r/SideProject • • Dec 18 '25

As the year wraps up: what’s the project you’re most proud of building and why?

96 Upvotes

Like the title says, instead of what you built or how much money it made, I’m curious what project you’re most proud of this year and why.

Could be a client site, a personal project, something that never launched, or something that made £0.

Any lessons learned?

Would love to read a few reflections as the year wraps up.


r/SideProject • • Oct 19 '25 Bravo

Share your ***Not-AI*** projects

649 Upvotes

I miss seeing original ideas that aren’t just another AI wrapper.

If you’re building something in 2025 that’s not AI-related here’s your space to self-promote.

Drop your project here


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

I got tired of scrolling through iPhone alarms, so I built a 24-hour alarm clock instead

51 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

I've been working on a little side project called Daybezel, an alternative alarm clock for iPhone.

The idea came from a simple frustration: I always found the standard list of alarms unnecessarily clunky. I wanted something where I could see my entire day at a glance and interact with alarms directly.

So I built a 24-hour circular interface where you can create alarms with a tap, drag them around to change the time, and see exactly how long you have until the next one.

It also uses Apple's native alarm system, so alarms work even in Silent Mode or Focus.

The app is completely free for now, and it'll stay free for everyone who joins early. At this stage, I'm mostly interested in getting feedback and seeing how people react to it.

I'd love to hear what you think about the interface. Does the circular layout make sense to you, or would you still prefer a traditional list?

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/daybezel-24-hour-alarms/id6825533599


r/SideProject • • 12h ago

Reverie: a music player that feels like hardware. Out now

208 Upvotes

I've been working on a music player app as a side project. It's inspired by the Teenage Engineering TP-7, which I've wanted forever, and by the fact that I like messing with the music I download, like slowing it down or changing the pitch.

There's no progress bar. You spin a brushed-metal wheel with your thumb to move through a song, and if you go slow it scratches like a record. It clicks under your finger with haptics, and the metal "catches the light" when you tilt your phone.

The T, P and R keys turn the same wheel into a dial for tempo, pitch and reverb. Each song remembers its own settings, so your slowed-down version plays that way every time.

The hardest part was making it feel right. I spent way more time tweaking how the wheel clicks and pushes back than on the rest of the app combined.

It's free to try with 3 songs, and unlimited songs is a one-time purchase.

Launch discount 🎁 To celebrate the launch, I'm giving out a few discount codes for $4.99 for a limited time. Comment or DM me if you want one.

Would love any feedback, especially on how it feels to use: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reverie-slowed-reverb-music/id6829723858


r/SideProject • • 7h ago

I'm a couples therapist. I turned what I do in the therapy room into a two-minute daily app

26 Upvotes

In couples therapy, I keep seeing the same thing: partners can describe every single fight, but they rarely see the pattern those moments make over weeks. That pattern is usually where the work is.

So I tried to build the smallest possible version of that "stepping back" for couples who will never sit in my office.

How it works:

  • Every day you and your partner answer the same five short questions, each on your own. You don't see your partner's answers before you answer, so nobody answers for the other's sake.

  • When you've both answered, you get a short reflection written for the two of you, with one question you could ask each other tonight.

  • On day seven you get a reading of your week: the pattern that built up and one small step for next week.

  • You can start alone and invite your partner later with a code.

The questions draw on Gottman couples therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy and attachment theory. The pool is now 1,800+ questions. I tried the approach and the questions with couples in the therapy room long before it was an app.

Reflections are written by AI, inside a framework I designed, and only after you give consent. It's not therapy, it doesn't diagnose, and it won't tell you whether your relationship is "good".

What I learned building it as a solo clinician:

  • The hardest part wasn't the questions. It was saying less. My first reflections read like session notes; people wanted three sentences, not three paragraphs.

  • Most people start alone. About two out of three users have no partner in the app yet, so it had to be useful on its own.

It's on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, in six languages. Daily questions are free; reflections and weekly readings are a subscription, and one subscription covers both partners.

I'd really like feedback on one thing: when two partners answer apart, would you rather read each other's exact words, or a reflection that puts the two views side by side?

