If you're reading this inside the app, it worked
Last week I shipped handwriting recognition. I built it, tested it end to end on a Pixel Tablet, and released it. Then it occurred to me that almost nobody would find out, because the only place I announced app changes was the Play Store changelog, and nobody reads Play Store changelogs.
Well, almost nobody. Shout out to the one friend who caught me pushing a release on a Saturday morning because he religiously hits refresh on his imported Chinese foldable. You know who you are you magnificent man, I appreciate you.
For everyone else: coaches don't follow developer blogs, and I wouldn't ask them to. The one place a coach reliably looks is the app itself.
So the app has a What's New page now. Open the Profile tab and it's the first row. When there's a post you haven't seen, a red dot shows up on the tab. Tap through and you get the recent posts from this blog, each with its headline and a couple of lines of preview. Tap a post and it opens in your browser. It's out of the way, on purpose too I might add, so that it doesn't distract you from what you need to do with the app, you know, coach soccer.
The plumbing is deliberately boring
There's no clever content system behind this. The app reads this blog's RSS feed, the same one your podcast app or feed reader would use. RSS has been quietly moving articles around the internet since 1999, it needs no account and no API key, and it will still work long after whatever replaced it this year is disappeared.
The app grabs the feed when it launches and keeps the headlines on your device, so the page works at a field with no bars, like the rest of Super Trainer. Reading a full article does need a connection. Headlines don't.
Two things it deliberately doesn't do. It doesn't send push notifications: if a red dot isn't your thing, ignore it and the app will never nag you. And it doesn't report anything back, that's right, Super Trainer still doesn't have any telemetry built in. I can't see who read what, and I like it that way.
One more detail I'm fond of. This blog also covers my 3D printed planters and the odd poker trophy. None of that belongs in a practice planner, so the app only subscribes to posts tagged for it. Your drill library is safe from succulents.
What it's for
This becomes the channel for the things worth interrupting a coach for: new releases, new drills as they land in the library, tactics and formation content, and product news like the App Store release when it arrives. If it matters at training, it'll show up under that red dot.
The feed landed in version 0.1.60, and the current open-testing builds on Google Play and TestFlight have it. Unless a more interesting idea jumps the queue, the next release you'll read about here is 1.0.
And since the whole point of this feature is a two-way street: what do you want to read about here? Drill breakdowns, session planning, the engineering behind the app? Tell me through the feedback button. I read every submission.
Super Trainer is an offline-first practice planner for coaches, built by MNK Solutions. Plan sessions, run drills, track player wellness, all with no signal and no account required. Android: open testing on Google Play. iOS: TestFlight beta, App Store soon.
