Flutter Tabata Whip Timer
Jan 2025
Building my first Flutter app has been an exciting journey, filled with challenges, discoveries, and valuable learning moments. I've documented my experience in a blog and you can download the app from the store, see the links below.
The app is called Tabata Whip Timer, a free interval training timer built for iPhone. The idea came from a personal frustration: most tabata timer apps are subscription based, so I decided to build my own. It also turned out to be the perfect excuse to finally learn Flutter, something I had been thinking about since attending the Frontmania conference in 2022.
Coming from a React background, picking up Flutter felt surprisingly natural. The reactive programming model was conceptually familiar, and the hot reload feature made development fast and enjoyable, seeing changes reflected instantly on both laptop and phone. The app is built with Flutter and Dart, uses SQLite for local storage, and includes features like haptic feedback, workout statistics, landscape mode, and customisable interval controls.
The whole process, from writing the first line of code on November 4, 2024 to publishing version 1.0.1 on January 6, 2025, took just over two months. Key lessons along the way included working with Flutter's strict type system, the value of writing tests early, and the surprisingly smooth experience of shipping to the Apple App Store for the first time.
