Aloe Bud is Here 🌱

Self care is important to us at Lickability. But, like everyone else, we sometimes struggle with remembering to take care of ourselves—sitting at a desk for hours at a time, working through lunch, and forgetting to drink water all day is not a good way to live.

That’s why we’re thrilled about the launch of Aloe Bud, the self-care pocket companion we’ve been working on with Amber Discko. After a successful Kickstarter campaign last summer, nine months of designing and developing the app, and several weeks of beta testing, Aloe Bud is finally available for free on the App Store for all your self-care needs.

What it is

The idea for an app that sends gentle reminders to eat, drink water, and take breaks throughout the day was born out of personal necessity — Amber wanted an app to help with basic self care and everyday mental health struggles. That app didn’t exist, so when they came to us with their vision, we were happy to turn it into a reality.

Whether you’re having a stressful day at work or you’re trying to relax at home, getting a notification that says “Breathe; it’ll be okay” might be exactly what you need to get through the day (or even just the hour). Aloe Bud makes it easy to set up reminders like this to remind you to do all kinds of activities, like drinking water, reaching out to talk to a friend, taking your medication, and getting up to move around.

How we built it

From the beginning, Aloe Bud was built to be as simple and straightforward as possible, with the ability to expand and customize it in the future. This is why it’s written with the latest version of Swift 4.1 for iOS 11.

Aloe Bud works almost completely offline with local notifications that only users can set up, and all user data is stored on-device only, taking advantage of Core Data for persistence. There’s no need to sign up for an account or connect Aloe Bud to your social accounts—this keeps users in control of driving their own self care experience, allowing us to lower the barrier to entry when it comes to self care. Another added benefit: a user’s data is kept private, only accessible to them.

We are also proud to incorporate open-source work from the iOS community in this app, including extensive use of Static for various parts of the UI and SwiftyStoreKit for in-app purchases. It would have been far more difficult to complete everything along our timeline without the use of these and other thoroughly-reviewed, well-tested libraries.

Now that Aloe Bud has launched, we couldn’t be happier with the reception — the app has been featured in the App Store, TechCrunch, and Bustle, and has received lots of positive feedback online. We’re glad you like it as much as we do! 😊

We were also lucky to work with such a talented team of people. Making the app wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work of all of these fine folks:

🌙 pixel art @galactic_castle
🖌 design @tinkadoic
🎶 sounds @Drainpuppet
📝 copywriting @jersing
📱 dev @amberdiscko & @lickability
🤓 research @jeansgallo
🙏 sincere thanks to 1,538 Kickstarter backers who brought this simple idea to life! 🌱 https://t.co/ULTIkM5pCk

— Aloe Bud ♡ (@aloebud) April 27, 2018

Aloe Bud is available to download on the App Store. Try it out and let us know what you think by leaving a review or @-ing us on Twitter.

Need some assistance making or updating an app? Contact us and we’d love to chat about how we can help.