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Originally published at https://bestlatestapps.com/blog/redacting-a-pdf-so-the-text-is-really-gone/. Why a black rectangle isn't a redaction, how my browser tool finds words in PDF coordinates, rasterises only the pages that need it, and refuses to save until the hidden text can't be found There's a familiar kind of news story: a document is published with black bars over the sensitive parts, someone selects the text under the bars, pastes it, and there it all is. The bars were shapes drawn on top. The words were still in the file. That failure is the whole design brief for the Redact PDF…

Originally published at https://bestlatestapps.com/blog/generating-swift-codable-types-from-json-in-the-browser/. Inside my JSON to Swift Codable converter: a parser that keeps 1.0 a Double, type inference that merges array items, naming that survives Swift keywords, and a decoder snippet that matches the dates it found Every iOS project eventually gets a new endpoint, a JSON sample in a ticket, and twenty minutes of typing let properties and CodingKeys cases by hand. It's dull work, and it's also where real bugs come from: a field that's null in one response but not the sample, a price…

Originally published at https://bestlatestapps.com/blog/background-removal-in-the-browser-u2net-onnx/. How my background remover turns a 320×320 saliency mask into a full-resolution cut-out with soft edges, entirely in a Web Worker, with WebGPU when it's there and WebAssembly when it isn't Background removal is one of those features that feels like it needs a server: a big model, a GPU, an upload. For a lot of photos, it doesn't. A small segmentation network can run in a browser tab, and most of the quality people notice, clean edges and hair that doesn't look cut out with scissors, comes…

Originally published at https://bestlatestapps.com/blog/a-document-scanner-in-an-afternoon/ Apple's document camera on iOS 13+, a Vision rectangle-detection fallback for older devices, enhancing scans with Core Image, saving locally, sharing PNGs and printing Scan Via Cam app icon Document scanning used to be a serious computer-vision project: find the page's edges, correct the perspective, flatten the lighting, sharpen the text. Today, most of that is a system view controller, but there's still plenty to get right around it. That includes older devices, enhancement that doesn't destroy a…

Originally published at https://bestlatestapps.com/blog/a-practical-guide-to-ios-haptics/ The three layers of haptic APIs, when to use each, building custom patterns with intensity and sharpness, AHAP files, looping and speed control, and two deprecations to know about in iOS 27 Haptics Explorer app icon Haptics are the most under-designed part of most iOS apps. Developers add .impactOccurred() to a button, feel it once on their own phone and move on. But haptics are a vocabulary: a light tick for a selection, a crisp double-tap for success, a heavier, duller buzz for an error. Used well,…

Originally published at https://bestlatestapps.com/blog/animating-algorithms-in-swiftui/ Separate the algorithm from the animation, record every step as data, then play it back with play, pause, speed and scrubbing, accessibly DSA Master app icon When I was learning data structures, the textbook diagrams were always a frame or two short. You'd see the array before the merge and the array after, and the interesting part, the moment the two halves interleave, happened somewhere off the page. That's the gap DSA Master – Data & Algorithms tries to fill. It's my learning app for data…

Originally published at https://bestlatestapps.com/blog/building-a-chromatic-guitar-tuner-on-ios/ From microphone samples to "A2, +3 cents": session setup, an input tap, autocorrelation with vDSP, note maths, smoothing and tuning presets Guitar Tuner: Chromatic app icon A tuner is the most honest app you can build. There's no design trick that hides a wrong answer: the guitarist plucks the low E, looks at the needle and then checks it with their ear. If the needle jitters, lands on the wrong octave or reads 4 cents sharp when the string is in tune, they delete the app. My app Guitar…

Originally published at https://bestlatestapps.com/blog/building-a-hashtag-copier-for-ios/ How to normalise tags so they actually work, model bundled categories with user edits, copy to the pasteboard without tripping privacy prompts, and redesign a "copy 30 tags" app now that Instagram allows five Hashtags Creator app icon Hashtags Creator was one of my first App Store apps. The idea was simple: pick a category, and a list of popular hashtags is copied and ready to paste into Instagram. You can customise the lists, delete tags that don't fit, and copy them in one tap. It's a small…

Originally published at https://bestlatestapps.com/blog/building-a-live-temple-darshan-app-for-ios/ Playing live and recorded video with AVPlayer, keeping darshan going in picture-in-picture, falling back gracefully when a stream is down, scheduling aarti reminders in the temple's time zone for devotees anywhere in the world, "Watch Now" and "Remind Later" actions, a next-aarti widget, and opening a temple in Maps the iOS 26 way Mandir Darshan app icon For many people, a daily visit to the temple is no longer a walk down the road. There are elderly parents who can't travel, and families…

Originally published at https://bestlatestapps.com/blog/building-a-live-ios-component-catalogue/ One registry for every component, hosting UIKit inside SwiftUI with UIViewRepresentable, wrapping the system pickers, comparing UIKit and SwiftUI versions on one screen, tag filters, search, favourites and recently viewed, and keeping copyable snippets honest Catalog Every iOS developer has done this: you need a segmented control, or a date picker in compact style, or a blurred toolbar, and you can't remember exactly how it looks or what the defaults are. So you open a scratch project, type the…

Originally published at https://bestlatestapps.com/blog/building-a-low-latency-virtual-piano-and-drum-kit-on-ios-with-avaudioe/ Samplers for pitched instruments, a player-node pool for drums, a multi-touch keyboard that handles chords and glissandos, and note names for beginners Drums n Piano app icon The test for a virtual instrument is brutal and immediate: tap a key, and the sound has to arrive with your finger, not after it. Play a chord and you expect three notes, not one. Drag your finger along the keyboard and you expect a glissando, not silence. Hit the snare four times quickly and…

Originally published at https://bestlatestapps.com/blog/building-a-real-time-mic-to-speaker-app-on-ios-with-avaudioengine/ Live audio passthrough in Swift: session setup, permissions, feedback, interruptions and route changes, from shipping an app that does exactly this Virtual Mic app icon Most audio tutorials on iOS cover one of two things: playing a file, or recording one. Very few cover the strange in-between case where the microphone and the speaker are both live at the same time, and whatever goes in comes straight back out. That in-between case is exactly what my app Mic to Speaker…

Originally published at https://bestlatestapps.com/blog/building-a-tap-to-match-marble-game-with-spritekit-and-swiftui/ A complete walkthrough of the game loop: marbles that settle under real physics, finding touching same-colour clusters, a pause-safe countdown, lives and levels, Lightning, Heart and Bomb power-ups, and particle effects, all hosted in SwiftUI with SpriteView Marbles Popperz app icon Every game developer has a "small" game that taught them how games actually work. Mine is Marbles Popperz, a puzzle game where you tap marbles of the same colour to match them and score points…

Originally published at https://bestlatestapps.com/blog/building-an-admob-earnings-dashboard-for-ios/ Signing in with ASWebAuthenticationSession and PKCE, storing tokens safely in the Keychain, calling networkReport:generate, decoding a streamed report, turning micros into money, why "today" is a Los Angeles day, live earning rates, and caching for offline use AdEarnings Pro app icon If you have apps with ads, you know the habit: open the AdMob website on your phone, pinch, zoom, wait for the dashboard, then do it again an hour later. I wanted a native, fast, glanceable view of my AdMob…