I have some tough news to share here for some of our customers. Basically we are really excited about being on the verge of sharing a next generation of Clear with you and the world – but it will be for iPhone only.
What this means is starting soon, Clear Mac and Clear iPad will be taken away from sale to new customers on the App Store. For the foreseeable future after customers will be able to download these versions via their App Store purchased history menu.
Our hope is to eventually build back up to a new version of Clear Mac & iPad to pair with the iPhone’s reboot, but this will take some serious time and a successfully rebuilt business to come to fruition as a tiny band of indie creators who want to do it justice.
We realize while there are less than 4% of you who use Clear on iPad or Mac vs. iPhone, that if you are one of our Mac users especially, this announcement will feel kind of terrible.
Please forgive this difficult but necessary transition. It comes from a need to wipe the slate clean to build a strong foundation for the next ten years and involves tens of thousands of lines of outdated code and other baggage that we cannot handle as a tiny indie team, and holds us back from delivering the amazing listing experience on iPhone that is our center of gravity.
We promise to do our best to make up for it in Clear’s new future and thank you for any amount of understanding and patience with this unfortunate update.
It doesn’t feel great here either, but as a tiny team for now it will unload a lot of baggage for us to lift as much as we can for this reboot to start. We’re really hopeful this is the path towards that vibrant future the app deserves.
I’m currently using the iPhone beta on my iPad also. It’s a workaround but works. Will there at least be an iCloud sync function so that both apps stay synced? This could also come in handy for those with multiple iPhones
There will not be live syncing in the initial release of new Clear! Syncing is strangely extremely complex and expensive to handle as well as we’d like. But we will be launching with a simpler automatic iCloud backups system, to allow you to restore to your latest backup if installing fresh on a new phone etc. (This does allow you the option of transferring over from new Clear iPad to iPhone later on if you want, just not recommended for like swapping between them regularly day to day or something.)
Thanks for giving new life to the Clear which is now quite perfect as is. I have it on all my devices, so it does not seem that I will be able to “upgrade” to the new one until all my devices will be able to participate.
Or is it possible that the two apps could work side by side on my iPhone SE2 so I may compare their function, without releasing the one I already enjoy?
Hey Rachel, my honest hope would be you fall in love with the new Clear so much, you would be willing to put up with it being on your phone only until we can make our way back to the other platforms.
I will DM you a link to our current beta, which does install separately, so you can give it a test drive so far (and through the summer as we add final new features to it). The final release will be updating over the current app though!
Long time (and still current) Clear user here. The lack of syncing and cross-device is a real shame, although appreciate it was always the buggiest thing about the original app. As one of the 4%, I have to say I’m gutted after such a long wait for Clear to resurface.
Does this mean the current Mac app and iPhone app will cease to work at some point?
Yeah if anything I think if we could rewind, we wouldn’t have added it so early, it has been a huge strain for a small team to handle. (Sync + other platforms.)
From what I understand Clear Mac and iPad would still be available to download for past customers (the last version released). Clear iPhone we plan to update directly over it, so the only workaround there might be turning off auto updates which would be a big pain.
I’m hoping after we ship new Clear for iPhone, that the landscape has changed since we last looked into this and maybe there is a syncing solution we can hook into that is more reliable and doesn’t have to be custom made. I will also note the new shared lists feature we are working on will add even more reason for us to pursue that kind of backend.
Don’t forget Apple Silicon compatibility, as per my other comments. You should check whether it is possible to update an unlisted app on the MAS or, if impossible, offer the necessary non-MAS Universal version for old Clear users, with a big, fat disclaimer saying it won’t sync with new Clear for iOS (obviously the first option would be preferable, as you could put such a disclaimer on the MAS release notes instead and shield new users from that confusion).
Offering support means offering support, and if Rosetta is canned and we’re unsupported (and I’m not even talking lack of updates here, but the old app simply not launching anymore)… you’re likely to lose our patronage and word-of-mouth. We may be just 4%, but we’re a valuable 4%. And yes, considering how modern Clear for Mac was, and how functional it still is, we know it’s just a few tweaks and a recompile away.
This, I don’t really get. IIRC, old Clear used iCloud syncing (or at least that was what us, the users, could see and use during setup), and I never had an issue with it. As a matter of fact, it still seems to work perfectly. What gives?
It’s a shame that one of the things that makes Clear on iPhone great, the gestures, is the thing that makes it hard to just do a barebones Catalyst port for Mac. And I know your style, if you do something, you want to do it right.
