PocketSync
This whole project started from my love of older tech and a viral moment (495 likes as of posting this) that made me have to stop and think about digital ownership. I had just gotten a Nintendo 3DS and I wanted to use it like how I used to use my iPod nano (a little pocket library filled with the music and videos that I loved). But when I signed in to my old apple account to download all of my previous purchases, I realised how much of it had quietly disappeared. That’s when PocketSync started to come to fruition.
3DS Utility
It was 2025, and Gnarly by KATSEYE had just been released. Ironically, I didn't even like the song at first, but it slowly grew on me. I bought the music video from iTunes and decided it would be fun to put it on my Nintendo 3DS.
That turned out to be much harder than I expected…
The 3DS required a very specific AVI format. Then I discovered the audio needed to be encoded differently. Even after I got the video playing, it still appeared in the wrong place because the 3DS sorted videos using embedded metadata rather than the file's modification date.
After a lot of experimenting with video conversion and metadata, I finally got it working. And I celebrated by making a silly little TikTok.
Automation
After converting a few videos by hand, I quickly realized I was repeating the same steps over and over again. What started as a one-off script slowly turned into an automation tool that could handle video conversion, metadata fixes, and transferring files to the SD card.
It wasn't long before the command line became the bottleneck (aka I got too lazy to type out the run command). I wanted something I could simply drag videos into, press a button, and let it take care of the rest.
Apple had also recently announced its new Liquid Glass design language. I thought it would be a fun to use SwiftUI again and building something I'd actually be willing to use. The result was the first iteration of the UI.