I missed a meeting I was sitting ten metres away from.
A calendar notification is a polite little banner. Some meetings need a tap on the shoulder you cannot scroll past.
Summon, for Mac
About ARRcade
Hi, I'm Anand. I build the apps I needed that afternoon.
ARRcade is a one-and-a-half-man studio. I design, write, ship, and answer the support email for every app here; the half is my son Aditya, who decides which ideas deserve any of that. Most of them began as an ordinary annoyance on an ordinary day — the kind most people shrug off. I don't shrug. I open Xcode.
How an app starts
Most of them started as my own problem
I don't research markets or chase categories. Something goes wrong in my own week — a meeting missed, a folder deleted, a library full of misspelt artist names — and I get annoyed enough to fix it properly. If the fix turns out to be useful the morning after, it becomes an app.
That's why the catalogue looks a little unruly: a Mac data-recovery tool sits next to a counting game, a flight journal next to a music tag editor. They have nothing in common except me. Each one is the smallest honest answer to a real, boring, specific problem — which is also why none of them try to become a platform, a subscription, or a social network.
It keeps me honest, too. I am the first user of everything I ship, so an app that's fiddly, slow, or nags for a rating doesn't survive the first week on my own devices. The apps that didn't start with me started with Aditya — he's the other half of the studio, and he's next.
One artist, five spellings, across twenty thousand files.
Editing tags one track at a time is a lost weekend. I wanted a spreadsheet for my music library, with a preview before anything is written.
Retag, for MacI deleted the wrong folder, and every recovery tool wanted my money before it would tell me anything.
Show me exactly what is recoverable, with a real preview, and let me decide. That's the whole product.
Unearth, for MacTwo folders drifted apart and I couldn't tell which side was right.
Sync tools are confident and destructive. I wanted one that shows the plan first and only then moves a byte.
Even, for MacSomeone always ends up dialling in at 6am.
Working across time zones shouldn't mean doing arithmetic in your head at midnight. Show the hours everyone actually shares.
DayshiftOpen a calculator, do one sum, close it again. Twice an hour.
Some tools don't deserve a window, a Dock icon, and a context switch. One click in the menu bar, an answer, done.
Calcbar, for MacEvery flight blurred into the last one.
Boarding passes get thrown away; the window seat over Borneo shouldn't. A journal that maps where you've actually been.
Up in the AirThe best thing I ate last year, and I can't remember the street.
Photos remember the plate. They don't remember the place, the dish name, or whether it was worth the queue.
Map My FoodI bought the music. Why am I listening to a worse copy of it?
Files you own, played at the quality you paid for, without a service in the middle deciding what you may hear.
IsaiiCloud has been full since the day we started filming Aditya.
Every one of those clips is a moment I'm not deleting to make room for the next one. The only honest fix is smaller files that still look like the day they were taken — up to 70% off, quality and metadata intact, all on the phone.
Klin
The product guy
When I run out of ideas, I ask Aditya
Aditya is my son, and he is the product guy. Whenever the well runs dry — and it does, more often than a tidy founder story admits — I put the problem in front of him. He doesn't know what a roadmap is, which turns out to be an advantage. He just tells me what he'd actually want to open, what he'd play twice, and what he'd quietly never touch again.
He's a ruthless reviewer. He'll use a half-built screen for ten seconds, hand the phone back, and deliver a verdict with no cushioning whatsoever. It is the most useful product feedback I get, and it arrives before I've wasted a month.
Which Bus is his, start to finish. He'd been playing Next Station, my MRT quiz, and wanted the same game for buses — name the service from its route. I explained that buses are a far messier network than a metro line, which is precisely why it would be a harder game to build. He was unmoved. So I built it, and now I lose to him at it regularly.
“Appa, this is boring.” — the shortest design review in the business, and usually correct
- “Too many buttons.” Cut the screen in half. He is never wrong about this.
- “What does that one do?” The icon has failed. Rename it or remove it.
- “One more round.” Ship it.
The catalogue
What ends up on the shelf
Four rough groups, in the order they usually happen: something breaks on my Mac, something bugs me on my phone, Aditya asks for a game, or a script I care about needs a way to be typed.
Mac utilities
Retag cleans a messy music library in one pass. Unearth shows what it can recover before you commit. Even previews a sync before it moves anything. Calcbar keeps a calculator one click away. Summon makes sure a meeting alert lands.
Learning, mostly for one kid
The education shelf is Aditya's backlog, more or less: Countopia, Equal, More, or Less, Infinity, Numbers, Tiny Streaks, and Story of Us.
Language & culture
A script survives when people can type it. Aksara Bali is a free Balinese keyboard and learning app; Tamilgram traces 2,500 years of Tamil writing, letter by letter. Neither will ever cost anyone their alphabet.
Everyday tools & play
Dayshift, Up in the Air, Map My Food, Klin, (nothing) To Do, Habit, AnyKiosk — and for the evenings, Hantu Line, Which Bus, and GIT: Guess In Ten.
House rules
The things I won't do
These aren't marketing promises. They're the rules I set so that I'd still want these apps on my own devices — and on my son's.
-
No ads, ever
No ad networks, no analytics SDKs, no third-party trackers quietly riding along. Nothing in an ARRcade app is trying to sell your attention to someone else.
-
No subscriptions
Free, or one payment. If an app gets better after you buy it, that's the deal working the way it should — not a reason to bill you again next month.
-
No account to create
You shouldn't need to hand over an email address to count to ten, compress a video, or find out which bus goes to Tampines.
-
On-device by default
Where an app touches your files, photos, or calendar, the work happens on your device and it asks for the least access it can get away with. Several apps have no network code at all.
-
Native, and small
Swift and SwiftUI, built for each platform rather than wrapped around a web page. Small binaries, fast launches, and features that respect the OS they're running on.
-
A person answers the email
Every privacy policy is in plain English, and every support message reaches me directly. There is no queue, no macro, and no tier-one agent.
Say hello
Found a bug? Got a better idea?
Bug reports, feature requests, and “have you thought about…” emails all land in the same inbox, and I read every one of them. If your idea is better than mine, I'll say so — and it might well end up on the shelf.