How I built Vicedex, a GTA 6 cheats and checklist companion

Max — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 13:31:09 +0000

GTA 6 comes out on 19 November 2026. Search for "GTA 6 cheats" today and most of what you find is GTA V codes with a new heading, or guesses. I wanted the opposite: a reference that lists a code only after someone has entered it on a retail copy of the game and watched it work. That rule became the product, and the tagline: Verified. Not guessed.

Vicedex is two things: the website vicedex.app and a free iPhone app, GTA 6 Cheats, Map & Checklist. Here is how it is put together.

The rule shapes the data

Every cheat entry carries the date it was checked and a named source. The app shows a "verified" seal only on codes tested on GTA 6 itself. GTA V codes are in the app today, but they are labelled GTA V everywhere, carry "Checked" with a date instead of the seal, and live behind a separate switch so nobody mistakes one game for the other.

The GTA 6 list ships empty. That sounds odd for a cheats app, but an empty list with a clear reason is more honest than a full one made of guesses.

One content feed, two front ends

Cheats, the checklist, news, videos and guides are JSON files in the app repo. A single Python build script validates them and publishes them under /content/ on the website, with a manifest and a version number. The app bundles a copy for offline use and fetches the live feed when it can. So when the first real code is verified on launch night, publishing it is a website deploy, not an App Store review.

The site itself is static HTML that the same script renders, served by a Cloudflare Worker. The deploy script builds, runs the Worker and end to end tests, checks the build and then production against a list of plain rules (one h1 per page, a self canonical, no noindex, a sitemap with trailing slashes and dates), and pings IndexNow.

The app

SwiftUI, iOS 18 and up, with the Xcode project generated by Tuist. Four tabs:

Home: a countdown, the unlock time we expect in your time zone, dates with local reminders, and sourced news marked official or community, with spoiler safe mode on by default.
Map: a painting of Leonida with the places Rockstar has named. You save places to lists, number a day one route, add notes and drop your own pins. Everything stays on the phone.
Plan: a launch checklist you can add to, reorder and tick off. No account, no sign in.
Cheats: button sequences drawn for your controller, a big display mode and read aloud.

There is also a Lock Screen and home screen widget for the countdown.

The map is painted from public data

There is no official GTA 6 map yet, and I did not want to copy a fan map. So the base map is our own painting, drawn by a Python script from public domain US land cover, elevation and census data, at 8000 by 7730 pixels and cut into tiles. The app reads the map definition from the website, so pins, links and even the base image change with a deploy.

A bug worth sharing

When the app was translated into 45 languages, testing in Arabic turned up a countdown that was simply wrong. The code built "19 November 2026" with the phone's current calendar, so on phones set to the Islamic or Buddhist calendar it pointed at a different day. The fix is to build fixed dates with the Gregorian calendar explicitly and only format them in the user's calendar. If you ship a countdown, check this.

Launch night

On 19 November a small group of players on PS5 and Xbox will test codes as they surface. Each one goes up with a clip or source and the time it was checked. If a code on the list fails for someone, it comes down until it has been checked again.

The site and the app are free, and every code is free. If you are playing on day one, the list is at vicedex.app/gta-6-cheats/.