📍 Richmond, Virginia

We Build Apps
We'd Actually Use.

Pixel Workshop is a small, scrappy app studio based in Richmond, VA. We combine a passion for great software with AI-assisted development to ship focused, polished apps faster than you'd expect from a team our size.

Our Story

Born out of frustration
with bloated software.

It started with a simple observation: most apps do too much, ask for too much, and respect you too little. Endless subscription prompts, invasive ads, feature bloat that buries the one thing you actually opened the app to do.

So we started building our own. Retro Handheld came first — a Game Boy emulator that just works, no strings attached. Then Solve To Snooze, because alarm clocks have been boring for too long and we needed something that actually got us out of bed.

Every app we ship follows the same rule: it has to earn a place on your home screen. That means doing one thing really well, staying out of your way, and never treating you like a data point.

4

Apps Shipped

And more on the way. We're just getting started.

0

Ads. Ever.

No ad SDKs, no tracking, no monetization at the cost of your experience.

RVA

Based in Richmond, VA

Proudly building from one of the best mid-sized cities in the country.

How We Work

Small team.
AI-powered velocity.

We use AI throughout our development process — not as a shortcut, but as a force multiplier. It lets us move fast without cutting corners on quality.

01

Start with a real problem

Every app starts with something that genuinely annoyed us, or a gap we noticed in the market. If we wouldn't use it ourselves every day, we don't build it.

02

Design for clarity, not features

We resist the urge to add. Every feature has to justify its existence. If something doesn't make the core experience better, it doesn't make it into the app.

03

Build fast with AI assistance

We integrate AI at every stage — prototyping, code generation, QA, and copy. This lets our small team ship with the output of a much larger one, without ballooning headcount or timelines.

04

Ship, listen, improve

We ship when something is genuinely good — not when it hits an arbitrary deadline. After launch, we listen to users and iterate quickly. No two-year roadmaps, no feature freezes.

What We Stand For

The rules we don't break.

🚫

No Ads. Full Stop.

Ads change incentives. Once you're optimizing for clicks and impressions, you're no longer optimizing for the user. We'd rather charge a fair price upfront.

🔒

Privacy by Default

Your data lives on your device. We don't collect it, we don't sell it, and we don't even want it. Building apps that way keeps things simple for everyone.

🎯

One Job, Done Right

We don't build Swiss Army knives. We build the best possible version of one specific thing. Scope creep is the enemy of quality.

💸

No Subscription Traps

Subscriptions make sense for services with ongoing costs. A flashlight app doesn't have ongoing costs. We price things honestly and don't hide features behind paywalls.

⚡

Speed Matters

Slow apps are bad apps. Performance is a feature, not an afterthought. If it's not fast, we're not done.

🌱

Always Growing

We're a growing studio with a lot more ideas than hours in the day. More apps are coming — on iOS, Android, and wherever people need great software.

Want to try our apps?

Both are available on the App Store now. No account required, no strings attached.

Browse Apps Get Support