Markus SolbergHoist

// iOS · iPadOS · watchOS

Hoist

Turns an iPhone or Apple Watch into a sign — a flag, a name, a QR code — fullscreen, at full brightness.

  • The Norwegian flag filling the screen, waving as if in wind

    A flag, fullscreen, at full brightness

  • A lit candle filling the screen, its flame glowing against black

    A candle that flickers

  • The flag picker — a searchable grid of national flags with a Design a Flag button

    275 flags, plus the ones you design

  • The library, showing a pinned Norwegian flag above saved flags and signs

    Your library, pinned and sorted

Hoist is a signalling app. You pick a thing — one of 275 flags, a photo, a line of text, a QR code, a candle, a flat field of light — and hold the screen up. It fills the display with no chrome, no status bar and the brightness pinned to maximum, because the screen is aimed away from you and the interface has to get out of the way.

Flags wave. The motion is a Metal distortion whose amplitude grows from the hoist, so the edge against the pole stays put — that fixed edge is what makes the eye read a flag rather than a rippling rectangle. Tilting the phone leans the cloth, and waving it raises a gust that settles a couple of seconds after you stop.

Occasions let you set a date rule and a time window — 17 May, every year, 09:00–12:00, the Norwegian flag. At the start time Hoist posts a notification that offers the item; one tap takes it fullscreen. It never seizes the display on its own.

The Apple Watch app carries its own copy of the library and runs with the phone out of range. Everything happens on the device: no account, no server, no network.