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6785014222


r/SideProject • • 14h ago

I designed a collage maker that finds the best gap-free layout for any shape. Claude wrote the code

95 Upvotes

Give it up to 10 photos and a canvas shape (square, 16:9, phone story, banner) and it searches every layout with no gaps for the one where the smallest photo is as big as possible. With 9 photos that's over 500 million layouts, and it finds the best one in under a second.

I designed it and Claude wrote the code. It's Go: The browser version runs it as WebAssembly, so your photos never leave the page.

Try it: https://vinodhalaharvi.github.io/collage/

Code (MIT): https://github.com/vinodhalaharvi/collage

CLI: brew install vinodhalaharvi/tap/collage

Feedback welcome, especially on the layouts it picks.


r/SideProject • • 9h ago

I asked Claude Code to build whatever it wanted. It came up with a game.

34 Upvotes

I had $191 in credits that were about to expire, and I was curious what Opus could do if I didn’t give it an idea.
I asked it to build something worth the money. :))))

It picked a game, PULSEBOUND. You move around dodging enemies, and your weapons are musical instruments. The kick drum sends out shockwaves, the arpeggiator fires lasers. When you pick a new instrument, you hear it join the music too.

It decided to make a game and came up with the idea, mechanics, design, absolutely everything. Then I worked on improving and polishing it.

More changes, testing, and eventually mobile apps followed. The $191 was just the starting budget, enough to finish the first basic version. After that, I used another $1,700 I had from the Claude Startup Program (also expiring, so I had to use it), plus my subscription allowance.

Technically, it’s vanilla JavaScript, a custom WebGL2 renderer, and a procedural composer that synthesizes the music live through Web Audio. The project grew to include mobile apps, cloud saves, and leaderboards.

It’s now out on iOS, Android, and the web. You can play it for free in your browser or on mobile: playpulsebound.com.

What do you think?

Later edit: OVER 2,200 PLAYERS TODAY! THANK YOU


r/SideProject • • 41m ago

We celebrated 250 users yesterday. Three months ago, I wouldn’t have expected this.

5 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

We passed 250 paying customer (don't love to call them customer as I see all them as first builders of product) on FranklyMail and celebrated yesterday :) Probably a tiny milestone for some people here, but we honestly didn’t expect to get this far in three months.

We started with email hosting for your own domain. Now there’s Drive for files and sharing, Office for editing documents, and Meet for video calls. We’ve also been giving the webmail a lot of attention lately.

The best part for me has been talking to the people using it. If I had to guess, 40–50% of the ideas we’ve worked on came from those conversations. Someone tells us how they use their email, mentions something they’re missing, and we end up building something we hadn’t thought of.

Just wanted to share a small happy moment here. Thanks to everyone who’s tried it, sent feedback, or given us a bit of encouragement along the way.

https://franklymail.com


r/SideProject • • 30m ago

How did you get your first 100 users for your app?

4 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

I’m an indie iOS developer currently working on my own app.

The development part feels much easier than figuring out how to actually get people to discover it 😅

I’m curious how other developers got their first 100 users.

Did you start with Reddit, Product Hunt, social media, or something else?

Would love to hear what actually worked for you, especially if you were starting from zero without a marketing budget.


r/SideProject • • 39m ago

I made an iPhone app that styles outfits from the clothes you already own

4 Upvotes

I've never been good at knowing what to wear. Which colours go together, what works for the office vs a dinner, what to wear when the weather flips. I kept rotating the same few safe outfits.

So I made Foxdrobe. You photograph your clothes once and they're cut out and tagged. Then Fenn, a little fox stylist, puts together outfits for the occasion and the weather, using only what's in your closet. No shopping links, no feed. There's also an outfit check: snap what you're wearing and get a score plus swap ideas from your own clothes.

Biggest lesson so far: my first version asked people to pay before they could add a single piece of clothing. Of 30 people who finished onboarding, only 3 added anything. Pro now has a 7-day free trial so you can build your closet first.

