The Pure portfolio: how Flashlight, QR Scanner and Fake Chat Video came about

April 2026, the app portfolio is in place:

Alongside Anpfiff1 a second track has been running for months: a portfolio of ad-free utility apps for Android. Three are live, all with the same DNA: entirely offline, no trackers, no subscriptions, pro features as a one-off purchase.

Flashlight Pure (com.pur.taschenlampe)

The first of the Pure range, and the template for everything that followed. Greenfield Kotlin, views with ViewBinding, no Compose, no Hilt, Room for local data, Google Play Billing v7. The core (LED, SOS, screen light, morse code) is free; pro adds RGB colours, party mode and the AMOLED theme as a one-off purchase. Its own domain: taschenlampe-pur.de.

QR Scanner Pure (pur.qrscanner)

The same pattern one level up. CameraX for the preview, ML Kit for recognition in the standard build, ZXing in the F-Droid libre build with no Google dependencies. Room for the scan history, a quick settings tile and a home screen widget for fast access. Released 8 April 2026, v1.0.0.

Fake Chat Video & Screen Maker (com.digitalemanufaktur.chatstudio)

The creative tool in the portfolio. 15 chat styles (WhatsApp, iMessage, Telegram, Instagram DM and more), exported as a screenshot or an animated video. The free version has four styles; pro unlocks all of them. Its own domain: fakechatvideomaker.com.

What they share

✅ The architecture template: views with ViewBinding, activity-based, Room, no DI framework. Simple, testable, quick to iterate.
✅ The billing pattern: Google Play Billing v7 behind a single BillingManager class that every app can share.
✅ Edge-to-edge compliance: required by SDK 36; every activity calls enableEdgeToEdge() before super.onCreate().
✅ Localisation: German and English as the baseline, with more locales per app through Fastlane metadata.
✅ Fastlane for store metadata, screenshots and changelogs.

What worked

• Views instead of Compose in these utility apps. Less magic, faster builds, smaller APKs.
• A one-off purchase instead of a subscription. It builds trust and cuts support work.
• Fastlane as the single source of truth for store listings. Every text change is a commit.

What did not

• Rendering the chat itself in Compose. The preview and the video export have to match pixel for pixel, and two render paths never will. It is drawn now by a single canvas renderer that preview and export share; the Compose bubbles sat around as dead code for a while afterwards until they went. The app's own interface is still Compose with Hilt.
• Localising too early. Other languages come once German and English are settled.

Next in the pipeline: BelegScan, a receipt scanner with OCR built to German bookkeeping rules, and Vault Pure, an AES-256 encrypted photo vault. Both built as v1.0.0, both in store submission.

The Manufaktur dev