# Warranties > Your things, remembered. - Role: Designer & Developer - Period: 2023 — 2025 - Focus: Product design & app development - Platforms: iPhone, iPad & Mac - Status: Support ended in 2025 Warranties was a personal product. I designed it and I built it. It kept a record of the things you own — what they cost, where they came from, and how long they stay covered — so that the information is there on the day something breaks. Cover image — Warranties running on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, showing an item list grouped by remaining coverage next to an Add Item form. ## The shared thread A warranty is only useful if you can find it. The problem was never storage — it was making a record worth keeping up to date, and putting the answer to “is this still covered?” in the first thing you see. ## 01 / Capture — Ask for little. Accept more. Every record starts with someone typing on a phone, usually while standing next to the box. Only the name is required. Brand, model, price, store, serial number, purchase date, photos, and attachments are all there for the people who want them, arranged so the form stays short until it needs to be long. Screenshot — The Add Item form on iPad and Mac, with a required Name field and optional Brand, Model, Price, Store, Serial Number, and Purchase Date fields. - **Required is a short list.** A name is enough to save an item. Everything else is marked optional and can be filled in later, from the receipt or the manual. - **The photo does the identifying.** A picture of the actual object recognizes faster than a model number, so adding one sits at the top of the form rather than at the end. - **Room for the paperwork.** Notes and attachments keep the receipt and the warranty document with the item, which is where they are needed. ## 02 / Coverage — The hard part is the date. Coverage is a date-math problem people should not have to do. The expiry field pairs a calendar with shortcuts for the terms things actually come with, shows the resulting length in plain language, and allows more than one warranty per item, because parts and labour rarely expire together. Screenshot — The Edit Item screen on iPhone with a warranty expiry calendar, +30d, +1y, +5y, and +10y shortcuts, coverage details, and an Add Another Warranty button. - **Terms, not arithmetic.** +30d, +1y, +5y, and +10y cover most purchases in a single tap, and the field confirms the choice as a duration as well as a date. - **More than one warranty.** Parts, labour, and extended plans are separate rows on the same item instead of a single date that has to stand in for all of them. - **Coverage in the owner’s words.** A free-text field holds what the document actually says, so the detail is available later without hunting for the original paperwork. ## 03 / Detail — Sorted by how much time is left. The list is grouped by remaining coverage rather than by name or category — within a year, two to five years, no expiry, and expired. That ordering answers the question people open the app with. On iPad and Mac, the same list becomes a sidebar beside the full record. Screenshot — Warranties on iPad with a sidebar of items grouped by remaining coverage and a detail pane showing a photo, information rows, and warranty rows. - **Time as the sort order.** Grouping by what expires soonest puts the items that need attention at the top without anyone having to search for them. - **Expired, not deleted.** Lapsed items collapse into their own group. The purchase record still matters after the coverage runs out. - **One layout, three sizes.** The phone stacks list and detail; the iPad and Mac show both. The structure of the record does not change with the window. ## End of support I released Warranties in 2023, designed it and built it on my own, and maintained it alongside full-time work. In 2025 I ended support. The decision was about attention rather than the product. A utility like this earns its keep by staying current with the platforms it runs on, and that maintenance is a standing commitment, not a finished task. Continuing to sell something I could no longer give that time to was the wrong trade, so I stopped. Winding it down deliberately turned out to be part of the work, and worth doing as carefully as the release. ## Principles - **Legible time** “3 years 8 months 18 days” answers the question. A date is something you still have to do arithmetic on. - **Optional by default** A record that is easy to start gets started. Detail can be added later, and often is. - **Quiet by design** The app opens to the things you own and nothing else. There is no reason for a utility like this to ask for attention. ## What I carry forward Warranties was small enough that every decision was visible — the number of required fields, the order of the groups, the wording of a duration. That is the useful part of building something end to end at this size, and it is what I take back into larger products: the shape of a record is a design decision, not a schema detail. --- Source: https://devinschulz.com/work/warranties/