Just for funWeb · iOS2025
A neat & free guitar tuner, web & iOS
Fed up with tuners full of ads, I built my own: a minimalist web app in 2 days, then a native iOS app. Free, no ads, used daily by at least one guitarist (me).
- Role
- End-to-end · Design & code
- Platforms
- Web · iOS
- Built with
- Next.js · Tailwind · SwiftUI
- MVP
- 2 days
- Free, no ads
- 100%
- V1: metronome & backing tracks
- +1–2 days
- Daily active user (me)
- 1 DAU
"Free" tuners are kind of broken
The free guitar tuners on the web are full of ads, horrible to look at & worse to use. And I didn't want to pay for yet another subscription just to tune a guitar.
So I built my own. Clean. Free. Functional. Made by a frustrated musician, for himself & others.
An MVP in 2 days
It was my first project end-to-end, from design to code, built while working on Tolly. A few quick Framer prototypes to explore design paths & check the tuner was technically feasible, then a mini web app with Next.js, Tailwind & shadcn.
The tuner itself took the most iterations. The MVP was ready in 2 days.
A metronome & backing tracks
I ended up using it every day, so I kept going: a metronome for exercises, a library of backing tracks to practice scales, an about section & a "buy me a coffee". Deployed for free on Vercel, with tracking.
Then, an iOS app
Next, the tuner got a native iOS app, built in SwiftUI: pitch detection written in Swift, tunings to pick from & a meter that shows how far off each string is.
What I learned
I use it every day, which was the whole point. Keeping it free, with no ads, was easy thanks to Vercel. And I loved every bit of the process.
