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NATIVELive2026
Beads Pro
A SwiftUI 3D prayer-beads app. Beading triggers haptics and sound, while a satellite globe shows other practitioners around the world in real time. Runs on iPhone / iPad / Mac / visionOS with zero third-party deps.
- Role
- Lead + full-stack
- Duration
- 2026
- Reading
- 1 min read
Stack
SwiftUISwiftData + CloudKitSceneKitMapKitAVFoundationCoreHapticsGo 1.23GinPostgreSQL 18
Product Shots
SCREENSHOTS · COMING SOON
Screenshots coming soon. Drop captures into public/works/<slug>/ and add a screenshots array to the mdx frontmatter.
public/works/beads/01.pngMost prayer-counter apps are just adders — visually flat and isolating. Beads Pro turns counting into 3D bead interaction plus a satellite globe of live blessing lights: as you bead, you see practitioners across the world lighting up the globe — turning solo practice into shared presence.
Problem
- Existing prayer apps are bare counters — no atmosphere
- Practitioners feel isolated, no sense of "we're practicing together"
- Visuals are too plain for younger users to engage with
Solution
- 3D beads replace the bare counter: ring / vertical / wrist modes with 9 wood-grain materials, haptic + audio feedback as you bead.
- Live satellite globe of blessing lights: each blessing shows as a light pin on a 3D satellite globe; in privacy mode, lights fuzz to city level.
- Shared practice presence: as you bead, other users see your light pulse on their globe; milestones trigger special animations.
- iCloud cross-device continuity: pause on iPhone, pick up on iPad, finish on Mac — all auto-synced.
- Atmosphere stack: 5 themes (Ink / Midnight / Temple / Lotus / Bamboo), 11 background tracks, 5 dedication-text templates.
Outcomes
- Live across iPhone / iPad / Mac / visionOS
- Global blessing lights render with low latency (~200ms)
- iCloud auto-syncs practice records across devices
- Pure Apple frameworks, zero third-party deps — robust through OS upgrades
Lessons
- For practice apps, atmosphere beats feature count: 3D beads + the shared-light globe drive daily-open behavior far more than adding 50 small features ever would.
- Cross-device continuity matters more than expected: users switch between iPhone / iPad / Mac throughout the day. Without iCloud sync the app's value is almost halved.