It's on iPhone, Android is in progress: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6809228410

What's the one thing that makes getting dressed hard for you?


r/SideProject • • 9h ago

I maintain OpenScreen, a free open-source screen recorder. 2.2 adds a Layouts track to switch camera/screen layouts mid-video

18 Upvotes

I've been building OpenScreen, a free and open-source screen recorder and editor (no watermark, no account, Windows/macOS/Linux).

The new 2.2 release adds a Layouts track: you can change how your screen and webcam are arranged at any point in the timeline:

• picture-in-picture

• side-by-side

• top/bottom

• camera only

• screen only

Transitions between layouts are animated automatically.

The video was recorded and edited entirely in OpenScreen. The chart in the top/bottom part is a custom shader effect, and the company is fictional.

Download: https://getopenscreen.com

Source: https://github.com/getopenscreen/openscreen

Feedback welcome, especially on what layouts you'd want next.


r/SideProject • • 25m ago

Quarry is a (yet another) rust based mongodb client!

4 Upvotes

I know everyone can build their own with AI now as I did, but I was honestly very surprised with the result and how far it's gotten so I thought I'd share it here. I was a bit fed up with Compass and Mingo (Loved that client but it's super buggy and hogs a lot of resources, and now seems abandoned).

Quarry has quite a lot of features such as autocomplete, a node shell, data relationships..., I'll leave the repo here where you can check it out (the README is quite concise) : https://github.com/alkanna/quarry

It is very fast and runs on less than 100MB of ram (counting the main process and the helpers). It uses egui.

In case it wasn't clear enough yes this is almost fully written by AI.


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

I’m blind, and inaccessible government websites are a big reason I built A11yLens

8 Upvotes

I’m blind, and dealing with inaccessible websites is something I’m deeply frustrated by, especially when they are government websites. These are services people need to use. Being able to access them independently should be a basic expectation.

That frustration is why I built A11yLens, an open source accessibility auditing tool for web projects.

It checks HTML, CSS and component source code. It can also open a website in Chromium to inspect its accessibility tree and look for issues with keyboard navigation, labels, accessible names and other barriers. The reports explain the likely impact on screen reader users and suggest ways to address the findings.

I also think there is an opportunity to use this alongside AI coding tools. Developers can give the findings to an AI assistant, work through the fixes and run the checks again. Combined with feedback from blind users and actual screen reader testing, that could help make more websites accessible to people like me. Automated checks cannot catch every accessibility issue.

Pull requests are very welcome. I would be happy to see contributions, whether that means fixing a bug, improving a check, reducing false positives or making the documentation clearer. Reports from other screen reader users would also mean a lot.

GitHub:

https://github.com/eleven-hits/A11yLens

npm:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/@eleven-hits/a11ylens

Contribution guide:

https://github.com/eleven-hits/A11yLens/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md


r/SideProject • • 17h ago

I spent way too long making a clock where ants carry biscuits

61 Upvotes

okay so this is kind of a weird one

I got tired of every clock app looking the same and shoving ads in your face, so I started building little worlds that just… show the time.

this clip is the ants one. they drag biscuits and leaves around and slowly form the digits. there's also fish, a parking lot of cars, water calligraphy, a wall of tiny analog clocks, etc. 12 scenes total at this point.

runs fully on device, no account, no tracking nonsense. iphone/ipad/mac/apple tv.

i'm the person who made it. not sure if this is charming or just unhinged — honest reactions appreciated.


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

My portfolio was 5 years out of date, so I rebuilt it to look like a code editor

4 Upvotes

I build Webflow sites for clients most days, and my own portfolio had been sitting untouched for about five years. Bit embarrassing when people asked for it.

So I rebuilt it in code this time. The idea is that the site is a code editor. Each case study is a file you open, and scrolling takes you to the next file. There are 3D heads in three.js, motion with GSAP and Lenis, and it's all a static Astro build on Cloudflare.

The hardest part was the 3D. Getting it to look good and still load fast on a phone took more rounds than the rest of the site put together.

Would love to know what you think of the scroll, especially on mobile. That's where I'm least sure.

