We Make Apps

10/03/2026

A new, and pretty comprehensive, instructional video on the Trees Near Me app we made for the NSW Government just got released.

We built this app nearly 5 years ago and it remains one of our favourite projects. A super simple and intuitive design to help users find out about the native vegetation growing anywhere in NSW.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHEm3r3n9lI

The Trees near me NSW app makes it easy to identify native plant community types and the species found in them. In this short instructional video, Senior Loc...

10/11/2025

Every now and then, a client like Simon Curwood Jewellery comes along with a gorgeous brand and beautiful assets. It's even rarer that they come with a bold and innovative idea for their app!

The Simon Curwood app is a post-sales tool for insuring high-value jewellery and building ongoing engagement with customers. We built this app in close partnership with SCJ with deep integrations with their POS and insurance systems. Read our case study here:

https://wemakeapps.net/simon-curwood

We Make Apps built the Simon Curwood Jewellers app, a post-sales engagement tool to insure and protect valuable diamond rings.

29/10/2025

Neat tool I found today that lets you see how the Open Graph info on your web page will look when rendered as a 'preview' on social media platforms, check it out:

https://www.opengraph.xyz/url/https%3A%2F%2Fwemakeapps.net

OpenGraph is the easiest way to preview and generate open graph meta tags for any website.

28/10/2025

We built the 'Let's Ride' app for Ride On - they're the company behind those kiddie rides in pretty much EVERY shopping centre in Australia! This one was an easy sell to my designers, as they came with one of the funnest design guidelines we've ever seen. We've been managing the app for these rides since 2018 and have helped more than a million kids have a few minutes of fun since then. Read our case study here.

https://wemakeapps.net/lets-ride

The Let's Ride app, supported by Innovative Retail, lets parents pay for children's rides in shopping centres.

19/12/2024

Here's me and Cameron Hendy at the supplier function as part of our work building the app and website for EZEE Mobile - a new prepaid mobile play backed by Chemist Warehouse.

We're super proud of the work we did with the amazing EZEE Mobile team, and with the marketing leviathan of Chemist Warehouse behind them, I know this is going to be a hugely successful product.

The EZEE Mobile site and app are fully live at https://ezeemobile.com.au

14/07/2024

Our favourite clients at We Make Apps are always the really successful start ups, because more than others, they understand the need to be continually innovating and we have no one doing more innovation than Efficiency Matrix. I've got a detailed case study up on our website (see the link), or read on for a summary right here.

https://wemakeapps.net/efficiency-matrix

Efficiency Matrix is one of the leading companies in Australia for thermal testing of buildings, including detailed on site inspections, thermal imaging and blower-door tests to check for air tightness.

We've built a highly customised app used by their technicians to guide them through their inspections, with tools to capture and align thermal and photographic images, mark up images with remediation instructions and temperature marks and locate defects on floorplans on multi-level buildings. These apps are designed to work entirely offline (in half-built, multi-storey concrete structures) on iOS, Android and with a comprehensive web app. Reports involve complex calculations measuring detected gaps against the overall building envelope surface area and volume and matching against blower door results.

And to top it all off, they're an amazing team to work with (I would highly recommend checking out the Efficiency Matrix YouTube channel).

Efficiency Matrix, a leader in building performance measurement in Australia, have two apps developed by We Make Apps.

02/07/2024

Bell Direct is Australia's largest non-bank online share trading platform. Throughout 2020 and early 2021, we worked closely with their dev team to build a mobile app for their customers, including all the core features from the web version including portfolio management, trades, order history, watchlists and more.

I've got a case study up on our website about our collaboration with this great company and some of the key lessons we learnt (hint, it's always all about security).

https://wemakeapps.net/bell-direct

We Make Apps worked with Bell Direct to build their share trading and portfolio management mobile app.

