SimplyKyra Monthly Overview: August 2026

I'm writing this a little earlier this month so it's ready to go without too much effort later. Tomorrow we're loading up the car for a road trip out to my sister's wedding and depending on when it actually gets sent... we're either almost back or still catching our breath from all of it.

Welcome back to the SimplyKyra Monthly Overview!

I know inboxes can get crowded, so this one stays intentionally low-key. If you ever prefer only these monthly summaries (or want to adjust your subscriptions), you can update your settings at the bottom of this email.

🏡 This Month with Me

While creating this newsletter I realized how app heavy this month was with me. The whole time I was optimizing to get ahead of everything, both in life but mainly work, before leaving my computer.

Oh... and almost forgot as I recorded this last month, but I was a podcast guest on an episode of The Boss Society Podcast with Megan which went live on the 6th. It talks about simplicity, decision fatigue, and building calm technology.

📱 App Updates

August started with a scare when first one person then another emailed about Simply Customize It crashing for them. During the process I realized I should catch the data loading error so the app doesn't crash and the error can be more easily emailed to me. This led to a series of updates in all my apps... and then later, after finding a Reddit thread sharing that subscription grace periods needed to be manually handled in my code, led to another round of update making this a very app-centric month.

Simply Customize It

Make your reMarkable truly yours with custom templates and screens.

During the chase to figure out why this crash happened and fix it I released two updates, 1.4.1 and 1.4.2, only to realize that it was caused by corrupted data that needed the app to be deleted and reinstalled. I immediately shared this on all my socials to give you advance notice.

Afterwards someone else reached out with issues uploading a screen image that we assumed was because of the reMarkable Pure... but instead happened before that even mattered. This update then went a bit further and also fixed a crash that only happened if the app was open on two synced devices at the same time.

To better test Simply Customize It I have each reMarkable synced to several device accounts so I can test multiple times. Recently I noticed on one account, while using the Clean Up button, that my templates were all duplicated. Between this annoyance and the subscription fix I decided to dig in and both fixed this and several other annoyances that popped up in testing.

Simply TBR

Your reading list, organized and visible so you always know what's next.

I first rolled out 1.1.4 so if there were ever any data issues it would be caught. Later on I released 1.1.5 to share not only the subscription update but also better support for NetGalley and a more robust import process for when Open Library might go down. I thought that would be it but then I had an issue with my Libby import stalling out and felt the need to add more to justify the 1.1.6 update so added the ability to save and share what book you just finished.

Quick aside: If you've been following along I also share short reels showing Simply TBR if you want to check them out.

Simply Remember It

When did you last…? Now you know with no second-guessing required.

Near the beginning of the month I noticed the What Needs Attention widget didn't work until the categories were updated. I bundled the fix with the data loading catch and shared it in 2.2.5 and then, while waiting to be approved I found another issue with the widget which I shared in 2.2.6. I next realized, when distracted by a kid, if you start logging a task and then force close the app the log remains and so the task disappeared from the widget. I switched it to a draft so that no longer happens then realized, when testing, that if you happened to have the same task open on two devices, deleted one, and then it synced the other app would crash. These fixes went out in 2.2.7. Then I pushed one more update, 2.2.8, for the subscription grace window recognition but added in fixes with sharing and two new shortcuts.

Simply Match It

A fast-paced, multiplayer race to spot the match before your friends do.

This game had much simpler updates than above with both the data loading handling in 1.1.2 and then later, with 1.1.3, handling the subscription grace period better along with fixing up the warning if you somehow signed up for both a subscription and lifetime access.

Simply Uncover It

A calm, intuitive twist on the classic Minesweeper puzzle.

Like Simply Match It this game had similar 1.1.2 and 1.1.3 updates though the first included a board size cap as my daughter found she could push the game board size beyond its safe limits.

📚On the Blog

During the chase to figure out why Simply Customize It was crashing back at the beginning of August I learned that the CloudKit database had to be manually deployed to production. The development version updates without us needing to do anything and I erroneously assumed production did too when an app update was approved. As such, this month's two blog posts came out of that same Simply Customize It scare... one gave everyone a heads up on the fix, and the other went deeper for other developers on the manual CloudKit deployment step I'd missed

💻 Coming Up Next.

Going forward I'd love your input on what you want to see. Currently I'm working (or.... more like procrastinating) on converting two of my current apps to Android while also playing with a hobby app similar to TBR along with two ideas from recent Hacking with Swift livestreams. On the blog side I snapped some photos when hemming two of the dresses for my sister's wedding and although it's in no way professional I keep meaning to write it up to share before I forget completely what I did.

🌿 Something Extra

A few calm nature Pause videos from this month, if you'd like a minute to breathe: two small otters on the Salish Sea, a heron from back in December, Canadian geese at Marathon Park, and this:

💌 A Note on Preferences

You’re receiving this email because you signed up for Monthly Overview a once-a-month roundup that highlights what’s new, what I’ve been working on, and a little extra behind-the-scenes.

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Thanks for being here 💕 I’m so grateful for your support as I keep building, learning, and sharing.

Until next month,

— Kyra