How squirrel-loving dads on the Internet created a camera app

Calling is not an exaggeration DualShot Recorder the feeling of the night.

It took only 12 hours from its release to reach number one on the list of the most paid apps on the App Store. It was an amazing success – but even more amazing is the story behind the program: it all started with a group of friendly squirrels and their loving caretakers.

Derrick Downey Jr. he built a career on short videos documenting his adventures with the squirrels that visit his yard in LA. His Instagram and TikTok account each has a million followers (myself included) who are familiar with the characters: Maxine, Richard, as well as lesser but affectionately known guests such as Hoodrat Raymond. Downey treats them to plenty of nuts, custom-built shelters, and trips to the local vet when emergency care is needed. It’s fun and as good as it gets.

He was looking to capture YouTube videos, but struggled to find a way to capture horizontal and vertical images at the same time. Some manufacturers solve this problem by using a special connector with two phones or cameras that shoot at the same time, or by cropping the image from both views in post-processing. “I tried to go out and buy different tools and equipment, and extra phones to make it happen… but it was a ton of money,” he says. “The maintenance…it was all too much.” And downloading in post also has its problems: the iPhone’s camera uses full-frame recording when you take a video. Taking a vertical 16:9 crop from the center of the already cropped frame means you’re only using a fraction of the entire sensor, losing a lot of focus and limiting your options.

Last year, he came up with the idea of ​​trying to create an app to solve the problem. He is not a programmer, and he tried ChatGPT to test with vibe-code something. This did not work, so he put the project aside. But earlier this year, something told him to try again, he says.

“I entered the code and the camera was on. And I said, well, maybe we have something here.” They had to dig into the iPhone’s camera capabilities to find out what’s possible. Apple’s camera API allows third-party developers to capture images from the entire sensor, which third-party developers can use they have taken advantage of it in the past. Downey saw an opportunity to use this capability to solve a multi-level problem. With the full reading of this sensor, its software can save horizontal and vertical crops from the original video – all in the camera without loss. Three or four months and a lot of engineering later, they had a working program.

The project started with ChatGPT, and Downey tried using Google Antigravity also, but he says Claude was the tool that made it possible. And like anyone who has worked with AI tools, he has learned to deal with its problems and flaws. “I understand what I’m trying to create, I understand the functionality and what I’m looking for, and there have been times when the answer (Claude gave) wasn’t right,” he says. You might think that because you are giving instructions to the machine that it will give you the correct information, but I have found that it is not, so I have to fix it. Realizing this, he says he double-checks and triple-checks everything he wants to do.

With the app ready, he reportedly looked for a way to put it on Apple’s App Store. It seemed possible. “I was like, well, let’s just put it out there and share it.” He bought it for a one-time price of $6.99, and within his first 12 hours, DualShot Recorder it became the first in-store payment program. It stayed in the top spot for eight days, Downey reports, and is still in the top 20 at the time of this writing.

The answer was a lot nice. The price is $9.99 now, but there are no subscriptions and no data is collected, and the videos stay on your device. The app also includes a lot of controls for quality and layout, and it also allows you to record from two different cameras on the same device at the same time. It’s a refreshingly simple idea. Downey says that it was important to avoid data collection, but this has made it difficult to publish and correct errors. They are working on adding a troubleshooting feature so that users can submit a bug report when they encounter problems.

It’s been a big but positive change for Downey. “I’ve been losing a lot of sleep, which I don’t really care about,” he tells me. “I like to be creative, but when things get tough, sometimes you can’t sleep because of it. He explains that the job is fun, and it gives him new ideas. But he admits that maintaining a successful program may require some kind of pivot. “There are a lot of new things coming, and I agree.”

Downey has been open about his mental health with his followers, and credits his interactions with his squirrels as something that helped him get out of the dark. Sometimes when his channel is quiet, he shares updates that he is not in the right place to make videos. His community supports him, he said. He’s like oh, take your time. We are not going anywhere. We will stay here.

Wherever his embrace of change takes him, Downey says one thing never changes: spending time with squirrels. With what she calls the initial “chaos” of the show’s launch, she was able to get back to spending time with Richard, Maxine, and her other furry guests. “He met me at a time when I was depressed. And that’s family.