Product Updates: December 2021

Happy New Year! It’s always a busy time of the year for all things journaling, gratitude, personal goals, and seeking out ways to make your life a little better. It just so happens that we’ve been steadily improving Happyfeed as well. Most of the changes we’ve implemented recently won’t make the app look very different but are doing a ton of work behind the scenes to make it easier to keep your daily habit going.

Let’s get into the changes:

iOS Updates

• 🛠 Streak Repair: We’re strangely excited for this one because it’s been a recurring piece of feedback in my inbox for years. Before, if you entered days out of order, your streak broke completely. Now, when you fill in those empty days, the app intelligently looks ahead and can rebuild your streak back to it’s previous glory!
• ✌️ Double-Tap to Like: Thanks to a user request, now you can simply double-tap to send a classic 💜 reaction in Pods.
• ✍️ Editable Reactions: With the new “quick kudos,” we noticed a need to make the emoji editable. Now you can tap the reaction to change it to something new.
• 8️⃣ Memories 8 Years Ago: Happyfeed is getting older and so are your memories! Some people will be seeing “10 Years Ago…” memories before we know it.
• 📸 Photo Library Fixes: In November, we rewrote our photo backend from the ground up. Now photos should reflect any changes in your library, location data should map properly, and we even use degraded images for faster loading. (Note: if you delete a photo from your library, we’ll still have back-up, so no worries.)

Android Updates

• 🖼 Zoomable Pod Images: Tap any photo in your Pod feed to see it full screen. This works the same as tapping any of your photos on your moments. Joining Random Pods: Now you can tap the PLUS icon in the top left corner of the Pods screen to join a Random Pod (if you already are in other Pods) and you can join up to two Rando Pods.
• ✂️ Image Cropping: We noticed that image cropping was causing a crash for some users and could feel like an unnecessary step when uploading. For new users, this is off by default and you can turn it on and off in your settings.

Overall Improvements

• 🗑 Random Pod Shuffling: After receiving a lot of helpful feedback, we finally have a system in place that seems to work for everyone. Share or send kudos once every 11 days or you’ll be removed from the group. We’ll send a push notification reminder after 7 days and an email after 9 though!
• 💗 Bigger Random Pods: We increased the number of people in Random Pods from 8 to 12. This means 50% more people and (we hope) 50% more content to interact with and engage with.

Coming Up

The core features of Happyfeed, like photos, are really feeling rock-solid after another month of full focus. For January, we’ll be focusing more on what makes Happyfeed truly a unique app: Pods and Private Sharing. More specifically, we’re exploring ways that you can share with friends without having a go through the work of creating a group and getting the right friends to join. It’ll be an experiment but one I’m very excited about!

Journaling first, sharing second. That’s the way Happyfeed will always work because all the benefits of reflecting, savoring, and practicing gratitude come from doing it for yourself first.

Cheers!