About

Dando is a one-person app studio in Australia. Two apps out, one being built, and a fairly stubborn idea about how software should behave.

The idea

Most apps grow until they are hard to use. A feature gets added because a competitor has it, a subscription gets added and then made impossible to leave, an account gets added because someone wants the data. None of that makes the app better at the thing you opened it for.

So every app here starts from the opposite end. One job. Done properly. Then stop.

What that means in practice

A way to pay once. There is a subscription, because building these full-time costs something. But Aloud can also be bought outright — pay once, keep it, no renewal. Why that’s possible.
On your device wherever it can be. Aloud generates its narration on your iPhone and never uploads your library.
No account unless the app genuinely needs one. Most of them do not.
Support goes to a person. Email hello@dando.cc and you are writing to the person who wrote the code.

The apps

iPhone

Forge

Daily workout streak. Show up, log it in seconds, keep the streak alive. Free on the App Store.

See Forge → iPhone & iPad

Aloud

Turns any book into an audiobook, with the voice generated on your phone. 125,000+ free titles built in. Free on the App Store.

See Aloud → In development

Coming soon

Number four is being built right now. It has an icon and not much else to announce yet.

Take a look →

Who is behind it

I’m Joel Holomek. Dando is my trading name, and I run it as a sole trader in Australia. I write the code, draw the icons, write these pages and answer the support email. That is why there are only a few apps, and why you usually get a reply the same day.

What I have made so far:

Dando. I started the studio so the apps had somewhere to live that was not one product’s website. Everything below ships under it.
Forge. A daily workout streak app for iPhone. Free on the App Store, rated 5.0.
Aloud. An audiobook reader that makes the narration on your phone rather than on a server. That is what lets it carry 125,000+ free books and be sold once instead of rented.
Valuist. An iPhone game that teaches you to invest: value real companies from their annual reports, then skip ahead through the real years to see if you were right. Coming soon.
The boring half. App Store review, licensing, the privacy policy, this website and the support inbox.

I build for iPhone and Mac, and I keep as much as I can running on the device instead of on a server.

Read more on the blog, or email hello@dando.cc.

Get in touch

Questions, bugs, feature requests, or a note to say something works: hello@dando.cc. There is also a contact form.

Contact support