News · 18 October 2026

A new Melbourne studio is building useful apps people are glad to put down.

Sofra Studio makes apps for the phone and the web, its own and for other businesses.

Most apps are built to keep you on them as long as possible, with feeds and algorithms tuned to be hard to put down, and Sofra refuses to build that way. Its apps carry no addictive feeds and no ads, nothing about you sold, and they're made to help people get back in touch with themselves, look after their health and stay engaged with their own lives, then close the app and get on with them.

“We all feel the pull of algorithms built to be hard to put down, and I'd rather give people apps that leave them in control and glad they opened them,” said Emrah Istrefi, founder of Sofra Studio.

The name comes from the sofra, the low round table of a family home where everyone eats together, and it's how the studio works, close to the people who'll use the thing, one project at a time.

For businesses, Sofra builds what's hard to buy off the shelf: booking systems, marketplaces, shopfronts, and the tool that finally replaces the spreadsheet everyone hates. Clients deal directly with the people building it.

Its first app, The Cards, a tarot journal built around Pamela Colman Smith's 1909 deck, is in testing now on iPhone and at thecards.app, with more of its own apps to follow.

Sofra Studio Pty Ltd is a member of the Apple Developer Program. Media and new work: hello@sofra.studio.