Back when I used the first version of Clear, I didn’t use the MacOS version because I was happy with this cute thing that stayed on my phone. However since moving on to Apple Reminders, Drafts, Tot, and Notion (at various times) for lists and notes, I’ve become dependent on things being cross-platform for my workflows. Unfortunately what this means is that I’d hesitate to incorporate Clear again until that’s an option.
As I said, I’m not a Clear for Mac user, and to be honest I stopped using the Clear beta late last year, so this isn’t out of self-interest: I think you should reconsider having the New Clear replace the old one in the App Store. Renaming the old Clear to “Clear Legacy” (for example) and delisting it from the App Store would maintain both the cross-platform functionality as well as timed reminders and the other features that aren’t making it into 2.0. I don’t think that this would detract from the PR of launching Clear 2, as it’s a format that other indie devs have pulled off successfully.
Removing Clear from Mac will kill the power-use of the app!
First let met state that I have used Clear right from the start and that I have paid-for versions of the app for iPhone and also iPad and Mac. There are some bugs in Clear, most notably iCloud sync that can have at random issues although that seems to have become rare the last few months. Other than that it is probably the app that is powerful in its simplicity and my general advice for the new Clear would be to keep things more or less the way they are, provided minor bugs are dealt with. Clear is truly amazing and something I use constantly. The fact that it will no longer be available for Mac however is not trivial and this implies I will not be able to use it for work and other productivity related matters as these are typically centred around a computer, not an iPhone. I check and lightly edit lists on the phone but the power use happens on a computer. I fear this simple but strong “productivity app” will deteriorate in a toy app for listing “movies you want to see if ever you have the time” and other things that are really not relevant for productivity. Will the original Clear versions for iPhone/iPad/Mac remain available as a legacy app for a while so that at least I can keep using those? I fear the search for another professional listing app will inevitable for me unless there is an outlook on a follow-up for Clear on Mac on relatively short notice. Looking from the forum I think many of the loyal Clear users will be hit in the same way. So I would say, “if it works, don’t fix it” - I don’t see how a new version of a car having only three wheels could be a genuine improvement over the original four-wheel car…
Ok, well, I am using this beta version on my iPad Mini right now. I don’t have the Beta version on my iPhone. It seems to be working fine, and I have to say I was really looking forward to using it on both devices, because the previous version exchanged information back and forth effortlessly. So now I am wondering what the advantage is for me to upgrade. I don’t see any advantages, but maybe there are some that are not readily apparent — can you as the developer point some out to me? Also, is it easy to download the beta app to my iPhone after already downloading it to my iPad? How do I do that?
I’m very curious how people are able to still use iCloud sync on Legacy Clear. Mine stopped working a couple of years ago. Is there something you did?
I’d love to keep using Mac and iPad versions, and it’s my hope that they can be brought back at some point. However, folks need to understand that for developers it takes work to keep these things up-to-date, even if you’re not adding features. iPadOS and MacOS are constantly changing, and for a small team like Clear, even “keeping it as it is” involves a lot of work.
Anyway, enjoying the beta, and glad to see it is being actively worked on once again!
Very similarly to how you did it on your iPad.
Download TestFlight on your phone, open it, and sign into iCloud. You won’t need a new invite or the link, because TestFlight betas are shared across your iCloud account, kind of like apps you bought in the App Store. You should see it there in a list (along with any other app betas you’re in, if you are), with an Install button.
I agree with your main point though. Looking at the “What’s New” list (What's New in the New Clear ✨), there’s many more omitted features than new functional ones.
I understand why this is, though: the app has been essentially rewritten from scratch to support Apple’s new frameworks and platform. Which is a good thing in the long run! But until those core functionalities are there in the new one, I think the old should be kept around.
No, there was nothing special I did. I was describing the way worked many years ago, and I didn’t make that part clear at all. Sorry about that. Right now I use Clear only on my iPad.
That being said, I don’t understand why the new Clear can’t work across any Apple devices. There are many apps that do, so what’s the problem? For example, I use an app that I think is called lists, and it works for me on my iPad, my iPhone, and my wife’s iPhone.
So I just really don’t understand why we are bothering with all of this, if we’re not going to be able to use the app across many devices. Is this supposed to be a big step forward? How is that True?
Not only that, but I suspect that there will be a subscription required to keep the app working overtime. I think I could accept that, albeit reluctantly, if the app worked across devices. Otherwise, my interest in the new version of Clear is waning.
And yes, considering how modern Clear for Mac was, and how functional it still is, we know it’s just a few tweaks and a recompile away.