How the internet’s favorite squirrel dad made the hottest camera app of 2026
How the internet’s favorite squirrel dad made the hottest camera app of 2026
互联网最受欢迎的“松鼠老爸”是如何打造出 2026 年最火爆相机应用的
Viral wildlife creator Derrick Downey Jr. vibe-coded his way to a hit app in DualShot Recorder. 病毒式传播的野生动物创作者 Derrick Downey Jr. 通过“直觉编程”（vibe-coding）打造了一款热门应用：DualShot Recorder。
It’s not hyperbole to call DualShot Recorder an overnight sensation. It took only 12 hours from the time it was released to hit number one on the App Store’s list of top paid apps. It was a surprise success — but what’s even more surprising is the app’s origin story: it all started with a cadre of friendly neighborhood squirrels and their favorite caretaker. 称 DualShot Recorder 为“一夜成名”绝非夸张。该应用发布仅 12 小时，就登上了 App Store 付费应用排行榜的第一名。这虽然是一个令人惊喜的成功，但更令人惊讶的是它的起源故事：这一切都始于一群友好的邻家松鼠，以及它们最爱的“饲养员”。
Derrick Downey Jr. built a career on short-form videos documenting his interactions with the squirrels that visit his patio in LA. His Instagram and TikTok accounts each have well over a million followers (myself included) who know well the regular cast of characters: Maxine, Richard, and less frequent but affectionately named visitors like Hoodrat Raymond. Downey treats them to plenty of nuts, custom-built shelters, and trips to the local vet when emergency medical care is needed. It’s delightful and about as wholesome as it gets. Derrick Downey Jr. 的职业生涯建立在记录他与洛杉矶自家露台上的松鼠互动的短视频之上。他的 Instagram 和 TikTok 账号各自拥有超过百万的粉丝（包括我本人），大家对其中的“常驻角色”非常熟悉：Maxine、Richard，以及那些不常出现但名字亲切的访客，比如 Hoodrat Raymond。Downey 会用大量的坚果、定制的避难所款待它们，并在需要紧急医疗护理时带它们去看兽医。这一切既令人愉悦，又极其治愈。
He was looking to spin up a series for YouTube, but he struggled to find a way to capture vertical and horizontal footage simultaneously. Other creators solve for this by using a special rig with two phones or cameras shooting at once, or by cropping the clip to both formats in post-processing. “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,” he says. “The editing… all of that was too much.” 他当时正计划为 YouTube 制作一个系列视频，但苦于无法同时拍摄竖屏和横屏素材。其他创作者通常通过使用带有两部手机或相机的特殊支架同时拍摄，或者在后期处理中将视频裁剪成两种格式来解决这个问题。“我尝试过购买各种设备、支架、云台以及额外的手机来满足拍摄需求……但这太累人了，”他说，“后期剪辑……所有这些工作量太大了。”
And cropping in post has drawbacks, too: the iPhone camera uses a crop of the full sensor when you record video. Taking a vertical 16:9 crop from the middle of that already-cropped frame means you’re only using a small portion of the total sensor, losing a lot of resolution and limiting your framing options. 而且后期裁剪也有弊端：iPhone 在录制视频时使用的是全传感器裁剪后的画面。从那个已经被裁剪过的画面中间再截取一个 16:9 的竖屏画面，意味着你只利用了传感器的一小部分，这会导致分辨率大幅下降，并限制了构图选择。
Last year, he got the idea to try creating an app to solve the problem. He’s not a software developer, and experimented with ChatGPT to try and vibe-code something. This was unsuccessful, so he put the project to the side. But earlier this year, something told him to try again, he says. 去年，他萌生了开发一款应用来解决这个问题的想法。他并非软件开发人员，于是尝试利用 ChatGPT 进行“直觉编程”。起初并不成功，所以他暂时搁置了这个项目。但他说，今年年初，某种直觉告诉他应该再试一次。
“I went into the code and the camera activated. And I said okay, we possibly got something here.” He did some digging into the iPhone camera’s capabilities to find out what might be possible. Apple’s camera API allows third-party developers to access footage from the entire sensor, which other app developers have taken advantage of in the past. Downey saw an opportunity to use this capability to solve the multiple aspect ratio problem. With this full sensor readout, his app could save horizontal and vertical crops from that original video — all in-camera without losing resolution. Three or four months and a lot of prompt engineering later, he had a working app. “我进入代码界面，摄像头启动了。我当时就想，好吧，我们可能真的搞出点名堂了。”他深入研究了 iPhone 相机的功能，以探索各种可能性。苹果的相机 API 允许第三方开发者访问整个传感器的画面，过去已有其他开发者利用过这一点。Downey 看到了利用这一功能解决多比例画幅问题的机会。通过读取全传感器数据，他的应用可以从原始视频中保存横向和纵向的裁剪画面——所有操作都在相机内完成，且不会损失分辨率。经过三四个月的努力和大量的提示词工程（prompt engineering），他终于做出了一个可用的应用。
