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Indie developer's five-year struggle turned viable by iOS 15 Safari extension support
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Illustration only Photo by Albert Stoynov on Unsplash
A solo Mac and iOS developer recounts a decade of indie work where a Safari extension called StopTheMadness only became financially sustainable after Apple added mobile web browser extensions in iOS 15.
The story illustrates how platform-level changes can make or break an indie software business, and how long the runway can be before that moment arrives. It also shows the cost side: five years of depleted savings, failed products, and an inability to find traditional employment. For engineers considering indie development, the timeline and dependency on a single platform decision are the concrete takeaways.
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The developer quit his job in August 2016 without a plan and spent five years burning through savings before his business became viable.
His first app, Underpass, an end-to-end encrypted chat and file transfer tool, earned under $3000 lifetime and was removed from the App Store in 2021.
The turning point was Apple's release of iOS 15 on September 20, 2021, which added web browser extensions for mobile Safari and made his Safari extension StopTheMadness a sustainable business.
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