Wildlife Creator Derrick Downey Jr. Built a Hit iPhone Camera App Using AI Coding Tools

A wildlife content creator with no software development background built one of the year's most talked-about iPhone apps using AI coding tools — and reached the top of the App Store within half a day of launch.

Derrick Downey Jr., who built an audience of more than one million followers each on Instagram and TikTok by documenting his interactions with squirrels at his Los Angeles home, developed DualShot Recorder to solve a specific problem: how to capture vertical and horizontal video simultaneously without two devices or resolution-sacrificing post-processing.

The app hit the number-one spot on the App Store's top paid apps list within 12 hours of its release. It held that position for eight days and remained in the top 20 at the time of publication.

The problem Downey set out to solve is a familiar one for video creators targeting both short-form and long-form platforms. Existing workarounds — dual-camera rigs, a second phone, or cropping footage in editing — all carried tradeoffs. "I tried going out and buying different devices and rigs and gimbals, and additional phones to set up to accommodate for that… but it became too taxing," Downey said. "The editing… all of that was too much."

His technical solution rests on an Apple camera API capability that allows third-party developers to read the full camera sensor, rather than the cropped output the iPhone uses natively for video. By capturing the full sensor readout, the app saves both a horizontal and a vertical crop simultaneously — in-camera and without resolution loss.

Downey is not a software developer. He first attempted to build the app using ChatGPT in a vibe-coding approach, with little success, and shelved the project. When he returned to it earlier this year, he eventually found that Anthropic's Claude was the tool that made meaningful progress possible. He also tested Google's Antigravity along the way.

Working with AI tools required persistent auditing. "You would think that because you're giving the prompts to this machine that it would give you accurate data. But I found that not to be the case," Downey said, "so I would then have to correct it." He described double- and triple-checking the AI's output as a core part of his development process. The full build took roughly three to four months.

Downey priced DualShot Recorder at $6.99 at launch — a one-time purchase with no subscription and no user data collection. The price has since been raised to $9.99. Videos remain stored entirely on the user's device, and the app offers granular controls over quality and resolution. It also supports recording from two different cameras on the same device simultaneously.

The absence of automatic data collection, while a deliberate privacy decision, has complicated bug diagnosis. Downey said he is working on an opt-in error reporting feature to help users flag problems.

The app's success has brought a significant shift in Downey's professional life. "I've been losing a lot of sleep, which I don't mind, really," he said. "I'm all about balance, but when something is fueling you, sometimes you lose sleep over it." He acknowledged that sustaining a software product may require a strategic change of direction, adding, "It's a lot of new things coming up, and I'm embracing that."

Downey said his wildlife content — and the squirrels themselves — remains a constant. The animals, he noted, were a source of support during a difficult period in his life. "They met me in a space when I was going through depression. And that's family."

The app's rise underscores a broader pattern in consumer software: AI-assisted development tools are lowering the barrier to entry for non-engineers, enabling individuals with domain expertise but no formal coding training to ship functional, commercially viable products.

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