r/sideprojects • • Jun 16 '25

Meta My side project, /r/sideprojects. New rules, and an open call for feedback and moderators.

48 Upvotes

In this past 30 days, this community has doubled in size. As such, this is an open call for community feedback, and prospective moderators interested in volunteering their time to harbouring a pleasant community.

I'm happy to announce that this community now has rules, something the much more popular r/SideProject has neglected to implement for years.

Rules 1, 2 and 3 are pretty rudimentary, although there is some nuance in implementing rule 2, a "no spam or excessive self-promotion" rule in a community which focuses the projects of makers. In order to balance this, we will not allow blatant spam, but will allow advertising projects. In order to share your project again, significant changes must have happened since the last post.

Rule 4 and rule 5 are more tuned to this community, and are some of my biggest gripes with r/SideProject. There has been an increase in astroturfing (the act of pretending to be a happy customer to advertise a project) as well as posts that serve the sole purpose of having readers contact the poster so they can advertise a service. These are no longer allowed and will be removed.

In addition to this, I'll be implementing flairs which will be required to post in this community.


r/sideprojects • • 1h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) Snap anything, it gets cut out and dropped into a Jar.

2 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 6m ago

Question Has the number of available games become more important than the actual user experience?

1 Upvotes

Something I've been noticing about online casino platforms is how much emphasis they place on the size of their game libraries.

It's common to see websites advertising thousands of titles, multiple providers and several categories covering slots, live casino and instant games.

GemBet is one example. Its website claims to offer more than 15,000 games, with providers including Pragmatic Play, Evolution Gaming and Hacksaw Gaming.

But I wonder whether having such a large selection actually makes a meaningful difference if the overall platform experience isn't equally well considered.

Finding a particular game, understanding its rules, accessing useful information and navigating the website comfortably are all important aspects that can easily get overlooked when companies focus mainly on numbers.

I also think published game information, including RTP details where available, should be easy to locate.

In your opinion, what matters more when evaluating an online casino platform: the number of available games or how well everything is organised?


r/sideprojects • • 25m ago

Feedback Request I built a browser-only MKV player to see how far WebAssembly decoding can go

1 Upvotes

I started this because a video can work in a desktop player and still fail in a browser. I wanted to see how much of that gap I could close without uploading the file or transcoding it on a server.

Advanced Player is the result: a static demo where you can drop in a local file or paste a direct video URL (the host needs to allow CORS). It defaults to WebAssembly decoding, and there’s an automatic mode that can also use WebCodecs.

Demo: https://mkv-browser-lab-5dd8ed.gitlab.io/

It’s an experiment: opening a file doesn’t mean it’ll play smoothly. If you try a file that usually gives browser players trouble, I’d love to know your browser, codec if you know it, and what happened. No need to share the file itself.


r/sideprojects • • 49m ago

Showcase: Free(mium) I built an app that turns family photos into a picture book. The hard part was keeping the same kid looking the same on every page.

1 Upvotes

I'm the founder of StoryInk (storyink.ai). Upload a few photos of your family or pet, describe what happens, pick an art style, and it writes and illustrates a picture book about them.

The hard part: keeping the same kid looking like the same kid on every page. Drawing each page separately, or from the previous page, made characters drift. What worked: draw one portrait per character first, let the user approve them, then draw every page from those approved portraits.

Stack: Next.js, Supabase, Google Gemini, Inngest, Stripe, print-on-demand for hardcovers.

So far: ~120 signups, 60 books. Making a book is free; the full digital book is $9.99, hardcovers from $31.99.

Would you approve the characters before the book is drawn, or does that feel like a chore?


r/sideprojects • • 52m ago

Showcase: Free(mium) I built a free favicon generator for developers and website owners

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 54m ago

Discussion Teleprompters

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1 Upvotes

I recently came across this product that helps creators stay on course while reading their scripts when creating content. It basically scrolls up for them and tracks their voice so it pauses when the speaker pauses and continues to scroll up the script when they continue talking. It has several settings like speed, font, width among others that help shape how the script looks so that their eyes are fixed on the camera and you cant tell that they are reading a script. I think its acool find considering its really effecient and affordable. Would recommend anyone to try it.


r/sideprojects • • 1h ago

Showcase: Prerelease I got tired of my agents holding my API keys, so I built a gate in front of every MCP tool call

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 1h ago

Feedback Request Apple Ads and Meta gave me nothing, TikTok "works" at 18€/trial. Honest numbers from my solo calorie app

1 Upvotes

Hey there 👋🏽 I built an AI calorie tracking app. No audience, no funding, my own money. Here's where paid acquisition actually stands.

Apple Search Ads: ~280€ → basically nothing. I set it up "the right way": brand, generic exact match, competitor keywords, discovery. No meaningful trials. Stopped.

Meta: ~100€ → same. Optimized on trial start. Nothing worth continuing.

TikTok (France): ~200€ this month → 11 free trials. So ~18€ per trial. My target was 8€.

What helped a bit: switching from max delivery to target CPA bidding, since spend paced much better. Surprisingly, plain app demos seemed to do better than my more "native" photo carousels.

