NextApp is finally in Beta!
1 min readNextApp is a native application inspired by Getting Things Done, with some extras to make me productive and inspiered. It's Open Source. It's written in C++20. The user app use QT to hadle a UI that works on Linux, Windows, macOS and Android. The backend, used for synchronization between devices, runs on Linux/Docker containers.
The plan was to release the beta in October 2024, but it was not ready. Since this is a lovechild and not a VC-financed hype, I kept going month after month until it almost became a habit. At the beginning of May 2025, I set a new release date: May 17th, Norwegian Liberation Day. That also failed. The website was not ready. The software to generate the website was not ready. The automated builds did not work properly. There was no infrastructure for metrics or logging. So I kept going, pushing the release from week to week.
Today, everything required was ready. I had a deployment of the backend running in two regions (Europe and North America). I had a server for collecting metrics and logs running locally in my homelab. The app mostly worked. All the really annoying bugs and the showstoppers were fixed.
I committed the final code and READMEs to GitHub this morning and triggered the automated builds. Six hours later, all the apps except the Android versions were ready. I ran the GitHub workflow to create a release, and it worked. Then I recorded the first video about how to use the app, finished the initial homepage, and built and uploaded the Android packages to the release. Lots of things did not go as planned. But in the evening, just after I fed the dogs at 20:00, I was ready. So I published the app’s homepage, then announced the release and asked for early beta testers on Reddit.
Tomorrow, a new phase of my life starts. I know nothing about how the app will be received - if anyone at all will care. But this thing was important to me. I have been talking about this app for over ten years. I have been talking and typing about its development since 2023. Now it’s real. No longer a dream. No longer a goal. It exists in the world.
I hope some good people will find it useful.