iOS App · Live Activity
ParkIst
Native iOS parking app · Turkey
Istanbul's and İzmir's municipalities both publish live parking occupancy data — but no native app actually used it well. ParkIst was built from scratch as a fast, native iOS app that unifies both feeds, colors lots by real-time availability, and runs a parking timer on the Lock Screen so drivers never have to reopen the app.
A native SwiftUI iOS app that unifies Istanbul and İzmir municipal parking feeds into one map and list — with a Lock Screen / Dynamic Island parking timer and a backend proxy that shields the app from upstream API hiccups.
- Product Design
- Civic & local data
The results
iOS downloads on the App Store — a niche native app finding its drivers
App sessions in the last 90 days — used regularly, not one-and-done
Cities unified — Istanbul and İzmir municipal feeds rendering in one consistent UI
What this means for your business
If you have municipal or public data nobody is turning into a real product, this is the kind of native app build that turns a messy API into something people actually use every day.
One map, two cities, real-time data
Istanbul (İBB İSPARK) and İzmir municipal parking feeds, unified into a single map and list. Lots are colored green-to-red by live occupancy so drivers can pick a working spot at a glance.
A timer that lives outside the app
The parking timer runs as a Live Activity on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island — drivers see how long they have left without unlocking the phone, with a red expired state when the meter is about to bite.
Robust against upstream hiccups
A backend proxy with caching and a last-known-good fallback means users keep seeing data even when the municipal APIs are slow or down — no blank screens, no support tickets.
The brief
Open data, no real product.
Finding parking in Istanbul is its own minor sport. The municipality publishes a live occupancy feed for hundreds of car parks across the European and Asian sides of the city, and İzmir does the same — but no clean native app actually used either feed well.
Drivers didn't have a single app that could tell them which lots near them were open right now, how full they were, how the tariff actually worked, and how much paid parking time they had left without unlocking the phone.
ParkIst was built to be that app.
How we built it
Native iOS, two municipal feeds, one calm experience.
The two municipalities return wildly different data shapes, so we built one adapter per city and normalised them behind a single model — the rest of the app doesn't need to know which feed an entry came from.
The parking timer is a Live Activity: when you start a session it lives on your Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, with a progress bar and a red expired state when time runs out. You never have to reopen the app to check it.
A small backend proxies the municipal endpoints with caching and a last-known-good fallback, so when the upstream APIs get slow or wobble, the app still loads instead of going blank.
What we shipped
A real native app, with the rough edges sanded down.
- 01A native SwiftUI iOS app live on the App Store
- 02Map and list views unifying Istanbul and İzmir parking feeds, with live occupancy colors
- 03A parking timer running on the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island via Live Activity
- 04A Home Screen widget for quick access to the active session
- 05Bilingual UI (Turkish / English) with in-app language switch
- 06A backend proxy that keeps the app alive when the upstream APIs misbehave
Want results like these?
If you have municipal or public data nobody is turning into a real product, this is the kind of native app build that turns a messy API into something people actually use every day.
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What we did on this project — and can do for you
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