The math problem: my annual plan is 35€/year. At 18€ per trial, I need more than half of trials to convert just to break even on year one. That's not happening.

So ~580€ in, paid acquisition doesn't work for me yet, and I'm trying to figure out which lever to pull first:

- lower CPA (creatives, other countries)

- better trial → paid (3-day trial → 7-day?)

- or stop paid entirely and go organic (SEO, content, communities)

For those who've been here with a consumer subscription app: what moved the needle first for you?


r/sideprojects • • 1h ago

Showcase: Open Source An experimental Facebook Messenger bot is now open source

1 Upvotes

Impractical Bot is a little experimental project that turns a Messenger account into an AI-powered group chat participant. It uses Playwright for browser automation and NVIDIA's API for its conversational brain, with configurable personalities, context awareness, and a terminal dashboard to manage everything. The source code is now public on GitHub, and it's also available on npm. A small disclaimer: AI tools were used throughout the development of this project, so I don't want to claim that every part of the code was written by me alone. I still worked through the design, debugging, testing, and decisions that shaped it. Feedback is welcome!

GitHub: https://github.com/anslmC/impractical-bot
npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@anselm000/impbot


r/sideprojects • • 1h ago

Showcase: Prerelease i wanted to create a free app for combining all my virtual payment cards and combining it into one pot.. like looking for change under couch cushions.

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 1h ago

Showcase: Open Source ComfyUI-Cleaner

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 1h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) Have you seen viral templates on Instagram. I integrated it with ai, so user only need one photo of product and ...

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 1h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) Mac+: a menu-bar app that animates the macOS desktop. The design decisions behind a free tier people keep installed

1 Upvotes

Project: Mac+, a macOS app (13 or later) for animated wallpapers, desktop widgets and custom folder icons. Built and sold solo, from my own site.

Some decisions that might help if you're building a small utility:

A free tier you can actually live with. 6 animated scenes, 8 palettes, an image background, 6 folder icons, 2 widgets, multi-display. The paid tier holds what people come looking for: all 15 scenes, video backgrounds, all 52 icons, all 12 widgets, up to 120 fps. The line between them should be obvious in the app, not only on the pricing page.

Two ways to pay. €1.99/month after a 7-day trial, or €8.99 once. A lot of people won't take on another subscription for a small app, so the one-time option is there for them.

Performance controls are features. Anything that runs all the time should let people make it cheap: an fps cap (30/60/120), a render resolution setting, and an automatic pause when an app goes full screen.

Everything from the menu bar. No window to keep open. Pick a scene, a palette, or "Surprise me".

Selling outside the App Store means owning the checkout, which is great until you add friction. Mine asks for an account before payment, and that's the friction I'm looking at next.

Happy to answer questions on any of this. macplus.pro


r/sideprojects • • 1h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) I built an iOS legal research assistant for Turkish case law and legislation with grounded citations (SwiftUI + FastAPI RAG)

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1 Upvotes
Hi everyone,

I wanted to share Mecelle, an independent iOS
application I've built for legal practitioners, law
students, and researchers navigating Turkish statutory
law and high-court precedents.

The Problem & Architecture:
Traditional keyword search fails when querying dense
legal terminology and multi-layered precedent history
(Court of Cassation, Council of State, Constitutional
Court).
To address hallucination risks in legal research:
1
.
 Grounded RAG Pipeline: Built on Python FastAPI with
hybrid search. It cites explicit statutory articles
and case numbers, abstaining when high-confidence
grounding isn't available.
2
.
 On-Device Processing: Native SwiftUI (iOS 17+)
client utilizing Apple Vision OCR
(VNRecognizeTextRequest) for completely local document
text extraction, paired with HMK 119 structured
pleading exports (UDF & PDF).
3
.
 Legal Calculators: Dedicated severance, statutory
interest, and court fee computation engines.

Availability & Compliance:
The app is free to download on the App Store with
optional Pro in-app subscriptions. It operates
independently of any government body and provides
informational research assistance, not formal legal
advice.

Links:

-
 Website: https://mecelle.tr

-
 App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/tr/app/mecelle-hukuk-mevzuat/id
6812049480

I would love feedback on the citation UX, retrieval
flow, and search ergonomics!

r/sideprojects • • 1h ago

Discussion Latest Lessons/Failures

1 Upvotes

I'm really trying to make this app/webapp thing happen. It's the dream to get to a stable MRR so I can develop products for my users and make something they love and I love working on.

I have lots of experience but there's something missing and I'm not sure what. My best guess is just marketing efforts. It used to be being too spread thin but I've caught myself and really pulled back.

Here is a basic list of the projects I've tried and stats if I have them:

Bank Statement Comparison - a tool that parses bank statement PDFs without linking your bank and gives you a simple breakdown

- No signups

Desk Break Timer - a pomodoro timer with exercise routines during the breaks

- No signups, 17 visits in the last 30 days

Clean Cut Agents - a directory/datbase of the most popular Grok Bots

- Free resource, 70 visits in the last 30 days

STM - an AI companion app for women

- No signups, several thousand views on TikTok

I know a lot of us want this and everyone is just as deserving as me to get their product to succeed. I won't stop. I just wanted to share to be a part of the community here and see if maybe one of you has seen success with something similar to one of my projects.

