Bridges 1.0
Today I’m excited to launch the 1.0 of my next app Bridges. It’s the link saving app I’ve always wanted. Im happy to say it is available now on the App Store and the Mac App Store.
Bridges is great at saving links and keeping them all in one place but it does a lot more than just that. Bridges aims to make some tedious tasks easier. If you ever had reoccurring tasks to save links for a podcast, blog post, or newsletter you’ll love Bridges. Making a link more human readable is easy but if you need to save lots of links it can add up quickly. Maybe you need these links with titles but in multiple formats.
Bridges gives you a fast way to save a link with a custom title. Each link you save gets displayed with that title, hero image, and a favicon. Anytime you need that link in a format like: Hyperlink, Markdown, HTML, JSON it’s just a tap away to copy it.
To organize all your links you can setup folders and even different sections. Maybe you have a section for personal folders. And other sections for different projects your working on. When you’re in a folder it’s easy to copy all those links at once. You can choose the format you need and save a ton of time.
Adding links to Bridges is really fast. You can add a link to a folder in the app and it will autofill that links title as a potential custom title. Or you can use the share sheet and it will also autofill come key information. After everything is how you want it you just pick the folder you’ll add the link to.
iPhone
When making Bridges I tried to make each platform have a view and a flow that made sense to the device. iPhone and iPad are similar but the Mac counterpart is a little different. On the iPhone the main view for Bridges shows you all your folders and sections. In each folder if a link has a hero image for your link it’ll be displayed as a nice preview in a horizontal scrolling list. That way you can just tap on a link and it will open the link in the app. This lets you quickly see what is in each folder or quickly read an article you saved. This is also where you make new folders, each folder gets a title and an icon. You use any of Apple’s SF Symbols to add a nice icon to your folder. After that you choose the color scheme for the icon.
When you tap on a folder and see the links inside you get a nice grid layout of each item. In this view you can do a few things. You can long press on a link to get a context menu. That will show you a rich set of features like: copy the link, transfer to another folder, open the link, share it and delete it. In the toolbar is the add folder button and a copy button to copy every link in the folder in the format you need.
If you tap on a link you go to the detail view. This will show you a link preview card and different formats you can copy that link in. You can edit a links custom title here as well just in case you wanted to change it. If you tap on the ellipsis you also can use the export as feature.This is to let you copy the link to your clipboard with a custom title but this title won’t be saved in the app.
iPad
The iPad app is very similar to the iPhone app. It shows a nice three column layout with all three iPhone views side by side. But the center column for a folder and its links are in a list view not a grid view. The list view on iPad felt a little more natural to use. You get lots of expected behavior like swiping to the left to delete a link. If you long press on a link you get a context menu to copy that link in the format you need. When you tap on a link in a folder to go to the detail view it will collapse the side column and switch to a two column view.
The iPhone and iPad version of Bridges is a single purchase on the App Store. It is a paid up front app and costs $3.99.
Mac
The Mac version of Bridges is a three column layout like the iPad but a little different. It didn’t feel right for the side bar to have all your link previews in a horizontal list. So its a more traditional format. You see the link icon, title and then a count of how many links are in that folder. The center column is the same format as the iPad a list view. Each link can be copied with a right click bringing up different options. The Apps toolbar has all the toolbar items across the top in each column. The detail view for a link is the most similar to the iPhone and iPad.
It was important to me that the app be on all of Apple’s major platforms. I thought that users will often be collecting links on their iPhone. But then using them for their work on the iPad or the Mac. The Mac app is a completely separate app from the iPhone and iPad versions of the app. I know there are lots of different ways to make a Mac app. But during development building this as a standalone app with SwiftUI felt like the right move. Bridges is on the Mac App Store as a paid up front app for $3.99.
Launch day
Tuesday November 14th is the official launch day for Bridges 1.0. If you think this app can help you be more productive definitely check it out. I think you’ll enjoy using the app and if you have any feedback for me just send an email to feedback@bridgesapp.app. If you want to stay in the loop for whats to come definitely follow along on Bridges Mastodon page. Im excited to build out more features that didn’t make it into the 1.0.