19/06/2024

Yellowfin BI is a great Australian tech company, providing a complete online business intelligence solution sold around the world. We Make Apps worked closely with Yellowfin's internal dev team to build a mobile app that presents a streamlined version of their platform for mobile devices. Jump straight to the case study on our website at this link, or read on for an abridged version.

https://wemakeapps.net/yellowfin

We Make Apps was engaged in early 2019 as the mobile app specialists to complete the development of the Yellowfin BI mobile app.

This project involved very close collaboration between our mobile app developers and Yellowfin's own dev team, who were building out the API to support the app in parallel with the app's development. By working so closely, the API was able to be tailored specifically to the needs of the app, which helped produce a lean, performant API and an elegant separation of functionality and presentation.

The success of the original build has led to a fruitful, ongoing relationship, with the addition of new features into the app and a white-labelling project allowing client-specific versions of the app to be published.

Yellowfin engaged We Make Apps to build the mobile app for their powerful BI platform.

15/05/2024

I'd like to share a case study I wrote on our website about an app we developed called Fish Talk! You can jump straight to the case study in the link below, or read on for an abridged version right here.

https://wemakeapps.net/fish-talk

-=- Sustainable resource management -=-

For the island nations of the Pacific Ocean, seafood, especially tuna, is one of their most valuable resources. Through the implementation of the Nauru Agreement and the work of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency, these island nations have developed a coordinated system of auctioning fishing licenses to foreign fishing fleets. This process provides a sizeable income for Pacific island nations, while ensuring that fish stocks are not overfished, and is seen as a model of sustainable resource management worldwide.

A system of foreign fishing licenses also requires enforcement. Every participating Pacific island nation maintains a fleet of vessels staffed by trained fisheries inspectors that will approach and board vessels at sea to inspect their catch.

Which is where the Fish Talk app comes in.

-=- The Fish Talk app -=-

The central feature of the Fish Talk app is a collection of translated phrases. However, these are not travellers, but rather a collection of questions and statements specific to the inspection of foreign fishing vessels.

The app supports five languages and more than 300 phrases. Each phrase includes written and professionally recorded audio translations. Additionally, the app includes a folio of illustrations for presentation and facilities to capture images and audio during the inspection.

-=- A very unique use case -=-

One of the key challenges in the design of the Fish Talk app was meeting the unique scenario in which the app would be used. This was an app that would be used mostly on the high seas, with absolutely no network coverage, during the boarding of a foreign fishing vessel. Fisheries inspectors would need to find phrases in a high pressure environment, then present phrases shown on their own devices to the captain and crew of the vessels they board.

The resulting design emphasises high-contrast and large scale text, along with simple gestures to swipe between phrases and secondary buttons for experienced users to switch between categories and features.

The Fish Talk app, funded by the Australian Government, is a translation app for Pacific Island fishing inspectors.

09/05/2024

Since 1 May Apple will reject any new or updated iOS app that does not include Privacy Manifest file - the PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy plist file in the app bundle that declares if the app is tracking your behaviour for advertising, what data the app is collecting, and why the app is using various API methods that may be used for cross-app user identification.

If you're struggling to work out how to create the PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy file, you can always head over the Privacy Manifest Maker I built! It's totally free for use, explains what this whole thing is about and lets you generate the file for your app in minutes.

https://wemakeapps.net/manifest-maker

Generate the Privacy Manifest, PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy file, for your iOS app.

12/04/2024

I built a tool, the Privacy Manifest Maker, to quickly generate the iOS PrivacyInfo.cxprivacy files. And today I got featured in Dave Verwer's iOS Dev Weekly email:

https://iosdevweekly.com/issues/656

I've been in this app building game for quite some time, and Dave Verwer's weekly email has been a constant for much of my career. I went digging through my inbox and realised that I first subscribed 2013!

So you can imagine how fist-pumping it feels to be featured in that email. Thanks Dave!

Not so very long ago, was somebody we all know, wp on the stage he was the king, showing what the future just might bring… 🎸