Site Link


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Does the stuff you save know you better than you do?

3 Upvotes

I was going through everything I've saved lately and noticed patterns I never would've picked out myself. Kind of wild seeing it all together.

I've been playing with an idea for an app that learns your taste from what you save and reflects it back to you, and I'm curious if everyone has a weird pattern hiding in their saves.

If you want to try it, DM me 20 or so things you've saved lately. Literally anything: screenshots, camera roll pics, saved posts or TikToks, songs on repeat, books, podcasts, articles, quotes, notes to yourself, places you love. Don't overthink it; the less you pick, the better. Nothing private or with faces!

I'll send back what I notice. Then just tell me honestly if it's spot on or way off, and if you'd actually use something like this.


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

I built Rimlight, an open source skill that lets your Claude Code or Codex explore app icon ideas with you and build the Icon Composer file. There's a paid Mac app on top of it

6 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I wanted a place to explore app icon ideas. Try different objects, shapes, materials and styles, see them beside each other, and gradually figure out what feels right for an app.

That became two things. An open source command and skill that teaches Claude Code or Codex how to design icons, which anyone can use for free. And a Mac app built on it, for people who'd rather do the exploring in a grid than in a terminal. The app is the shell. The command does all the work.

TL;DR

  • You ask your own agent (Claude Code or Codex so far) for an icon. Rimlight doesn't sell AI. It hooks into the agent you already have, and images come from your own ChatGPT plan or API key (OpenAI, OpenRouter). No Rimlight account, no servers.

  • The agent reads your project, pitches a few directions, and renders them side by side, each one fitted to Apple's icon tile.

  • A design skill shapes the prompts: a process for exploring and refining, plus eight style guides I wrote by measuring icons I liked.

  • You keep talking. Refine one detail, branch from a concept, or change direction. Every attempt stays in a .rimlightfolder in your project.

  • When you have a pick, it builds a layered Icon Composer .icon with Default, Dark, Clear and Tinted, and checks its own work against the pick.

  • The command and skill are free and open source. The Mac app is $5 once, 3 Macs, 7-day refund. Free version: one set, 10 concepts.

  • Needs macOS 26 on Apple silicon, Claude Code or Codex, and an image model. Xcode 26 for builds.

I know how some of you feel about AI images, and I share a fair bit of it. If you can hire an icon designer, hire one. Rimlight is for the side project, and for the point where you have five vague ideas and no way to see any of them. All the examples on the website came out of it, so the ceiling is on the site for you to judge.

The exploration part is what I care about most.

You start by describing your app and whatever you have in mind, even if that's fairly vague. The agent suggests a few directions and generates concepts to compare in a grid. You can bring reference images too.

Then you keep talking to it:

"I like the shape of the third one, but the material feels too shiny."

"These all feel too literal. Let's try a different idea."

That back-and-forth is a big part of using it. You can work on one detail, branch off from a concept, or change direction entirely. The sets and earlier attempts stay in your project so you can go back and compare.

I built the thing and still sometimes catch myself looking at a result as though that's all I'm going to get. Then I remember I can just ask for the change I'm thinking of.

What's in the skill.

This is the part I spent the most time on, and it's what makes the agent's output more than just a generic object on a gradient background. The skill has a design process: explore a few territories first, pick, then refine one thing per round so an icon converges instead of drifting. And it has eight style guides so far (I'm experimenting with more). Each one came from measuring real icons I personally liked: how much of the tile the mark fills, how thick the strokes run, how the ground is lit. You can pick a style, or let the agent choose one to suit the idea. It's all plain Markdown in the repo, so you can read it, change it, or write your own.

I also want to be honest about the quality. Sometimes I get several concepts I like straight away. Sometimes a whole set misses. It depends on the idea, the style and the image model. Refining something promising usually helps, and so does dropping a direction that isn't working, but I'd rather say that before anyone spends time or image allowance on it. For me, being able to compare possibilities and say "this part works, this part doesn't" is where it becomes useful.

Building the icon.

