Why I Built TipCalc Pro
If you have ever searched for "tip calculator" on the App Store, you know the landscape. Dozens of apps, most of them cluttered with banner ads, paywalled behind subscriptions for features that should be free, or sporting interfaces that look like they were designed in 2012 and never touched again. For something so fundamentally simple — splitting a bill and calculating a tip — the experience was surprisingly bad.
The idea for TipCalc Pro lived in my head and in some wireframe concepts for years. Every time I sat at a restaurant fumbling with one of these apps, the same thought surfaced: someone should build something better. Not just incrementally better, but a completely different experience. An app that felt as polished and intentional as the best iOS apps, but for the most mundane task imaginable. The kind of app you actually enjoy opening.
What finally pushed me over the edge was experimenting with the latest LLM coding models. The idea had been simmering for years, but suddenly I had a development partner that could help me move at a pace I never could alone. I essentially vibe coded the entire app — describing what I wanted, iterating on the output, and shaping the result into something that felt right. It was a completely new way of building software, and it made a project like this feel possible for someone without a traditional development background.
When I set out to actually build it, Apple's Liquid Glass design language was the obvious choice. Announced at WWDC 2025, it offered translucent surfaces, depth, and light refraction — everything I needed to make a utility app feel alive. I reimagined the entire app around what Liquid Glass has to offer, pushing the boundaries of what people expect from a calculator. The result is an interface that feels less like a tool and more like a piece of glass you hold up to your bill.
What Makes It Different
- Tax-aware tipping. Most calculators tip on the post-tax total. TipCalc Pro lets you choose whether to tip on the pre-tax or post-tax amount — giving you a choice most apps never offer.
- Smart rounding. The app rounds your total to clean numbers, so you are not leaving $47.63 on the table. Payments should be simple.
- Liquid Glass design. Built from the ground up for iOS 26, with translucent materials, subtle depth, and animations that feel native to the platform.
- Split with precision. Divide the bill among any number of people with per-person breakdowns that actually add up correctly — no rounding errors that leave someone short.
What Comes Next
TipCalc Pro is just getting started. I am exploring features like receipt scanning with on-device ML, Apple Watch complications for quick calculations, and deeper accessibility improvements. The goal is not to add features for the sake of a changelog — it is to keep finding small, meaningful ways to make tipping less annoying. If you have ideas, I am listening.
