I happened to glance through my apps before I hit update all and saw that this is now 15X larger than it used to be. Glad I have skipped this so far!
Frankly, I guess I could live with the new “features” but the app was pretty near perfect before. More sounds, fonts, and low-res images should be a fractional add, not an exponential one.
What is it that accounts for all of the bloat and when will you make it go away?
You missed the boat here by not just offering a new app on a parallel track - One star.
Came here to say the same thing. Certainly not a priority given all the issues people are facing today, but maybe @phillryu could explain what’s making it so large?
It’s kind of symptomatic of the whole new version, unnecessary bloat for what should be a simple list app.
The app is too large I think because the fonts, themes, sounds; and app icons are already downloaded. But not available until you get them as a reward or buy them through the shop.
Sure, we would have to scan it to really break it down once launch dust settles but I would guess the main culprits are:
• Launch onboarding videos + images, had issues last minute compressing those properly and was in a rush to squeeze that in (the opening cards you swipe) for launch. Probably could trim off a solid 20-40 MB here.
• Sound themes can all be compressed, that will be done in an early update
• And yes there are a lot of assets with the collectibles / store side of Clear, hundreds of app icons and dozens of fonts etc. that would add up.
Past initial low hanging fruit with compressing etc. the big thing as @moinessn noted is transitioning to a system where it downloads some assets where it can contextually, e.g. a full sound theme only if you unlock it. That is a little more involved to implement but we are planning to eventually, Apple has a helpful service for this stuff.
I should post something more in depth/articulated later for people curious, but there is this dynamic where the collectibles enable a business model that could possibly be sustainable for us, without requiring a subscription. (The $5 upfront was not working for many years in today’s App Store world.) And you are welcome to ignore the shop if you don’t care for it!
It also does not tie our business model to adding more and more features over time. So there is a legitimate argument that it could shield Clear’s core simplicity from that kind of feature creep that would ruin it. Realize I’m rambling here but I hope that conveys some of it!
I think that’s an excellent summary. I think moving a formerly paid app to a subscription model leads to unnecessary feature creep, and it certainly leads to me not subscribing.
But when I can tip you by getting shiny themes? Yeah, that I will do. Often.
Also, somewhat amusingly, I think the phone upon which I first downloaded Clear had 8 GB of storage. Now I’m at 512. As a percentage of available storage space, this app may actually be actually smaller…
Agree! I was fine with the prior version - I can’t do reminders or return to the master list of lists. I have no new features that I know of & can’t get out of the To Do list to see if there are tips or anything.
Ok we need to do a better job of onboarding this and I realize I’m going to sound a little insane in this post, but try tapping towards the bottom of the screen. (Like above the ‘iOS multitasking bar’)
You can also still pinch shut or pull down to go back (past adding a new item) but once you get comfy with the invisible back button it’s very efficient.
You do have to pull down a good amount (or release pull down when the UI snaps/shrinks). If you have difficulty doing this, let me know if you happen to be on an SE or something like that.
Yes I do. Old phone with a shorter aspect screen ratio vs. latest ones? If so this might be a bug / blindspot here that we have to tune. (Similar for the swipe right for reminders.)
Hoping 2.0.2 or 2.0.3 we can do a compression pass and slim it down a decent amount to start, go from there.
Not sure what an SE is. I have an original iPhone X. No matter how far I pull and/or release it doesn’t work. Also the “add item” row gets a bit flaky… sometimes it disappears completely while I’m pulling down.
Does it back out if you release the drag when the ‘next item’ text disappears? If so that would be working as expected. We are kind of hoping most people go for the back button though since it’s snappiest.
Ok interesting, maybe it is broken somehow at least in certain cases. Will have to dig into this after we get through the data bugs affecting some right now.
As the app is now quickly approaching half a gig with these new image themes, has reducing the app size been set aside?
Each app update for Clear takes a very long time to install and after an early update that did reduce the size, each update since has only increased it.
For comparison, Carrot Weather which is in a similar category of being a weather app with a ton of customization and extra features is just over 150 MB.
We are working this week on assets downloaded on demand for graphic themes from our S3 server. This should directly target the root, then we’ll follow up with some more slimming/compression passes!
