AppCenter Spotlight: Artem Anufrij
Meet the one developer behind ten AppCenter apps
Artem Anufrij has become a sort of legend of AppCenter: he’s published ten apps (more than any other single developer so far), written a suite of multimedia apps (Melody, Cinema, and Memories), and actively engages with the elementary team on a regular basis.
He’s a 36 year-old project leader for industrial software development and architecture from Germany. Outside of his day job and working on elementary apps, he enjoys spending time traveling Europe and taking photos.
Inspiration for his apps comes from a few places, but it seems mostly necessity and personal itch. In the past, Artem has played drums for over ten years in some “rock, funk, and psychedelic” bands. His first app for AppCenter was Metronome—a click-style metronome for musicians—which helped him with training on and practicing the drums. Other apps, like Regex Tester, were created to address Artem’s own needs as an alternative to online tools, then published to AppCenter in hopes that they’d be useful to others.
I prefer to use the native “Regex Tester” instead of similar online apps because it returns the exact same result if I want to implement some pattern into Vala code, plus it’s faster if you work with big log files.
Image Burner, a dead-simple USB flashing tool, was actually spurred by a conversation I had with Artem a few months ago, wishing someone would make something similar to Etcher but with a native toolkit instead of Electron.
With ten apps, prioritizing work and keeping organized is crucial. Artem prioritizes fixing issues reported via GitHub first, then moves on to feature requests fielded from both GitHub and Google+. “I want to thank all the people for supporting my projects by bug reports, testing new functions and translations! It’s really valuable help for me!” Anyone can help and file an issue report by hitting the Report a Problem button in the footer of the app in AppCenter.
Artem told me many features and improvements, however, come from his own daily use, dogfooding his apps. “If something bothers me, I have to change it.”
Three of Artem’s apps are really alternatives to some built-in elementary OS apps: Melody to Music, Cinema to Videos, and Memories to Photos. I think that’s quite interesting and demonstrates how people really have choice when it comes to apps on elementary OS. But how does Artem feel about sort of “competing” with the built-in apps?
If I’m honest with you I don’t thinks the apps are “competing” with the built-in apps. I was inspired by elementary apps. The Music and Videos apps were among the reasons I stayed on elementary OS around six years ago, and still use it today.
His own multimedia apps, however, were driven by his want for apps focused on large media collections like his own. They include some features the default apps don’t have, like duplicate finding in Memories, more season-based features in Cinema, and online radio integration in Melody.
I think I have a different focus: it’s important for me to manage large content on my own network or local storage. In my case, I have 50,000 photos, 7,000 songs, and 1,000 videos; I am a collector!
You can grab Melody, Cinema, and Memories on AppCenter for the recommended price of just $2 each. Each of these apps can also be set as an alternative to the built-in elementary OS apps from System Settings → Applications → Default with the Video Player, Music Player, and Image Viewer settings. If you love them, give it a try!
AppCenter Dashboard, where developers publish their apps for elementary OS, was built after a lot of talking to developers and designing as simple of a process as we could. I think that work is paying off, because Artem loves it.
I think it’s the easiest way in the world to publish your own work into an existing landscape — I’m not kidding. I don’t believe it could be easier. GitHub → Connect to AppCenter → done! Excellent work from the elementary team!
If you haven’t peeked behind the scenes of AppCenter Dashboard, I recommend reading Building the Future of elementary OS. If you’re a developer, also check out developer.elementary.io.
Even with so many apps on his hands, Artem still has several features he’d like to implement, including CD ripping in Melody, external devices in Memories, and possibly some online services in each of his multimedia apps. He’s also not ruling out more apps in the future. “I have a long list, but I am open to suggestions. We can talk about future apps on Google+ or GitHub.”
If you want to follow along with the development of his existing apps, try out new features, and suggest future apps, be sure to do so. You can find Artem at github.com/artemanufrij and google.com/+ArtemAnufrij. Also be sure to check out his website and list of apps at artemanufrij.github.io.
To all newcomers: grab a keyboard, write code, and have fun :)
–Artem Anufrij
Thank you to everyone who’s bought an app on AppCenter, our supporters on Bountysource and Patreon, and those who’ve purchased a copy of elementary OS or merch from our store. Every contribution helps make all of this possible, and we wouldn’t be here without you. If you’d like to help improve elementary OS, don’t hesitate to Get Involved!
