Completely redesigned Settle Up for iOS released

We have been working hard on the new Settle Up for iOS and it’s finally here. It brings the long-awaited feature parity with Android and Windows versions. Now your friends with iPhones are not limited in using Settle Up.

The app is free to download

Up until now, Settle Up cost $1.99 on iOS, while the app on Android has always been free. We heard you loud and clear that friends on Android can use the app freely while iOS friends had to pay up front. This different monetization was due to historical reasons, but now it’s finally unified. Today, the app is free in the Basic plan and you can purchase the Premium plan with the following extra features:

• No ads
• Adding receipt photos
• Extra colors of groups

We always honor your previous purchases. So, everyone who purchased the app already has no ads and receipt photos unlocked forever.

The new Premium is also shared across platforms: if you have multiple devices or you switch phones, you can have Premium on iOS, Android, and Windows and pay only once.

Fast modern-looking app

The app is completely redesigned. It shares design philosophy and brand with the Android app, but it still follows iOS design guidelines and best practices. The design maintains group circles on top as a quick way to figure out balances in the group and who should pay next. You can quickly swipe between groups. Each group can have a different color, so you immediately know which group you are in. The UI also features member avatars which are easier to scan through than reading names.

We changed not just design, but also the underlying sync technology — now you don’t need to refresh anything because the app refreshes automatically so it’s super fast. Try placing two phones next to each other and change something on one to see it in action! Moreover, the app continues to work offline.

Feature-packed expenses

Adding expenses is better than ever. You can finally enter an expense where multiple people paid. Don’t quickly know how much 5 beers are when one cost $2.45? Use the integrated calculator. Exchange rates now support many more use-cases: you can have a different exchange rate for each expense and exchange rates are synced with other members. Receipts were previously a local-only feature, now they sync with others as well (but it’s a Premium feature). And finally, you can enter not just expenses, but also incomes — like that refund of a deposit at your last trip.

Easy group sharing via a link

The old app had group sharing based on emails. It wasn’t very practical because these days you might not have your friends’ email addresses. You might just have the phone number, WhatsApp or iMessage connections. Now you can share groups via a link and share them with any app that you use for communication with your friends. The link automatically redirects to the app if installed or to App Store / Google Play / our website.

Plus, we have added an even simpler way for friends who are in the same room. One person can broadcast the group “nearby” and others can join it automagically. It uses ultrasound!

We even support some advanced permission management like read-only access or transferring group ownership.

Other notable additions

There are many tweaks here and there. You can:

• Create an account with email/password, not just with Google or Facebook
• See the history of changes in a group. This way, you are in control of expenses others add or change.
• Change group order

What did we remove?

We removed a few things:

• Offline groups don’t sync so people were losing data in the past. We don’t want our users to have such bad experience so we decided not to allow offline groups. Once you create the group online, you can keep adding expenses offline.
• Marking expenses as transfers. In the new version, we have a simplified workflow for transfers. Transfers are now always 1:1 transactions.
• Transaction tolerance. It was confusing to explain what it means and it wasn’t used a lot.
• Adding more emails you own. Now you can sign in with any of your accounts, and you can clearly see who has access to your group. With sharing via link you don’t even need to know your friends’ email addresses.

What’s next?

There are still some features from Android and Windows that are not available in iOS. We plan to gradually add them:

• Localizations
• Transaction categories
• Recurring transactions
• Group Premium plan
• Charts and statistics

Let us know what you think about the new iOS app. The best way is to write us at ios@settleup.io.