Promo Sunday
Trovelo: a trip planner with no servers, no account, just your iCloud
Hey r/apple, solo developer here. It's Sunday, so I wanted to share something I've been building for the past months.
Trovelo is a trip planner for iPhone, iPad and Mac:
- MCP on Mac: Claude, Codex or any MCP client can build a full itinerary inside the app, running 100% locally and off by default.
- SwiftData + CloudKit: your trips live on your device and sync through your own private iCloud. No account, nothing uploaded to me.
- Foundation Models: type "dinner at Nobu 8pm ¥4000" and on-device AI turns it into a card with time, price and category. Works in 13 languages.
- MapKit: route optimization for each day and a map of every place you've been, built from your own photo library.
- WidgetKit and Live Activities: your next stop on the lock screen.
- Shared trips through CloudKit sharing, so you can plan with the people you travel with, still without my own servers.
- Universal Purchase, so one payment covers iPhone, iPad and Mac. Free tier with 3 trips, Pro is a one-time $9.99, currently $6.99 with code TROVELO699 (Settings → Redeem).
If you try it and have ideas, there's a small community at r/trovelo where users suggest and vote on what gets built next. Most of the recent features started there.
Using double hyphens for headers in your app description looks really sloppy; use Unicode box drawing characters if you must, though I would just make the description more concise so you don’t need summary headers. Also in your description, you’re using ticks " instead of real left and right quotation marks “”
Good catch, thank you! .. I'll swap the double hyphens for proper headers (or cut them and tighten the description) and fix the quotes to proper curly ones in the next App Store update 🙏.
And if you end up trying the app, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it too. Clearly you have a good eye for detail ;D
I have been using this app for a couple of trips now, mostly love it. but i hate how terrible it is to search for landmarks using the built in apple maps.
Thanks so much, really glad it's been working for your trips 🙏
And you're right, Apple Maps search can be pretty bad for landmarks. That's exactly what I've been working on: the latest version cross-checks Apple's results with my own curated places data, so landmarks and popular spots show up much more reliably.
If you remember any specific landmarks that didn't show up, send them my way and I'll make sure they're covered. And a quick workaround meanwhile: you can paste coordinates straight into the search and the pin lands exactly there 📍
An example would be Arakura Fuji Shrine, if I'm searching for it and my previous card is Tokyo Station. Not sure if it's because it's a different prefecture.
But thanks for the tip on using the coordinates, will be testing that out.
Looks great. I'm one of those people that skips onboarding in favour of playing, but I noticed it seemed very long. Maybe disclose as you go? I'd also love to hear if you've had much uptake with the MCP.
On MCP uptake: honestly, I can't tell you exact numbers, because Trovelo has no analytics or servers, so I don't track what people do in the app.
What I do see is feedback, and the people who use it tend to use it a lot, mostly for building a whole trip from a messy note or a list of bookings in one go. It's still a niche feature, but it's the one that gets the most "wait, it can do that?" reactions 😄
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u/Last_Rub6998 16h ago
Using double hyphens for headers in your app description looks really sloppy; use Unicode box drawing characters if you must, though I would just make the description more concise so you don’t need summary headers. Also in your description, you’re using ticks " instead of real left and right quotation marks “”