Manifest
Less app. More quiet.
Three principles for small iOS apps that do one thing well. Fairly priced, no trackers, no dark patterns.
What you read on this page isn't marketing. It's the minimum condition for an app to be allowed to carry the "hyperzero" label.
Why hyperzero exists
Something happened to apps.
Ten years ago an app was a small tool. One task, one button, done. You bought it. It worked. Case closed.
Today every app wants everything. A calculator with a Pro version. An alarm clock with seven onboarding screens. A scanner that asks you for a rating three times a week and costs €9.99 a month, because somewhere a cloud has to run that nobody asked for.
Between you and your task sit an account, a subscription, a notification and a dialog asking whether you really want to cancel.
hyperzero is built so it can also work the other way.
Three principles. Nothing else.
Small
A hyperzero app does one thing.
Not four. Not ten. One.
A document scanner scans documents. No to-do list, no calendar, no integrated chatbot to help you scan. The document goes in, a PDF comes out. That is the task.
If during the build we notice that an app wants to do two things, it becomes two apps. Or one of them is dropped.
That is uncomfortable. We could stack features. We could build a super-app that does everything — and nothing well. The market even rewards that, short-term: longer feature lists, higher conversion, more reviews.
We don't do it anyway.
Because something that stays small is something you can polish. An app that does fourteen things can't really do any of them well. An app that does one thing can do it almost perfectly.
Carefully
hyperzero is run by a designer, not a developer.
That sounds like a side note. It isn't.
Most indie apps are built out of a technical idea. Architecture first, then features, then — if there's budget left — design. You can see it. Menus are afterthoughts, icons are clicked together, the language is translated from the English changelog.
We turn that around.
Every hyperzero app starts as a sketch. As a flow, as a word, as a feeling. Code only gets written once the first screen sits — not "works", *sits*.
Every colour is decided. Every line of copy is written, not assembled from blocks. Every animation has a reason. If a button is three pixels too far right, it gets moved. If the OCR drops one too many lines, it gets swapped out.
That takes longer. One app per quarter, not one per week.
In return a hyperzero app behaves like a good tool: invisible when it works. You don't think "the app scanned my receipt." You think "I scanned a receipt." That's the difference.
Fair
Fairly priced means: the price matches the value.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Some hyperzero apps are one-time purchases. You pay €4.99 or €9.99, the app is yours. It will work in five years without you having to send any more money.
Other hyperzero apps have a subscription. Not because we like that — because real ongoing costs run in the background that can't be covered by a single payment. Server sync, OCR compute, storage, API calls.
Example: Verso is a scanner that runs entirely on your iPhone. Buy once, done. Quitto manages receipts with OCR and multi-device sync — that costs infrastructure money every month, so it costs subscription money every month.
Both ways are fine. It becomes unfair when one is dressed up as the other. A subscription to export a screenshot. A one-time price that, three months in, suddenly demands a "premium version". A feature that was free yesterday and sits behind a paywall today.
We don't do that.
What we also don't do:
- Dark patterns at checkout
- Tricks at cancellation
- Hidden fees
- Prices that get "adjusted" right before a recession
If we need a price increase, we say so. For new customers. Existing contracts stay as they are.
Promises
Independent of pricing model and app, this holds for everything hyperzero ships:
No tracker. No analytics SDKs, no advertising IDs, no third-party networks. The only metrics we see are the ones Apple anonymously shows us in App Store Connect, the sales numbers Gumroad shows for direct downloads — and the ones you send us voluntarily.
No ads. Ever. Not as banners, not as interstitials, not as "recommendations" for another app. If you pay for an app, you are the customer. Not the product.
No dark patterns. No hidden auto-renews, no pre-checked upgrades, no buttons larger than others because we want to nudge you into a click. If you don't want to buy, "no thanks" is just as easy as "yes".
These are not features. These are the minimum conditions.
Who builds this
hyperzero is a small label out of Germany.
One person sits behind everything — design, code, support, decisions. Made in Germany, more precisely: out of the Ruhr Valley.
That means: slower than a startup. More personal than a corporation. Closer to you than a brand with three product managers and two growth hackers could ever be.
If you have a question, you write to hello@hyperzero.de. The reply comes from the same person who built the app.
If you don't like something, you write that down. We read it. Not every piece of feedback gets implemented — but every one is read.
That's the deal.
And now?
Three apps are finished. More will come when they are ready.
If that sounds like something you want, head over to the apps.
If you want to know how it works in detail, the journal has something for you.
If not — also fine. Going back to a louder app is always an option.
But if you're reading this, we suspect you already know why you'd rather have less app.
And more quiet.