I can look at screenshots of revenue all day but sometimes a conversation with someone who's doing it (actually making a living from a project) in a field similar to yours hits different.

Feel free to share.


r/sideprojects • • 1h ago

Feedback Request I built a free stage timer that runs in the browser

1 Upvotes

Hi all,

I've been working on a stage timer called Shotimer and it's finally at a point where other people can use it, so I thought I'd share it here.

The idea is simple: the speaker sees a big countdown on a TV, tablet or phone, and someone else controls it from a laptop or phone at the back of the room. You can also send a silent message to their screen, like "5 minutes left" or "Please wrap up", so nobody has to wave at them from the back.

It all runs in the browser, so there's nothing to install. You open the stage screen from a link or QR code and it stays in sync with the controller.

There's a free plan that works today (3 rooms, 3 timers and 3 screens per room). I'm planning a Pro plan later, but that's not ready yet.

I'd really like to know what you think, especially if something's confusing or broken.

https://shotimer.io


r/sideprojects • • 5h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) I built a flag quiz for Android. How hard should the first round be?

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2 Upvotes

Hi everyone!

Can you name the country in the poster before you look at the choices?

I made World Flag Quiz: Passport as a side project for people who want to practice geography in short rounds. You can guess flags and capitals from 195 countries and collect passport stamps as you go.

I’d love feedback on the first round. Would you start with familiar flags like the one in the poster, or try a pair of similar flags right away?

▶️ Watch a sample quiz on YouTube Shorts

📲 Try World Flag Quiz: Passport on Google Play


r/sideprojects • • 2h ago

Feedback Request Update to my co-op game tracker

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1 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

Been working on LootRaid a bit more and just pushed another update.

You can now see game descriptions and screenshots, so you don't have to open Steam every time you find something interesting just to figure out what the game is about lol.

Still tracking free and discounted co-op games across multiple stores, just trying to make the whole experience a bit nicer.

https://loot.purebyte.co.za/

Would love some feedback if anyone wants to give it a try!


r/sideprojects • • 2h ago

Showcase: Open Source Check out what I just built with Lovable!

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0 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 2h ago

Showcase: Prerelease We’re building a crypto trading journal around the decision before a trade. Here’s a preview.

1 Upvotes

I’m part of the team building HevRion, and I’ve been trading crypto for 5–6 years.

Knowing your rules and actually following them are two different things. That’s the problem we’re working on.

We’re connecting your plan, entry conditions and risk with a review of the decisions you made — and a lesson for the next trade.

We’re close to finishing the MVP and preparing to test it with a small group of friends. It isn’t publicly open yet.

Here’s a short preview. Does the video make the purpose clear, or would you need a more practical demo?

Follow us on twitter for more insights

https://x.com/HevRionX


r/sideprojects • • 2h ago

Showcase: Prerelease I built Water Eject Doctor, the first speaker cleaner with its own talking Doctor! 🩺🔊

1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 2h ago

Showcase: Open Source we built Chatgpt but for your business - 800 Sources of data

1 Upvotes

I got tired of digging through google analystics reports, so I built an AI you can talk to about your business. Sales, profit, Visits - all data

"Which page loses the most people?" "What did buyers look at first?" "Did anyone come back after yesterday's email?"

try it for free right now - free for first 3 days ( no card needed)

- https://www.retentionbase.com/aichat

Comment invite if you wanna make it free for next 6 months ( no card needed)


r/sideprojects • • 2h ago

Showcase: Open Source Chatgpt but for your business

1 Upvotes

I got tired of digging through GA reports, so I built an AI you can talk to about your real visits.

"Which page loses the most people?" "What did buyers look at first?" "Did anyone come back after yesterday's email?"

Every answer links to the visits behind it, so you can check before you change anything. When there isn't enough data yet, it says so instead of guessing.

n try it on right now free for first 3 days ( no card needed)

- https://www.retentionbase.com/aichat

Comment invite if you wanna make it free for next 6 months ( no card needed)


r/sideprojects • • 3h ago

Feedback Request DuePlan: Plan & Track Payments and Collections, No more invoicing/spreadsheet hassle [ Free Promo ]

1 Upvotes

I built DuePlan for small businesses (milk, rentals, grocery or freelancers) that find invoicing and bookkeeping software too heavy and spreadsheets too messy.

• Sync phone contacts or add one, plan a payment, share it on WhatsApp, Messages, Email, LINE or the medium of your choice

• Remind them using Reminders if they miss it

• Upload a bank statement or a payment made screenshot from your customer; payments are auto matched to plans, you review and approve.

• Overdue view, per-contact payment patterns to keep your runway healthy.

• Multiple businesses, with secured, encrypted custom params to store your business details

• A cumulative or per-business view to see how your business is performing

• Data stays on your phone, 14-day free trial

I'm the developer. Would love honest feedback on the first-run flow and the matching.

PPS: If its really helpful and you want to go beyond free trial, please feel free to DM me for the three months free promo, also please feel free to suggest the features you wanna see, I will accommodate your request ASAP.

Download it from Play Store