Building Nibo

@fredoyetayo|July 11, 2026 (15h ago)0 views

The first time the idea for Nibo came to me, I was on a six or seven hour flight from Doha to London. I remember wondering whether there was a good solution for keeping track of all the places I have ever visited. I came across a couple of apps on the app stores, but they all offered fairly basic functionality and I wanted more, ideally for free. I reckon there are maybe hundreds, or even thousands, of people who would love a free app where they can log their travels.

I had the idea for Nibo for over four years, but I could never find the time to build it. That changed recently. I visited Rwanda for four days and decided to build it during my free time.

This is the first time I have ever written Swift and built a mobile app entirely on my own. I have worked across several teams building mobile apps, but mostly on the backend side of things. I know a bit of React Native and Flutter/Dart, and I would regard my general understanding of building a mobile app as very high. Even so, doing everything from planning to design to development on my own was new. It was all handled by me and my new friends, Claude Code and Codex.

Nibo is a Yoruba word which means where. Where have you been? Where are you going? Where do you wish you could go? You get the concept.

Nibo allows you to log your travels and get inspired by new destinations. It has an internal passport feature that shows you the stamp of every place you have visited. You can generate postcards of different locations and share them directly to Instagram, WhatsApp and other social media platforms. The app also has a smart notification system that notifies you of new places and reminds you to relive old memories.

One of the problems I wanted to solve was building an app that works entirely offline, meaning you do not need internet access to log your travels or even to get notified. The only time you need the internet is to back up your data to iCloud, and that is entirely optional. I noticed that most apps these days require the internet, and I was clear from day one that I wanted Nibo to work without it.

Nibo does not collect your data, and everything stays entirely on your device.

This app is free and will remain free forever. I have no plans to monetise it. If I ever want to monetise something, I will build a separate app with more justifiable features that warrant it.

I plan on building and adding more features as time goes on. I am the only contributor on the app for now, but I would welcome others to join in. For now, the app will not be open source. I am making no promises regarding a version two, but I will always fix any major or minor bugs and resolve issues as far as I can.

Nibo is a very simple and intuitive app, and I hope every traveller finds it useful. If you have feedback or comments, please feel free to leave a review. I will always read any review and look for areas to improve.

You can download Nibo on the App Store.

Nibo. Travel log, postcards and digital passport.