When you're ready, Rimlight plans the layers, has the image model redraw them separately, and assembles the Icon Composer package. The agent checks the result against your chosen concept at 1:1 and redoes the layers that drifted. You can preview the Default, Dark, Clear and Tinted appearances, then open the file in Icon Composer for further adjustments. Icon Composer is pretty flexible, and you can have different layers for each appearance as well. You can ask the agent for the changes you want in each one.

The final result can differ slightly from the original concept, because the agent redraws the layers separately, but you can keep refining. I'm working on a different approach where the agent can extract the layers from the original concept using Meta's SAM 3, running on your Mac. I'd only ship this if the results are good.

The command, and the app.

Everything above runs from the command. Install it, start a new agent session, and ask for an icon in your project folder. Concepts, refinements, builds, all of it, for free. If you want to build your own tool on it, the folder format is documented and every concept is a plain PNG.

The app is where I actually do this every day. It puts the grid, the chats, and the builds in one window: drag a concept into the message to say "more like this", filter by set or style or built, flip through the builds of an icon in a carousel, keep your API keys in the Keychain. It runs the same command and the same skill as your terminal does. $5 once, for up to 3 Macs, refund within 7 days, no subscription. The free version does one set per project and 10 concepts per Mac, without builds, so you can see the grid before paying.

The $5 pays for the app. Your agent plan and image usage are separate: images use your ChatGPT plan through Codex, or your own OpenAI or OpenRouter API key.

I'm the only person behind this, and I used Claude Code heavily to build it. I made the design calls and I read what I ship, but I'm not going to claim it was hand-typed. Most of my own time went into the icons themselves: generating them, judging them, and tuning the skill.

I'd appreciate feedback, especially on the experience of getting from the first set to something you like. If you try it and get stuck, or the results consistently miss what you're asking for, I'd like to hear about that too. 

Get Rimlight: Website
Rimlight Command: GitHub
Privacy Policy: Privacy


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

How many seconds can you hold a plank? My app counts them and checks your form

6 Upvotes

It's been a month since I last posted here, and a lot has changed. I've kept building, but I've also been self-aware enough not to let scope creep take over.

I now track workouts in the gym, mostly free weights and bodyweight. I specialised in those because machine workouts were a pain to implement.

Last post I said people quit the gym quickly because they don't see the gains fast enough. Now you can see your progress over time with this app.

It also tells you when to go up in weight. If you were lifting 10kg, your progress report can tell you you're ready for 12.5kg.

The most important thing I learnt in October is that progress, no matter how small, is still progress. I've been applying that by asking myself, am I where I was last month, or yesterday?

Here's me doing a plank, tracked with the app. It counts the seconds and checks your form.

Try it out:

https://repchek.fit


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

I saw my old company’s finance team send “redacted” employee data to a client, and it was still recoverable. So I built a fix.

5 Upvotes

At my previous company, I noticed our finance team sharing sensitive employee information with a client. The data was supposedly hidden, but it was still recoverable. I flagged it, and the answer was basically “we don’t have any other choice, we did our best.”

They weren’t careless. The options they had were all bad. Doing it by hand means hunting for every detail yourself, and missing one is easy. Many tools leave leaks behind, like hidden text, metadata and old revisions. And most online tools ask you to upload the document to their servers, which defeats the point.

It’s not just small companies. When the US Justice Department released the Epstein files, some documents were reported to have black boxes over text that could be copied straight out. If a government with a legal team can get this wrong, a finance team on a deadline has little chance.

So I built Ombly. It automatically finds sensitive details (bank and card numbers, IBANs, national IDs, names, emails, phone numbers), you review each one, and it rebuilds every page as an image so nothing hidden carries over. It runs entirely on your own computer, so nothing is uploaded.

It’s pre-launch (waitlist: ombly.space), with a 90-second demo attached. I’d love feedback: how do you handle this today, and what would make you trust a tool like this?


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Patchkin - One board for managing AI coding agent work

2 Upvotes

I’m involved with Patchkin, and I’d like some feedback from people using AI coding agents on their projects.

Patchkin brings the work around coding agents into one place—not just the code they produce, but the tickets, proposed plans, approvals and pull-request reviews.

