Hey everyone!

So I made myself a promise when I launched Node Playground: I'd get the first update out before the app turned one year old. Bold commitment, right? Well, the update is live now — at the 10-month mark. Cutting it a little close there, but hey, a promise is a promise. The next update won't take quite as long. (Probably.)

Version 1.1 is here though, and honestly it was worth the wait. This one addresses pretty much everything I wanted to fix after launch, plus a feature I didn't even know I needed until I built it.

The Big One: Presets

This is the headline feature and it changes how you use the app. Node Playground now has a full preset system — you can load up curated configurations like Zen Garden, Deep Space, Morning Rain, and a handful of others with a single tap.

But here's the part I'm most proud of: you can save your own presets too. Found that perfect combination of node types, audio settings, and visual tweaks that hits just right? Save it. Name it. Come back to it whenever you want. And if you ever mess things up experimenting, there's a Reset Defaults button that puts everything back to square one.

I built this because I kept finding myself tweaking settings to recreate setups I'd stumbled onto before. Now I just tap and I'm there. Ten months of occasionally thinking "I should really add that" finally turned into actually adding it.

Audio That Doesn't Hurt Your Ears

Okay, confession time. The audio in 1.0 had some issues. Volume levels were inconsistent — sometimes way too loud — and there was this crackling and popping that would show up on certain devices. Not ideal for something that's supposed to be a calming fidget experience.

All of that is fixed now. Volume levels are balanced, the crackling is gone, and the overall sound output is just cleaner. It's one of those changes where you might not consciously notice it, but everything feels better.

The Usual Suspects

There are also the standard bug fixes and stability improvements that come with any update. Nothing dramatic, just smoothing out the rough edges that have been bugging me since launch. (For ten months. While I did nothing about them. We've been over this.)

What's Next?

I've got ideas. Lots of them. And I promise — promise — the gap between 1.1 and 1.2 will not be ten months. The hardest part of shipping updates is shipping the first one. Now that the muscle is warmed up, expect more frequent releases.

If you already have Node Playground, the update should be waiting for you. If you haven't tried it yet, now's a great time to jump in — the presets give you a much better starting point than just dropping into a blank canvas.

Download Node Playground on the App Store →

As always, I'd love to hear what you think. Drop a review, send me a message, whatever works. And if you save a preset that's particularly cool, tell me about it — I'm always looking for configurations I haven't thought of.

Happy node-ing!

-George