Don iOS App: What We've Built So Far

I've been heads-down building Don's iOS app for the past few months, and it's time for an honest update on where things stand.

The short version: Don is no longer just a web app with an iOS wrapper. It's a full native SwiftUI app — built from scratch for iPhone — and it's become the primary way I use Don myself.

Here's what's new.

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Talk to Your Money. Literally.

The biggest addition is voice commands. Press and hold the center button, say what you want, and Don handles it.

"How much did I spend on food this week?" "Move my groceries budget to $400 this month." "What's my net worth?"

It's not a gimmick bolted on top — the entire navigation is built around it. The Don logo glows while you're speaking, you get haptic feedback when recording starts and stops, and your transcript appears in real time. It feels like talking to someone who actually knows your finances, because it does.

Under the hood, it's on-device speech recognition streaming into Don's AI assistant (Claude Haiku 4.5), which has direct access to your accounts, transactions, budgets, and goals. When Don gives you a number, it pulled that number from your actual data.

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Interactive Charts That Actually Help

Charts in finance apps have a problem: they look nice in screenshots but don't tell you much when you're staring at them wondering why you're broke this month.

Don's spending chart now supports interactive scrubbing — drag your finger across the chart to see exactly how much you spent on any given day. The chart also shows an "ideal pace" line that accounts for your autopay bills, so the expected spending steps up on the days your bills hit. If you're below the line, you're ahead of pace. If you're above it, you know early enough to adjust.

The Y-axis stays stable while you're interacting (no more chart jumping around), and the whole thing updates in real time as new transactions sync.

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Month-Specific Budgets

This one's small but important. You can now override your budget for a specific month without changing your default.

December always costs more than February. A fixed monthly budget pretends that's not true. Now you can bump dining to $500 for December, and it snaps back to your default in January. The spending chart and Don's AI both respect the override — so your "on track" calculations actually mean something during the months that matter most.

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Goals That Make You Want to Open the App

Don's goal system now has XP, streaks, and progress rings that keep going past 100% (because beating a goal should feel like something). There are difficulty tiers, AI-generated goal suggestions, and status badges that tell you where you stand at a glance — "On track," "Grace zone," or "At risk."

The psychology here is intentional. Most budgeting apps make you feel bad when you fail. Don tries to make you feel good when you succeed. Streaks create a cost to breaking the pattern that willpower alone doesn't. And the XP system means that even small wins — a no-spend day, staying under your coffee budget — accumulate into visible progress.

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Security That Doesn't Get in the Way

Don now requires device authentication (Face ID, Touch ID, or passcode) every time you open the app. Your session tokens are stored in the iOS Keychain, not in app storage. API connections use certificate pinning. Chat messages are encrypted.

None of this is visible when you're using the app — it just works. But if you're trusting an app with your bank connections, this stuff matters.

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The AI Got Smarter

Don's AI assistant now has persistent memory across conversations, so it remembers context from previous chats. It can update your display name, navigate you to specific screens, and handle bulk transaction categorization faster than before.

There's also a proper data consent flow now — before Don's AI can access any of your financial data, you explicitly grant permission. This was important for App Store compliance, but it's also just the right thing to do.

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Under the Hood

For the technically curious:

• -Pure SwiftUI with Swift 6 strict concurrency — no UIKit wrappers, no Storyboards
• -Server-sent events (SSE) for real-time streaming of Don's responses — you see the AI thinking in real time, not waiting for a full response
• -Delta buffering that coalesces rapid text chunks into fewer UI updates, keeping the interface smooth even during fast streaming
• -Pre-loaded ViewModels so every tab is ready the instant you swipe to it
• -Gesture-driven navigation with momentum scrolling between tabs
• -Handedness preference — left-handed users can flip the button layout

The app has over 112 Swift source files and it's built to feel fast. Tab switching is instant. Transactions paginate lazily. Search is debounced. It's the kind of attention to performance that you don't notice until you use an app that doesn't have it.

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What's Next

The core experience is solid. Voice, chat, budgets, goals, charts, bank syncing — it all works. The focus now shifts to polish: tightening animations, improving onboarding for new users, and addressing the feedback coming in from early beta testers.

Android is on the roadmap but paused. iOS is the priority until it's right.

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Don is free for 21 days, no credit card required. If you've been looking for a finance app that talks to you instead of just showing you dashboards, this might be the one that sticks.