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Posted by alentodorov 12/21/2025

Show HN: WalletWallet – create Apple passes from anything(walletwallet.alen.ro)
I got my Apple developer certificate and built a simple app to solve a problem I had. One shop I buy from doesn't have Apple Wallet passes. Since you need signed certificates to build these very simple things, I created a minimal app that signs them. It's available if you need it too. It won't scan cards with AI - you manually enter the barcode, which I think makes it less prone to error.
448 points | 115 commentspage 2
081guy 12/21/2025|
This is great! Are you sure you are not violating any ToS for that? I’d hate to see it go
saxenaabhi 12/21/2025||
It probably is violating the ToS. But would like to know more.
jackdh 12/21/2025|||
Unlikely, I've used apps similar to this such as passbook [0] for a while now and they're still up.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/passbook-wallet-pass-creator/i...

saagarjha 12/21/2025|||
Nothing wrong with signing a pass
mythoughtsexact 12/22/2025||
I'm so confused, is HN now littered with nothing but Supported Bots and Crappy AI Generating supposedly a small developer Bots?

Nothing about this app is unique or cool, just one peek at the source code reveals OP or the Bot literally wrote Jack Shit. Everything on the App is powered by Cloudflare's AI tools. In fact, every other App listed on the page is exactly the same.

So with all those thoughts out there, if OP is a real human, then the best we could do is shame them for not having a single drop of creativity and for relying on AI to do all the work. Or are we still pretending this AI is actually useful? Because from the point of an actual engineer with decades of experience and several successful startups that went public, this is seriously concerning, and tells me that the next generation is going to be F'd when they wake up one morning and everything is falling to pieces and they realize that they have no real skills beyond asking a computer to do their work for them.

b3lvedere 12/22/2025||
I've tried it with two cards that just have barcodes (i have no idea which bar code format they are). Your barcode (code 128) doesn't look like the original barcodes on the cards, so unfortunately i can't use the generated wallet cards.

Would be nice to have a preview of the generated card before downloading the correctly generated file.

jacobajit 12/21/2025||
I wish there were a way to “archive” cards and passes in the Wallet app. I’d be much more likely to pass-ify my life if that were the case.

The Wallet app is just too important and used frequently in time sensitive actions to clutter with cards/passes that I use once every few months. That is, when I’m about to tap to pay, I don’t want to infrequently used cards to clutter my payment experience. Likewise, when I’m about to board a flight, I don’t want random loyalty cards to clutter the interface.

At the same time, I would really like to keep these occasional cards and passes in Wallet, just not on the main screen. It definitely beats hanging onto these physically, especially because they are in fact infrequently used so I would never carry them around.

It should be a similar distinction to Apple’s Home Screen vs App Library for long-term archival.

mcgrath_sh 12/21/2025||
I use my password manager for those. The only card I have in my Apple wallet is my grocery card. Otherwise, I go to my password manager and pull up the entry and the attached images. Some, I have just a barcode png. Others I have screenshots of the card from an app/website. This has been a really good balance for me.

As an aside, I tried to use base64 for the images so everything was in text, but decoding with a shortcut was annoying enough I went with the image attachment.

pimlottc 12/21/2025||
It’s possible to make a pass with location info so that it pops up on your Home Screen when you’re nearby a relevant location (e.g. a store, library, train station, etc). Doesn’t seem to be supported by this tool, though.
dickiedyce 12/21/2025||
Code39 would be really useful ;-)
corprew 12/21/2025||
Yeah, Code39 would be really festive.
x3n0n 12/21/2025||
Yeah, Code39 would be really festive.
alentodorov 12/21/2025||
noted
the_lucifer 12/21/2025||
This is such a quick and neat way to get a pass for all the random codes in your wallet.

I've had a long shelved project (>8 years now?) where I was working on a solution to doing this from a mobile device but with loads more customization (including image options for different slots), but the cost effectiveness thanks to the PKPass signing as you noticed, put me off to provide it as a public utility as I was a student then. This gives me motivation to revisit it.

mbirth 12/21/2025|
Have a look at MakePass[0] - which sounds exactly like you describe. It allows you to design a pass as per spec.

[0] https://pvieito.com

artificialLimbs 12/21/2025||
We’ve been using Apple Wallet (and Google Pay) with bar code scanners with some success, but the bar codes sometimes do not scan correctly and we get garbled or completely wrong data maybe 1 in 20-30 scans. Tried various scanner settings/speeds, etc, no dice so far, and the scanner/pos combo was the one recommended by our processing vendor. Both were among the highest dollar models. This looks like a very cool project!
below43 12/21/2025||
This is very cool thanks. It would be awesome as a PWA so I can have it installed on my home screen/use it offline (edit: it looks like I misunderstood what the website meant by "runs on the browser" - I didn't it has a server dependency. Even so, it's easy to get Claude to generate a manifest and service worker to make it a PWA).

Also, minor UX feedback. Make the barcode type the first form field.

maltalex 12/22/2025|
This might be naive, but why not just scan both sides of the card using Apple Notes or a similar app, then present the scan at the store?
aareet 12/22/2025|
Apple wallet is smoother to swipe through
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