Francisco Franco’s Gratus app updated w/ major performance improvements, custom colors, and more

Ben Schoon | Aug 29 2017 - 10:00 am PT

Last month well-known developer Francisco Franco debuted his latest creation to the world, Gratus. The simple app designed to let you remember what you are grateful for launched with a gorgeous material design look and a handful of features, and today it’s getting its first major update.

Gratus v1.1 is available now on Google Play and includes quite a few new features and UI improvements. For one, users now have more control over the interface, including the ability to set custom colors throughout the app. The settings menu has also been updated to make it easier to adjust anything you need to change. The app’s load time and overall performance also see major boosts in this update.

Further, this version brings the daily reminder to the free tier, hopefully giving users who aren’t willing to fork over the $2.99 in-app purchase a bit more of a reason to check in from time to time. Franco has also added a new “have a nice day” notification to Gratus which is delivered first thing in the morning. This notification and your collection of notes can also include the collection of 30 hand-drawn illustrations which are now included in the app.

The full changelog for Gratus v1.1 is below, and the update is available now on Google Play.

17 new stunning themes to better express your thoughts and emotions. My favorites are “gratitude green” and “buoyant blue”. What’s your favorite one? Tweet me at @franciscof_1990 and let me know!

The daily gratus reminder is now available even if you’re in the free tier. This will make the app feel more alive and give you reasons to come back and remember and the stuff you’re grateful for;

There’s a new “have a nice day” notification to empower your day with crazy energy and positivity. I love getting out of bed and receiving a bold and colorful hand drawn message. So personal and beautiful!

Options section has been re-designed for a better organization. Settings need to be easy to find and straightforward to understand;

30 hand drawn beautiful illustrations to use on your notes! They bring magical colors and positivity anytime you look at them;

When creating a new note with a picture Gratus will automatically grab the most dominant color and use it in the background, preventing black bars on the sides if the picture doesn’t fill the canvas;

Major performance improvements when adding, editing, deleting and notes list scrolling. Buttery!

Notes list background and sunshine now beautifully animate to create a seamless and fricktionless transition;

Now you can like your notes from the notification. The likes count affects the random algorithm that’s responsible for selecting the notes to show up on your Widget and permanent notification so now you can smash that like button faster!

Improvements on how the Widget parses pictures. Now it’ll crop the image depending on the size of the canvas;

Added support for Android Oreo’s new APIs;

There’s a new option to only choose notes with pictures to be displayed in the Widget;

New Dutch and Portuguese-BR translations;

The usual bug fixes and code improvements;