How to Name Your Baby
An iOS app where two partners swipe through baby names separately, and a name becomes a match when both like it.
in progress
- commits
- 588
- last 30 days
- 157
- first commit
- Jan 21, 2026
- last commit
- Oct 12, 2026
- stack
- React Native, Firebase
Counted from git on Oct 15, 2026.
Each partner swipes through names on their own, Tinder-style. When both like the same name it becomes a match. There are also curated collections to browse, a Name of the Day, secret name submissions between partners, and a premium upgrade through in-app purchase. It’s a React Native iOS app on a Firebase backend (Firestore, anonymous auth, realtime presence, Cloud Functions).
The App Store record exists (bundle com.htnyb.app). Whether v1.0 has actually been released is not something I could verify from the repo, so the status above is “in progress”.
What I learned / would do differently
- It grew a lot of audit paperwork before it shipped: launch plan, security, accessibility and dependency audits, a 248-case E2E test plan. Worth asking whether that bought confidence or just delayed submission.
- Several hooks (
useConnectionStatus,usePremium) are used in many places and each opens its own Firestore listener. Shared contexts would have been cleaner from the start. - Dead code accumulated (the text-to-speech service was wired to nothing), a sign that features were cut without cleaning up after.
- Accessibility labels were added to onboarding and settings first and the main screens were left for later; it’s cheaper to do it as each screen is built.
TODO: real screenshots of the app. The repo only has competitor references and early mockups, which I didn't use.