For me, digital hygiene is a very important thing. The browser I use every day is also a very important choice. Most browsers encourage doomscrolling, let you write in them, and make it easy to be distracted by personalized content, etc. So, I started looking for a browser that would fit my needs. And such browser was Firefox Focus.
But apparently, even though Firefox is a big company, Firefox Focus wasn't a fit for me. It was terrible in terms of speed, it lacked many features I needed from Arc Search, for example. Already this experience in using different mobile browsers formed some criteria that I expected to have in my daily use browser. So, even though I did a deep research, I didn't find what I was looking for.
And that's why I decided to build a first iOS app by myself, just for me to use. That's how I started building what ended up being Mau Browser.
My criteria were:
- One tab only
- No cookies are stored between sessions
- Slick and simple design
- Smooth animations
- Speed
That's how I started building. I started with a frame in Figma, just sketching out ideas from my head. After that, I started building with Claude Code. I chose Swift as the primary language because it's an iOS-first app.
While building this project:
- I used Figma MCP
- I used Xcode and its MCP
- I used Todoist and its MCP for project management
- I got used to Claude Code interface
- I tried to do multitasking, run parallel agents first in my journey.
My biggest bottleneck was actually animations. It was so hard for even top-tier Claude models to do the right animations. But I just tried and tried, tried to explain it in natural language, which definitely gave me some skills in actually prompting AI models the right way. I also tried explaining by just drawing sketches in Figma how it should look. This was a very interesting experience.
I consider it a very successful project. For me, it was a big win to actually build something usable and good-looking.
I also ended up integrating some AI features in this app, such as:
- No account perplexity search
- Long query search refinement with local Apple Foundation models
The app features three color themes that completely change the look and feel of the animations and UI.
Even though it didn't make it to the App Store, I still use Mau today. I'm installing it locally via Xcode, and I just love using this app.
