Primal is going to eat mobile nostr clients' lunch soon enough. Coherent UI/UX, plethora of content types, bandwidth friendly, product thinking, listening to their users and responding to feedback, actively doing marketing and relentlessly shipping. No installing 3 apps to use nostr, no UI hodgepodge, not targeting the autist or tech geek niche but a general audience, signer & wallet built in as your daily driver should have. These guys are winning.
miljan
I think it’s fair to say that we broke new ground with our iOS remote signer. People have been trying to build something like this for a long time (even predating Nostr) and afaik all those attempts have been shut down by Apple. Some of our well informed users are concerned that our implementation breaks Apple’s rules and that Primal might get banned from the App Store. I’ll share our experience here so that other builders can benefit from it.
First and foremost: we didn’t try to sneak this feature in. We provided a detailed explanation to the app store review team outlining exactly what we are doing and how. The technical tldr is: the only way to keep your iOS app running in the background is to play sound or dox user location. There is a history of developers trying to hack their way in by playing silent audio tracks or attempting to trick the reviewers (and confuse the users) in other ways.
The key to our success was that we actually built a polished ambient sound feature for our signer. Some users might actually want ambient sound for their remote sessions, so we took great care to pick the appropriate sounds and build polished UI that enables users to control those sounds via the dynamic island or the live activity UI on the lock screen. We also designed an informative sound opt in screen at the beginning of the session. This is important: the user is fully informed and totally in control every step of the way. I am not sure, but it might be helpful that Primal was already a multimedia app so this feature doesn’t feel out of place.
In any case, that’s how we did it; hope it helps other builders. 🫡
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Replies (22)
UX is king.
Privacy and decentralization are not features. They are architectural decisions that should just be there. Excusing bad UX by selling privacy will get you nowhere.
Users today don’t care about privacy or decentralization. We win by giving them the best UX which also happens to be private and decentralized.
they should just use twitter if they don't want privacy or decentralization, its much better and has better ux
Agree. Started with Damus long ago on NOSTR early days , after Primal released, never looked back again. Great job!
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Why not give them something better that also has privacy and decentralization?
Exactly. If they want to be the normies client thats fine but I'm not on nostr to jau the a twitter clone. I want my next cold. I want tor as an option. I want marketplace. I want zap splits. I want private PMs. They don't have shit on amethyst from a power user perspective.
if they are winning Nostr is losing
that's great news for the Primal Protocol perhaps
just ask yourself what will happen to the reputation of Nostr when they're the top 1 app and are forced to ban someone
I obviously agree about the importance of a good UX. But it cannot replace knowing and picking the right values (=features) in the first place.
A great UX should alleviate the pain that necessarily a new protocol introduce, and we should treat users with respect creating a dialogue around these values, don't just try to attract them with easy and appealing solutions. We win explaining what matters, why it matters, and offering good software that makes that obvious and enjoyable.
what if because of the decentralized architecture you can't build a UX as good as the centralized one? (according to some UX criteria)
what do you pick at this point?
WHAT DID THEY DO TO DESERVE IT
DID THEY EVEN ASK NICELY
What are you even talking about? They’re not even getting the basics right.
They've never managed to get the follower counts even close to right, despite having their own caching server. Also, 40 percent of the notifications don't come through, and replies sometimes don't show up.
There are much better clients out there.
yeah, did they ever fix zaps? 🤨
honestly about to delete Primal. really not interested in Apple servers storing my nsec. nearly done using nostr on ios anyway thanks to Apple, just not a winning ecosystem.
Yep. I didn’t want to point that out as well. It’s open knowledge that Apple has access to „encrypted“ iCloud syncs. I deactivate everything iCloud on a Mac but didn’t think of the >90% Apple users not doing that. That’s why I implemented #NoorNote storing encrypted nsecs on the file system instead of in the Key Chain yesterday. Will be in the next release insh'Allah.
Privacy and decentralization.
Developing B2B software on top of Nostr, with privacy and data sovereignty is hard, precisely because of the UX.
I agree. Privacy and decentralization is the reason why I chose to develop B2B software on top of Nostr.
My point is that if we want to win, we need to appeal to the regular user, and not just the forward looking user who is willing to put up with bad UX because of privacy gains.
Absolutely.
BTW, I’ve been getting a popup on #NoorNote the last 2 releases that wants me to upload my “password” to Apple keychain. Was going to ask about that.
Must be the NWC string. Your nsec isn’t stored in the Key Chain. Fix coming in a few hours insh’Allah. Then you just go to Settings -> Zap Settings and switch to file based storage of your NWC string.
Or is it the password you set in NoorSigner terminal to unlock it every 24 hours?
This is the message that comes up. I have just exited out and haven't noticed any issues. But zaps weren't working so could be it is the NWC thing. I'll update to newest release and report back.

updated and NoorNote zapping again
Ok, it was the keychain master password
Nostr does not inherently have privacy. Why do people keep believing this myth?
Nostr is a cryptograhically confirmed public identity. It's almost the opposite of private.
You are right. I use gift wrapped events to add a layer of privacy. It’s not perfect but if relays only serve gift wrapped events to their intended recipient, it’s reasonably private