The latest articles on DEV Community by Kyoto Unknown (@kyotounknown). https://dev.to/kyotounknown https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F3892327%2Fce437e92-d275-4ba6-82c8-0260a2bded2e.png https://dev.to/kyotounknown en Kyoto Unknown Wed, 22 Apr 2026 11:25:01 +0000 https://dev.to/kyotounknown/how-i-built-a-free-forever-ios-travel-app-with-no-backend-no-analytics-and-no-ads-as-a-2c9b https://dev.to/kyotounknown/how-i-built-a-free-forever-ios-travel-app-with-no-backend-no-analytics-and-no-ads-as-a-2c9b <p><em>No backend, no analytics, no paid tier, and the story of accidentally becoming a developer while building an app for Kyoto's under-visited 80%.</em></p> <p>Hi Dev.to. First time posting. Pretty nervous.</p> <h2> The short version </h2> <p>I grew up in Kyoto. I built a free iOS app called Kyoto Unknown that lists the under-visited 80% of the city. Along the way I accidentally became a developer, and I'd love some honest feedback on what I've made.</p> <p><strong>App:</strong> <a href="https://kyotounknown.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">kyotounknown.com</a><br> <strong>App Store:</strong> <a href="https://apps.apple.com/app/id6762438418" rel="noopener noreferrer">apps.apple.com/app/id6762438418</a></p> <h2> The why (short, then I'll get to the dev stuff) </h2> <p>Kyoto gets about 50 million visitors a year. The vast majority go to the same 10-15 places — Fushimi Inari, Arashiyama, Kinkaku-ji, turning them into queues. Meanwhile the other 80% of the city, full of genuinely excellent places, sits empty.</p> <p>I didn't want to write another "15 things to do in Kyoto" listicle — that just makes the problem worse. I wanted to build something that actually redistributes visitors: a small curated app with handpicked quiet places, offline-capable, chosen by locals.</p> <p>One thing I made a commitment to: <strong>it will always be free.</strong> No ads, no tracking, no accounts, no paid tier, no affiliate links, ever. I wrote a binding commitment page at <a href="https://kyotounknown.com/promise" rel="noopener noreferrer">kyotounknown.com/promise</a> so I can't walk it back. Not a strategy, if the product is "please go to less-visited places", ads would flip the incentives toward whoever's paying.</p> <h2> The dev story </h2> <p>Worth saying upfront: I am not a professional developer. I started this project with some basic programming familiarity and a lot of Googling.</p> <p>A few months in, I realised I was actually enjoying the dev side as much as the Kyoto side. Something about having a specific, finite project to learn on turned every problem into something worth solving. Swift, Xcode, Core Data, Astro for the marketing site, Cloudflare Pages for deploys, a little bit of everything.</p> <p><strong>What I built with:</strong></p> <ul> <li> <strong>iOS app:</strong> Native Swift, SwiftUI, Core Data</li> <li> <strong>No backend.</strong> All places are bundled into the app as data. The app never makes a network request for content.</li> <li> <strong>No analytics.</strong> No third-party SDKs. No tracking.</li> <li> <strong>Marketing site:</strong> Astro + Tailwind on Cloudflare Pages</li> <li> <strong>Content:</strong> Markdown files in the repo, rendered statically</li> </ul> <p>The "no backend" choice was partly philosophical (I didn't want to collect data) and partly practical (one less thing to maintain, one less thing to break). I'm sure a real engineer would look at the code and find a dozen things to refactor.</p> <h2> What I'd love feedback on </h2> <p>Not looking for download numbers or "nice work." I'd actually love thoughts on:</p> <ol> <li> <strong>Is bundling content into the app a bad idea at scale?</strong> Right now I have 26 places. What happens if I have 300? Is it time to add a CMS, or is "ship a new app version per content update" actually fine?</li> <li> <strong>SwiftUI vs UIKit for content-heavy apps?</strong> I went all-in on SwiftUI and mostly it's been fine, but there are a few places where it feels like I'm fighting the framework (scroll performance with many images, offline image caching).</li> <li> <strong>Static + markdown site vs a proper CMS?</strong> I'm enjoying the simplicity of markdown files, but I worry I'm going to regret it at 100 posts. Curious what setups people have converged on.</li> <li> <strong>App analytics without tracking?</strong> I want to know if people are actually using the app — which places get tapped, do people use the map more than the list — without adopting Firebase/Mixpanel. Is there a privacy-preserving approach I'm missing?</li> </ol> <p>If any of these resonate, I'd love your take. Not selling anything — the app is genuinely free forever, no monetisation, no upgrade funnel. Just a passion project for the city I grew up in, and I'm trying to make both the app and the code behind it better.</p> <p>If you're going to Kyoto, give it a download and tell me what it gets wrong.</p> <p><strong>Kyoto Unknown:</strong> <a href="https://kyotounknown.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">kyotounknown.com</a><br> <strong>Free forever commitment:</strong> <a href="https://kyotounknown.com/promise" rel="noopener noreferrer">kyotounknown.com/promise</a><br> <strong>App Store:</strong> <a href="https://apps.apple.com/app/id6762438418" rel="noopener noreferrer">apps.apple.com/app/id6762438418</a></p> ios swift beginners showdev