I’ll give you the news fast, then slow. I’m making two announcements today:
- I’m working with Ben McCarthy to launch a new app, Croissant. It’s a super-fun, super-easy way to cross-post your social media posts to Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon. Hit the web site for more info, or just head to the App Store to get it on your iPhone.
- PupperPost, my easy-to-use blog platform with apps for Mac and iOS, is being completely re-imagined as a new app, Soapbox.
This all started last spring. Not long after I launched PupperPost, I hired Ben McCarthy to perform an audit of my app. Ben is a great developer and designer; you may know them best for their iPhone camera app, Obscura. Finicky photographers who choose Ben’s app love it for a package that delivers great power with terrific taste. That’s what drew me to Ben’s work!
Their screen-by-screen analysis of my app proved what the market was already telling me: PupperPost has a problem to solve, but this is not the best app to solve it. In a true this is how they get you moment, Ben proposed a vision for my app that I think is the clearest expression of a blog-posting solution: simpler, more focused, better-looking. And they even had a name for it: Soapbox.
I hired Ben to flesh that idea out into a completely new app for iPhone, iPad and Mac, and I’ve been working on it ever since. It’s been a long road, but I’m getting pretty close, and hope to launch Soapbox later this year.
But Ben had another idea too. During their audit of PupperPost, Ben identified the ability to cross-post as something that was interesting all by itself! They imagined an app that would solve a gnarly problem that is oh-so-2024; with all these new social networks rising in the wake of X’s demise, how can we post to them all? Croissant, an app just for cross-posting, was born.
This app is a real partnership. Ben and I are 50-50 on this one, and working with them to design and build Croissant has been an amazing experience: passing control of the Git repo back and forth between Dublin and Whitby as each works while the other sleeps. Lobbing ideas over iMessage in my mornings. Overall, the app came together very quickly.
Here’s a quick tour of what Croissant is, and how it works.
Wire Up Your Accounts
First, of course, you need to tell Croissant what services you want to post to. There’s an account management system that lets you pick your service, and log in. Your credentials are saved in the iOS Keychain so it’s secure.
Compose Your Posts This is where you’ll probably spend all your time in Croissant. The post composer is a familiar environment for social media users, giving you a character count, image insertions, content warnings, alt text editing, and the ability to build a chain of posts into a thread.
Post Where You Want When you’re ready to fire, the post button reveals your connected services; choose any or all to send your posts off. For each service you’ll get a progress bar and indication when it’s done.
Draft For Later Finally, you can collect posts that you aren’t ready to send as drafts. We provide a list of draft posts that you can re-hydrate and continue editing.
Croissant is iPhone-only at launch. But we’re looking forward to bringing it to more platforms as we becomed overwhelmed by its success. We’re excited to see what you think of it!