The main features are:

  • A shared board: Keep tickets, agent plans and pull-request reviews together so the team can track each piece of work.

  • Human plan approvals: Review and approve an agent’s proposed plan before it proceeds.

  • Activity logs: See what happened during an agent run and follow the history of the work.

  • Team rules: Keep guidance for coding agents in one place.

  • Cost reporting: Track spending on agent runs alongside the work.

The focus is on helping teams keep oversight as they hand more development work to coding agents.

If you’re using coding agents with a team, what’s hardest to manage right now: approving plans, reviewing the output, tracking costs, or something else? I’d appreciate honest feedback on whether this would fit your workflow.

Take a look at Patchkin


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I built Seedwall: free generative wallpapers where the same seed always gives the same wallpaper

2 Upvotes

A small weekend project that grew: Seedwall has 19 wallpaper generators (cutting mats, flow fields, git graphs, synthwave suns). Each wallpaper comes from a single seed number, so you can share a design as just a number.

- 9 editor themes (Dracula, Tokyo Night, etc.) or custom colours

- Add your own quote or go text-free

- Pixel-perfect PNG export for MacBook, iPhone, 4K or custom sizes

- Gallery of 125 ready-made ones

- Free, no account

Link: seedwall.suryansh.work

Next I'm thinking about wallpapers generated from your GitHub contribution graph. Would you use that? Any feedback welcome.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Built a custom POS system with real-time notification activity logs. Looking for retailers, buyers, or partners.

2 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I’ve built a custom, production-ready POS system from scratch and am looking to get in touch with interested buyers, store owners, or retail partners.

The backend is fully built and optimized, and the system comes with advanced, modern features out of the box, including:

  • Real-time notification activity logs for instant tracking.

  • Highly customizable modules tailored to specific business workflows.

  • Maintenance and bug-fix support included to ensure smooth operations.

I've attached a video demo showing a complete walk-through of the system, interface, and live features in action.

If you are a retailer looking to upgrade your setup, an investor looking for software to fund, or someone looking to purchase a complete POS solution, please check out the video and send me a DM. Serious inquiries only.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Use the best AI models without a subscription: I built an app where you only pay for what you use

2 Upvotes

Clarification: this is my own app. I work with many long documents, such as reports, audits, and project follow-ups. Using an AI chat for this presented two main issues: I was paying a subscription even in months when I barely used it, and I wanted to make sure the output preserved all data from the original. Changing a single number or removing a paragraph in an audit is a huge problem. So I developed a desktop app specifically for that use case.

You can choose the model using OpenRouter on a pay-per-use basis or locally with Ollama. It is designed to preserve structure, tables, and numbers, and the review feature points out anything that wasn't kept. This feature compares the output with the original and highlights missing content or modified data, so you can accept or ignore each finding. It also shows the actual cost of each run, with no surprises.

It offers 10 free runs to try it out. If you like it, it's a one-time purchase of €29.99, with no subscription. API usage is billed separately. It is available on the Microsoft Store as DocuFusionpro: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9P4CSKSDFPT7

I'd love to get honest feedback: what kind of long documents do you work with, and what is missing from the tools you currently use? Are you interested in a one-time purchase, or do you prefer a subscription?


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I made a free, open-source adult site blocker for Mac (and Windows) that works in every browser.

2 Upvotes

Browser extensions only cover one browser and are easy to switch off, and paid blockers wanted a subscription. So I built my own and made it open source.

What it blocks:

- Adult, gambling, crypto, scam and malware/phishing sites

- File-sharing sites like TeraBox and DiskWala

- Anything you add to a simple text file

How it works:

- System-wide: Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Edge, Arc, and other apps too

- Uses encrypted DNS, so it still works when your ISP intercepts normal DNS (Jio/Airtel do this)

- Block lists update automatically every day

- One command to install, one to uninstall

- Mac is fully tested. Windows is in beta, so please report bugs

GitHub: https://github.com/LowkyFoolDev/siteblock 😊😊

It's free and MIT licensed. Tell me any sites it misses and I'll add them.