The project started with ChatGPT, and Downey tried using Google’s Antigravity as well, but he says that Claude was the tool that really made it possible. And like anyone who has worked with AI tools, he learned to deal with its quirks and inaccuracies. “I understand the product that I’m trying to create, I understand the functionality and what I’m looking for, and there have been moments when the response [Claude gave] wasn’t accurate,” he says. “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, so I would then have to correct it.” Recognizing that, he says he double checks and triple audits everything he asks it to do. 该项目最初始于 ChatGPT，Downey 也尝试过使用 Google 的 Antigravity，但他表示 Claude 才是真正让项目成为现实的工具。像所有使用过 AI 工具的人一样，他学会了如何应对 AI 的怪癖和不准确之处。“我了解我想要创造的产品，了解它的功能和我的需求，但确实有过 Claude 给出的回答不准确的时候，”他说，“你可能会认为，既然你给机器提供了提示词，它就应该给你准确的数据。但我发现事实并非如此，所以我必须去纠正它。”意识到这一点后，他说他会对要求 AI 执行的每一件事进行双重甚至三重审核。
With the app ready, he says he looked into the process of putting it on Apple’s App Store. It seemed doable. “I was like, alright, well let’s just put it on there and share it.” He priced it at a one-time cost of $6.99, and within its first 12 hours, DualShot Recorder became the number-one paid app in the store. It remained in that top spot for eight days, Downey recounts, and is still in the top 20 at the time of this writing. 应用准备就绪后，他研究了将其上架 Apple App Store 的流程。这看起来是可行的。“我当时想，好吧，那就把它放上去分享给大家吧。”他将其定价为 6.99 美元的一次性买断费用。在发布后的前 12 小时内，DualShot Recorder 就成为了商店里排名第一的付费应用。Downey 回忆说，它在榜首位置保持了八天，截至本文撰写时，它依然稳居前 20 名。
The response was overwhelmingly positive. The price is $9.99 now, but there’s still no subscription and no user data collected, and videos stay entirely on your device. The app also includes plenty of granular controls over quality and resolution, and it also lets you record from two different cameras on the same device at once. It’s a refreshingly simple value proposition. Downey says that it was important to refrain from automatic user data collection, but that has made it harder to pin down and fix bugs. He’s working on adding a troubleshooting feature so users can send an error report when they encounter problems. 市场反响极其热烈。目前价格已调整为 9.99 美元，但依然没有订阅制，不收集任何用户数据，视频完全保存在用户设备上。该应用还包含许多关于质量和分辨率的精细控制选项，并允许用户同时使用设备上的两个不同摄像头进行录制。这种价值主张简单得令人耳目一新。Downey 表示，坚持不自动收集用户数据非常重要，但这确实增加了定位和修复 Bug 的难度。他目前正在开发一项故障排除功能，以便用户在遇到问题时可以发送错误报告。
It’s been an overwhelming but invigorating change for Downey. “I’ve been losing a lot of sleep, which I don’t mind, really,” he tells me. “I’m all about balance, but when something is fueling you, sometimes you lose sleep over it. And that’s what’s been going on.” He describes the venture as exciting, and giving him a new sense of purpose. But he acknowledges that maintaining a successful app might call for a pivot of some kind. “It’s a lot of new things coming up, and I’m embracing that.” 这对 Downey 来说是一次令人应接不暇但又充满活力的转变。“我最近睡眠严重不足，但我真的不介意，”他告诉我，“我一直很注重平衡，但当某件事能为你提供动力时，有时你确实会为此牺牲睡眠。这就是我现在的状态。”他形容这次创业令人兴奋，并赋予了他一种新的使命感。但他承认，维持一款成功的应用可能需要某种程度的转型。“有很多新事物正在涌现，我正在拥抱这一切。”