I Built a Sleep App for Myself. My First Review Was 1 Star

I Built a Sleep App for Myself. My First Review Was 1 Star

From Programming Tech Brief By HackerNoon by HackerNoon

June 12, 2026 · 11 min

About this episode

The episode discusses the development of a sleep app that evolved from user feedback.

This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/i-built-a-sleep-app-for-myself-my-first-review-was-1-star . I built Sleep Island to fade out sleep sounds after I fall asleep. A 1-star review pushed it toward snore recording and sleep reports. Check more stories related to programming at: https://hackernoon.com/c/programming . You can also check exclusive content about #ios-development , #indie-hackers , #vibe-coding , #sleep-tracker , #sleep-habits , #sleep-medication , #sleep-island , #sleep-app , and more. This story was written by: @ethan . Learn more about this writer by checking @ethan's about page, and for more stories, please visit hackernoon.com . I built a small iOS app because fixed sleep timers never worked for me. It started as a simple “play sounds, detect sleep, fade out” tool. Then my first App Store review was 1 star because the app did not record snoring, so I added snore and sleep-talk recording. The biggest lesson: small personal problems can become real products when you use them yourself and listen carefully to blunt feedback.

Topics covered

  • sleep app
  • programming
  • user feedback
  • iOS development
  • product development

Keywords

  • sleep app
  • snore recording
  • sleep reports
  • HackerNoon
  • iOS development

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: HackerNoon

Products: Sleep Island, iOS app

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