Case study

Retrotick

A split flap clock app for iPadOS 26 and up, built in SwiftUI with Apple's Liquid Glass design language, the same language this site borrows. A custom animation engine drives the flaps through a flip-target queue.

On the App Store

Live on the App Store for iPhone and iPad.

Get it on the App Store Visit the Retrotick site

Headline block of the Retrotick marketing site: a split flap clock, rebuilt for iOS, with Apple's Liquid Glass design, on iPhone and iPad

What it is

Retrotick is the mechanical flip of a classic station clock, rebuilt for iPhone and iPad. Every digit is a split flap tile driven by a custom animation engine with a flip-target queue, so flaps land exactly on their target instead of drifting when updates stack up.

It is built in SwiftUI for iPadOS 26 and up using Apple's Liquid Glass design language. The mini split flap display on this site's homepage is the same mechanic, restated on the web.

Built into the platform

Live Activities

Live Activities with Dynamic Island support keep the clock visible outside the app.

Widgets

Home Screen widgets share state with the app through an App Group.

Themes

12 purchasable themes through StoreKit 2: 10 non-consumable purchases plus a Retrotick Plus subscription.

Features card from the Retrotick marketing site listing split flap animation, Liquid Glass backdrops, Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, Live Activities and Dynamic Island, 12 or 24 hour time, and a gallery of themes — The feature list from the marketing site. No accounts, no ads, no tracking.

The Retrotick marketing site headline at phone width — The same page at phone width.

How it ships

The app, widget, and shared targets are covered by unit and UI test suites in CI, and the Xcode Cloud release workflow refuses to ship a build unless the changelog changed.

Stack

Swift
SwiftUI
StoreKit 2
WidgetKit
ActivityKit
XcodeGen
Xcode Cloud
XCTest