When you're building an app on your own, you'll never test absolutely everything.
Today I released RiverScript Desktop client 1.1, added several new features, and fixed the bugs that were discovered over the last nine days.
Some of them were quite serious. For example, users couldn't sign in to the desktop app using Google Chrome on macOS. Yes, because I tested Safari on Mac, and Chrome on Windows. At the same time, Mac users are the first people to find my app, because Apple doesn't make it easy to record system audio on its devices, while my application can.
I also found that some corporate email clients automatically open the authentication link before the user even sees the email, invalidating it before the user has a chance to click it.
I noticed that my backend wasn't accepting OGA files for transcription, even though the application uses FFmpeg under the hood, and FFmpeg supports OGA – as well as hundreds of other formats – without any problems.
All of these issues have now been identified and fixed.
By the way, I found them thanks to the monitoring systems I built into RiverScript during development. Sentry reports errors and sends me an email whenever something goes wrong. Umami analytics shows unusual patterns, like three consecutive visits from the desktop client to the desktop sign-in page without a successful login. Sometimes PostHog also reveals interesting things about what users actually need and which features they use.
All of this data is incredibly valuable.
It's much better to fix the big problems of a solo project when only a few new users run into them instead of hundreds or thousands.
By the way, even without any advertising, new users are now signing up every day, and they're coming from dozens of different countries.
It's a great feeling to know that you've built something on your own that someone in Canada, Japan, Germany, or Australia is using while you're asleep.
There's still a lot of work ahead, of course. At one point I thought I'd get a chance to rest a little after releasing the app. It turns out it's the opposite.
But I enjoy doing it.
There's a reason it's called a pet project. It really is like a pet – you have to look after it and take care of it, and in return it makes you happy.
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