Clear iPad & Mac Taken Off Sale

If I could summarize our situation – we are a genuinely tiny, guerrilla indie team, but very passionate about rebuilding the app for the next ten years.

Being so tiny we have to both be pretty brutal about picking our main targets, while also really leaning into our strengths and the more unique personality and perspective of Clear initially to maximize our impact and ship something that excites the world again. The kind of features other developers can’t do for their apps because their apps have the same perspective like all the other to do apps, but for us and our app being Clear, happens to slot in quite easily and naturally.

Syncing happens to be a feature that seems deceptively simple, but at least from our past experience, can be a year+ long project to get like… 98% there in reliability. But it could take another year to stamp out the next 1% of edge cases, and so forth. (If you’ve ever run into strange syncing issues with Apple’s own services you’ve probably wondered why this is happening with a trillion dollar company in charge.) Unfortunately the current Clear syncing code is ancient and in that ~95% reliability zone which does not make it an efficient ‘fixer upper’. So when we attempted to write a new sync from scratch… it turned out to be a prohibitively costly project for a team of our size and the current state of Clear’s business where it needs a reboot to have a chance to survive and thrive in the future.

To be honest when I look back, if I have a single regret about Clear 1.x’s roadmap, it was pursuing sync and clients on Mac/iPad way too early. It was a huge amount of baggage for an also then very tiny, indie guerilla team, and quickly enough burned us all out, before we were able to get the business to a sustainable kind of place to support that kind of longterm ramp up on development costs.

Oh and there was also always a side I think you know and appreciate to Clear of feature minimalism, and keeping you totally focused on your lists. So there is a side of the new Clear resetting back to an even simpler place (to regroup and rebuild on cleaner foundations) that is also healthy I think for its design longterm. Think Casino Royale for Bond after the Brosnan years.

That said… we now have a foundation we dug deep underground, to support what we want to build over the years above ground, and it’s going to move FAST compared to the stasis you’re all used to over most of the past decade for Clear (iPhone) updates.

I also believe we have a good new angle to support layering on some more opt-in functionality just for those who want it. (A set of personalizable gestures you can set up.) So this will be a good way to accommodate some Clear 1.x features cut for now and bring them back in a way that doesn’t clutter the app for those who don’t care for them. (Like sorting a list, or sending list via email, etc.)

That’s a lot to say we are going to focus our effort on the ‘90%’ of our user base and trying to make the experience as exciting and robust as possible to start, and then should hopefully be in a great place to start filling in support for various very important more specific requests etc.

Sorry this turned out so long! It’s a complicated situation even to try to summarize :sweat_smile:

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Thank you @phillryu for this clarifying summary! We much appreciate everything you and your team do for all of us who love, use and rely on Clear!

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Hey Phill, on a slightly unrelated note; when I open The New Clear: coming soon, in the Legacy app, is that The Car Guys I hear in the background?

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It is! I find it nostalgic personally, it might seem very random to others haha.

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:heart_hands: Much appreciate how much you all care! Community is already helping catch a lot of blindspots and sparking and contributing fun ideas. Very motivating for us.

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It made me oddly happy. I haven’t heard that show in years and almost thought it was all in my head.

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I see a world with hand gestures. Better start working on the Apple Vision version! :sweat_smile::v:t3:

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Hello, I am a long time owner of Clear - I have both the iPad and iPhone versions purchased, but no longer own an iPhone. I did not know that there ever was a version made for the Mac and my Macbook Air is the primary method that I use for all my work.

Is there any way that the Mac version can still be purchased or accessed for those who did not purchase it before it was off the store? I have had so much trouble finding a good, useful, practical tool for to-do lists in this day and age (which is crazy considering you’d think there’d be more developers out there working on this.)

Your app is literally the only one that I find useful and accessible - where I am actually making progress in my goals.

Please let me know if there is any way that I could still pay for and access the old app - (even if there’s no syncing and no guarantee of future support!)

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Honestly I don’t think there is… we took it off sale from the Mac App Store and afaik the only way we could allow a sale like that is to put it back for sale officially. Sorry to disappoint there, but we of course do hope to make our way back to Mac someday.

Very disappointed to discover that Mac will no longer be supported. I love clear and have used it for years, but unfortunately I need a solution that syncs across mac and iphone. I am constantly jumping back and forth between devices depending upon what I am doing, where I am, etc. Sadly I will be moving on to another solution, but I hope I can come back someday if you choose to revisit the Mac option. Totally get that what you are doing may be necessary given your small team and resources of course. So definitely not complaining here. Just mourning the loss of my favorite productivity tool. Best of luck with everything, and thanks for many years of a great product.

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i’ve had the Clear Todos app on my iOS devices for a few years… love it.

was looking to see if there was a version for mac i could sync up as well… seems there is, but i’m unable to get it.

only link i’ve found that seems to lead that way ends up with a message from app store saying its not available in my area (Canada).

reached out to Realmac and they redirected me over here.

is there ANY way i can get Clear for mac in Canada?

I believe the Mac and iPad apps were pulled from the virtual shelves earlier this year because they’re Old Clear, and New Clear won’t sync with them when it launches. (Old Clear itself stopped syncing properly a while ago as well, at least on my end.) The new app is slated to be iPhone-only at launch, to eventually be joined by new iPad and Mac companion apps.

I used the sync functionality in Old Clear a good deal, so I look forward to it coming back. It’s great for those times I come up with a list while using my computer, but I expect to check most of the items off while using my phone. Handy when my phone is charging in another room, too—I don’t need to go fetch it or interrupt what I’m doing on another device to access my lists.

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Here’s more around the announcement: Clear iPad & Mac Taken Off Sale

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i use all the time on iPad, iPod, and iPhone…

will we still have access to the current/old version that works, or is there gonna be some forced upgrade that kills their functionality?

You can sync between iPad and iPhone? Mine stopped working a long time ago.

it seemed to stop for a while… though got it working again…

(or can’t recall if maybe didn’t have sync on in the first place as was mostly just using it on one device.)

either way, it had just turned out that the iCloud sync wasn’t turned on on one of the devices - whether it hadn’t been in first place or oddly got turned off on its own. but once flipped it back on, am good to go again now…

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Unfortunately it will stop syncing when the update is released this year. I think technically you could literally turn off iOS auto app updates to stay on the old version, but this would be an ongoing hassle of a workaround.

What I can say is we are re-evaluating current options for syncing and experimenting again, hoping there is some simpler version we could start with earlier in new Clear’s update roadmap. But this is quite early, we began scouting again on this last week, and are having to do this more back burner while we wrap up on other things for initial release.

I don’t feel good about this situation, but I am worried we would repeat the original Clear’s cycle where we took on sync too early and burned out with all the other platform SKUs + not reliable enough sync to deal with.

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I might be one of the lucky few where I had no problems syncing between Mac, iPad and iPhone. I used Clear on all three platforms all the time, even just yesterday. I’m really disappointed this is now broken, and it will push me once and for all to making Apple Notes my main list app, at least until there is syncing functionality back in Clear.

Hello!

I bought- Clear- for fon and desktop. Suddenly the sync between both doesn‘t function. This is essential and that was the reason for me to buy both.
If it will bot sync anymore- I please want back the money for both - i fon AND mac desktop app.
Or can i rebuild the old version of clear at the i fon?

Dank & Gruß - C. Schiener

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Saw your email, responding there!