Dark mode, license manager and font settings

It’s going to be a short update this time, because I’ve been focusing on the last 5% remaining to launch Darkmatter.

Dark mode

It’s funny that dark mode was among the last things I’ve shipped given the name of the app, but better late than never. Here’s a few screenshots, I think it looks pretty good.

CleanShot 2023-08-30 at 20.37.57@2x.png

CleanShot 2023-08-30 at 20.35.54@2x.png

License manager

I’ve already built several tiny apps to manage license keys for my other apps, but they were pretty basic and didn’t support per-seat billing. This meant I couldn’t implement the pricing I wanted.

I’ve always wanted to have one place to integrate with Paddle and manage license keys for all my apps, so I don’t have to maintain a separate server for each of them.

So that’s what I was working on this week. It’s a tiny project, that:

  • Generates a license key when a customer buys my app on Paddle.
  • Manages activation/deactivation of devices for each license.
  • Has an Electron library, which takes care of free trials and license management.

CleanShot 2023-08-30 at 20.51.40@2x.png

Font settings

I’ve postponed this for a while, but there were folks who were asking to customize the font long time ago. Finally, it’s shipped. CleanShot 2023-08-30 at 20.54.40@2x.png

I decided to go beyond a basic list of all available fonts. Font settings feature a custom menu component, which categories the fonts into 3 sections: default system font, custom fonts you have added yourself and fonts that came with the system. All items use the font they represent to render their label too.


I’ve mostly stopped working on the new features and I moved the focus to implementing the billing, designing the full version of the website and writing documentation. It’s time for the last-minute preparations ahead of launch.

This is the part where I struggle the most. Once designing and coding stops, it’s not that much fun anymore and it’s easy for me to lose motivation. But, I’m proud of what I built and I want everyone else to experience what Darkmatter has to offer.

It’s been amazing writing this newsletter for the past two months and even more amazing talking to you in replies 💙

Stay tuned for the final push and a launch announcement very, very soon!

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Darkmatter is in active development and may launch next month. Follow the updates, get early access and watch the building process.

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