Tejroop Bonagiri — iOS Developer & UI Designer

The Road Here

Years of effort.
Measured in shipped work.

No mentor. No placement. No company backing. Just curiosity, a MacBook, and an obsession that wouldn't quit.

Where it started

An iPhone 7 made me feel something

Not just a phone — an experience. Every animation, every transition felt intentional. I didn't know what design was called yet. I just knew I needed to understand how it was made.

First experiments

A Windows Machine - HP Pavilion Series

Hours on Behance studying how designers thought, then trying to replicate it in Adobe XD and Figma. Nobody around me was doing this. I was figuring it out all alone — but I kept hitting the same wall. I was designing for iOS without ever really living inside it.

HP PavilionBehanceAdobe XDFigma

Going all in

I asked my parents for a MacBook.

A deliberate decision — if I was building for Apple platforms, I needed to live inside them. The moment I had it, I started studying the ecosystem for real. How gestures felt. How transitions worked. How the details nobody notices are exactly what makes it work.

The uncomfortable part

No placement. But I knew I was thinking bigger.

College ended without a job lined up. Most people moved on through campus placements. I asked myself a different question: can I build something real — something people actually use? No safety net. No mentor. I decided to find out.

Learning to code

UIKit felt distant. SwiftUI felt like home.

UIKit never clicked. Then SwiftUI arrived and something shifted. Apple Books, YT Tutorials — whatever it took to bridge design and code. That intersection is what I keep coming back to.

SwiftSwiftUIPlay AppApple Books

Getting serious

Uxcel. 10kdesigners. Structure, finally.

Uxcel taught me design fundamentals through flashcards — that's where the principles actually stuck. Then 10kdesigners, a cohort-based program where I studied how real products are structured, not just how they look. Design became something I approached with intention.

Uxcel10kdesignersFigma Events

Finding my people

Swift Bengaluru gave me a world I didn't know existed.

Zomato iOS Ketchup. WWDC Keynote at Swiggy. Monthly talks at Apple Developer Center Bengaluru — 60 developers a session, Apple Developer Relations in the room. Nobody sent me. I just showed up.

Swift BengaluruZomato iOS KetchupWWDC @ SwiggyApple Dev Center

Now

2 apps. 0 rejections. Still building. ✦

Two apps on the App Store, zero rejections ever. Recognised as an Independent iOS Developer at Apple Developer Center Bengaluru. Exploring voice interfaces, Speech APIs, and on-device ML.

Years of experience is one way to measure someone. I earned a seat at Apple's table on my own. I'd like to see what I can do with a team behind me.

Stack

Tools & Technologies

🍎 Swift

🖼️ SwiftUI

🔨 Xcode

🎨 Figma

🐙 GitHub

🧪 TestFlight

▶️ Play App

📐 Apple HIG

Currently Exploring

🎙️ Voice Interfaces 🗣️ Speech APIs 🌐 Translation & Localisation 🤖 On-device ML

Live on the App Store

Published Apps

Design Experiments

Work on Behance

UI explorations, redesigns, and visual experiments — done independently, published on Behance.

Writing

Articles on Medium

iOS tutorials, design experiments, and SwiftUI deep-dives — written for builders who care about craft.

SwiftUI Practice

Decoding Settings UI
from real iOS apps.

One question drove this: how would a senior iOS developer look at this screen? I picked 5 popular apps, decoded their Settings page into SwiftUI, and built each one from scratch.

👆 View Breakdown

Apr 11, 2025

Settings page — profile header, grouped sections, "Also from Meta" footer, TabView.

ListSectionNavigationLinksearchableTabViewclipShape

👆 View Breakdown

Apr 15, 2025

Threads

Settings page — inline nav, VStack+Divider layout, Switch profiles & Log out Buttons.

VStackDividertoolbarItemnavigationTitle(.inline)Button.foregroundStyle(.red)

👆 View Breakdown

Apr 13, 2025

SmartThings

Settings — Samsung account header, Toggle with footer, "Labs" badge via LabeledContent.

ListToggleLabeledContentSection header/footer.tint(.blue)

👆 View Breakdown

Apr 15, 2025

Perplexity

Settings sheet — Pro banner (ZStack), user profile, LabeledContent rows, toggle.

ZStackLabeledContentsheetToggle .tint(.teal)ScrollView+VStack

👆 View Breakdown

Apr 14, 2025

ChatGPT

Settings sheet — insetGrouped List, Picker for colour scheme & map, Toggle for haptics.

List .insetGroupedPickerTogglesheetLabeledContent

How I Work

From Idea to App Store

💡

Idea & Research

Define the problem. Study similar apps.

✏️

Design in Figma

Wireframes → mockups → prototype.

⚙️

Build in Swift

SwiftUI first. Clean structure.

🧪

Test & Iterate

TestFlight. Real feedback. Refine.

🚀

Ship

App Store. Launch. Listen. Update.

Community & Recognition

Earned every room
I've been in.

Nobody sent me anywhere. I showed up as an independent creator — because that's what you do when you care.

Apple Developer Center Bengaluru

Swiggy HQ

Zomato iOS Ketchup

WWDC25 Keynote · Swiggy

10kdesigners

Figma Events & Uxcel

Through the Lens

Nature & Landscape

When I'm not building, I'm out with a camera. Same eye for detail — different medium.

Kempegowda Airport

Water Droplets

Beach View

Bandra-Worli Sea Link

Street Lamp

Taj Hotel

TL;DR

Everything you need to know in 30 seconds.

Who

Tejroop Bonagiri

Independent iOS Developer & UI Designer based in India. Self-taught, no prior company, fully self-driven.

Apps Shipped

2 apps · 0 App Store rejections

Magic Mesh: Gradient Generator and Pronuncio — both live, both free, both built solo from design to submission.

Stack

SwiftUI · Swift · Xcode · Figma

Designs in Figma, builds in SwiftUI. Understands both sides of the screen — that's the edge.

Proven in Rooms

Apple Developer Center Bengaluru

Recognised as an Independent iOS Developer. Attended as a self-funded creator — not sent by a company.

Community

Swift Bengaluru · Zomato · Swiggy

WWDC Keynote at Swiggy HQ. Zomato iOS Ketchup. Monthly Apple Dev talks. Showed up to all of it independently.

Writing

4 articles on Medium

iOS tutorials covering WidgetKit, TipKit, Live Activities, and SwiftUI app builds — written clearly for other developers.

Design Work

9 projects on Behance

UI redesigns, brand experiments, and product explorations — dating back to 2022, all published independently.

SwiftUI Practice

5 real apps decoded

WhatsApp, Threads, SmartThings, Perplexity, ChatGPT — Settings screens rebuilt from scratch in SwiftUI with full breakdowns.

Currently Exploring

Voice · Speech APIs · On-device ML

Building toward interfaces that go beyond taps. Voice, translation, and on-device AI are where the next work is headed.

A note to recruiters

You've seen the work.
Here's the honest part.

I don't have years of experience on a résumé. That's a real thing and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

What I do have: two apps on the App Store, zero rejections. A place at Apple Developer Center Bengaluru that nobody gave me — I just kept showing up. SwiftUI screens rebuilt from scratch off WhatsApp, Threads, Perplexity, ChatGPT and SmartThings. Articles. Designs. A Behance full of experiments. All of it self-taught, self-driven, with no team and no safety net.

I'm not asking for a favour. I'm asking you to be straightforward with me — look at what's here and make a call based on that. If it doesn't fit what you need right now, that's fair. But if it does, I'd genuinely like to talk.

I work better with a team. I just haven't had one yet.

— Tejroop Bonagiri, Independent iOS Developer

Let's talk