How we run 44 accounts on 9 iPhones.

This is our own rack, the one Foundry was built on. It has posted 1,371 times since August 21. Here is how it runs: the setup, the warm schedule, the check on every post, what breaks and what it costs. The week's numbers are from Oct 2 to Oct 8, read from the rack's own logs on Oct 9.

  1. The setup
    One MacBook Air (M2) and 9 iPhones: five iPhone SE (3rd generation), a 12 mini, a 12 Pro, a 13 mini and a 13 Pro. Every phone is on a USB cable into that one Mac, some through hubs. Our own docs tell you to avoid hubs where you can: a hub is one point of failure for every phone on it.
  2. The accounts
    44 accounts: 26 Instagram, 9 TikTok, 9 YouTube. Five to a phone, one phone holds four. An account lives on one phone, and every phone runs the official apps from the App Store.
  3. The warm schedule
    Each account gets two or three warm ups a day: about ten minutes of ordinary use: opening the app and scrolling the feed. They fall between 8 AM and 2 AM Eastern, spaced per account, and the plan for the next day is written every night. A new account warms up before its first post.
  4. The per post check
    Before a post goes out, Foundry checks the exact video, account and phone, and reads the profile's post count. After sharing, it checks the result: the post count on Instagram, TikTok's own "Video posted" screen, the channel's public feed on YouTube. Every post leaves a record on the Mac: a receipt with screenshots for each Reel and TikTok, a line in the day's YouTube check for each Short.
  5. What breaks, and how it is caught
    Warm ups that do not finish, and the odd post that cannot be confirmed. A watch reads every account through the day and flags any account that fails twice in a row; it flagged 8 times in the week. A post that fails before it goes out is tried again on the same phone. A post whose button was pressed but cannot be confirmed is never sent again, so nothing posts twice. This week's real breaks: an App Tracking prompt that started appearing mid post on Instagram, TikTok's upload chip, and YouTube's video picker on one phone. Foundry now handles each one.
  6. What it costs us
    The hardware above, nine USB cables, and an Apple Developer membership so the small runner app on each phone stays signed for a year (Apple's price: 99 USD a year). There is no per account charge anywhere in it. On our own price list a rack this size is Studio, $150 a month.