’s blog! For those who don’t know ZoZo allows you to create Keyboard Shortcuts for the Photos, Links & Files you want to share at any time. You no longer have to go searching for content, instead save that content to a Keyboard Shortcut inside of ZoZo to share that content, whenever you want. 

Check out ZoZo here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zozo-app/id1639795583 

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Alright, I’m done spamming. Lets jump into the fun stuff… building a lean Serverless App with SwiftUI. 

If you didn’t know already, ZoZo is built on SwiftUI. I chose SwiftUI because of how much I love the language and how it allows you to easily build cross platform apps… by the way ZoZo Mac version coming soon 👀

Not only does SwiftUI allow you to easily create cross platform apps, but there are a ton of other benefits that can help take your iOS app to the next level.  In this article I wanted to introduce one of those benefits, it’s called User Defaults. When I set out to build ZoZo the biggest thing I wanted to do was create an app that was lean. I wanted to keep the overhead low to increase our runway in getting the product off the ground. 

One of the developers that helped build ZoZo suggested we implement User Defaults. 
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What are User Defaults? ‍

User Defaults allow you to save content to a Users device essentially. See more use cases in the below screenshot

Using User Defaults would allow us to completely ignore any type of server costs since we’re storing everything on the Users device. Which means, any Shortcut or Purchase you make inside of ZoZo, will be stored on your device and not in our servers. Not only does this save us money but it also calms down the Users anxiety worrying about a cooperation like ourselves selling their data. We’re big on User Privacy, which made this decision a no brainer. 

Another benefit of User Defaults is that User no longer have to create an account, which means they can start using your app right away… this is one of the small benefits we love offering our Users.

With that being said, I wouldn’t suggest always using User Defaults. We did run into a ton of roadblocks when it came to App performance, but we eventually found a way to make everything work. With that being said, User Defaults won’t always replace your servers, but in ZoZo’s case it does. 

Who knows, maybe Apple will make improvements to User Defaults, if they do I can see a ton of Apps not requiring Users to create an account anymore

Don’t be afraid to download ZoZo to check out User Defaults in action! Thanks for tuning into our Ted Talk, I hope you enjoyed it!