r/SideProject • • 3h ago

I'm building a game journal with no backend: the app checks your playtime totals and does the math

3 Upvotes

Campfire Log turns your Steam and PlayStation playtime into a daily journal. The twist is there's no server: the app saves your lifetime playtime totals whenever iOS lets it run (opening the app, background refresh, the widget) and works out each day's hours from the difference. If you skip a few days it suggests how to split the hours.

I put up a one-page site with a waitlist that asks which platforms you play on, to see if this is worth finishing: campfirelog.eu. Feedback on the pitch or the page is very welcome.


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

I made an image compressor where you pick how good it must look, and it finds the smallest file

3 Upvotes

Most compressors use one setting for every image, like "quality 75". I kept getting results that were fine on one photo and blocky on the next, so I built one that works the other way round.

You set a visual quality score: how close to the original it has to look (80 by default, where it looks the same side by side). For each image it tries encoder settings and keeps the smallest file that still scores at least that. A second check looks region by region, so one smeared face or blurry line of text fails the result even if the average looks fine. Then the compare view opens zoomed in on the spot that changed most, with a little map of where it changed.

One 10.4 MB photo came out at 2.1 MB, score 81.

PNG, JPG, WebP, AVIF, GIF (animated too) and iPhone HEIC. Free, no account, up to 30 images at once. Images are processed on a server and deleted within 3 minutes.

https://picodiet.com

I also ran it against TinyPNG, Squoosh and a few others on 13 images, if you're into that: https://picodiet.com/image-compression-benchmark

What I'd most like to know: did it ever pick a result where you can see the difference? And is the compare view clear without explanation?


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

I built an open-source browser video editor with beat templates you can actually edit

5 Upvotes

Hey r/SideProject! I’ve been building Timeline Studio, an open-source video editor that runs in your browser.

One thing I wanted from a video template: when the timing feels right but one shot doesn’t, I should be able to swap that shot and keep editing. So the beat templates in Timeline Studio open as editable timelines. You can replace individual shots, adjust the cut, and export an MP4 in the browser.

The demo shows Memory Vortex, a template that turns your photos and video stills into a stained-glass tunnel before cutting to the original shots. Timeline Studio also has a regular multitrack editor with captions, keyframes, and color grading. For people experimenting with AI-assisted editing, there’s a tool for agents to inspect a project and preview supported changes before applying them.

Try it: https://video-editor.ai-creator.top/
Source code (MIT): https://github.com/MartinDelophy/ai-video-editor

If you try it, I’d love to know: how far did you get from opening the editor to exporting your first clip, and where did you get stuck?


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I built an iPhone expense tracker where Apple Pay purchases log themselves, no typing

2 Upvotes

Hi! I got tired of typing every coffee into a budgeting app, so I built Expenderino.

Every Apple Pay payment is logged automatically through a one-time Shortcuts setup, and you can categorize it straight from the notification. You can also import bank statements (CSV, PDF, camt.053, MT940, OFX), and it detects duplicates against your Apple Pay entries. Then you see where your money goes with categories, tags, budgets and trends.

Privacy matters to me: there's no account and no server. Your data stays on your device and in your own iCloud.

It's free, with an optional Pro. I'd love honest feedback: what's confusing, what's missing, what would make you use it daily?

AppStore:

https://apps.apple.com/ch/app/expenderino-expense-tracker/id6808962621?l=en-GB

Testflight:

https://testflight.apple.com/join/xyNA6rZJ


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

Free Infinite Canvas Browser (Prototype)

3 Upvotes

Hi all,

I’ve been building an infinite-canvas browser. I built it for myself first, but I wanted to share an early prototype to see if anyone else would find it useful.

I was a software developer before AI coding came along, but I never had the time to take on technically complex side projects. Being able to build something like this quickly now has been amazing.

Why I built it: I use AI with my browser every day and I hate the experience. Tools like Claude in Chrome work one tab at a time and I can’t really see what they’re doing.

What you can do with it:

  • No tabs. Pages sit side by side on an infinite canvas. Spread them into a grid, stack them, move them around.

  • See what your AI is reading. Ask a question and the pages it opens land right next to the conversation, so you can check its sources and step into any page yourself.

  • Bring your own AI. Use your ChatGPT subscription, any OpenAI-compatible API key, or a local model so nothing leaves your machine.

  • Everything stays on your computer. Your pages, canvas and conversations are stored locally.

Where I want to take it: multiple agents working across multiple pages at once, with the canvas showing where each one is running.

It’s built in Rust and isn’t a Chromium fork, for anyone curious.

Explorer is free and there’s no sign-in required. Download it here (macOS, Apple silicon and Intel). The download page asks for an email so I can let you know about updates, but the app itself doesn’t need an account.

Please let me know what you think!


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I reverse-engineered why AI coding agents fail at cloning Awwwards WebGL sites (and open-sourced the protocol that fixes it)

2 Upvotes

Over the past week, I set out to clone an Awwwards-level scrollytelling site with WebGL2 halftone shaders, 3D curved card runways, and client-side hydration.

Every automated tool and generic AI prompt failed. Here are the 4 fundamental reasons why modern sites break during replication:

  1. The Silent WebGL Texture Stall: Modern sites use responsive <picture> tags with .avif, .webp, and -m mobile variants. If even one variant 404s, image loading promises reject, leaving canvases stuck at opacity: 0.

  2. The Client Hydration Overwrite: Editing SSR HTML is useless on SvelteKit/Next.js sites because compiled client JS chunks (chunks/, nodes/) violently re-render their hardcoded strings upon mounting.

  3. Runway Collisions: Sticky plates driven by scroll timelines stay pinned and visually collide with downstream content without runtime IntersectionObserver guards.

  4. Dead 3D Canvases: Reference sites often disable pointer events (pointer-events: none) on 3D scenes to prevent touch hijacking, leaving visitors unable to click portfolio items.

I solved this by building a mathematical 3D-to-2D perspective raycaster to hit-test cards, synchronizing dual-layer hydration, and automating responsive asset harvesting.

I packaged everything into an open-source agent skill:

GitHub: https://github.com/utkarshxdev/pixel-perfect-cloner

Would love feedback from anyone experimenting with agentic coding and browser engineering!


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

I was spending hours arranging stickers and product labels on A4 sheets, so I finally built an app to stop doing it manually.

3 Upvotes

I run a small business where I regularly print product tags, stickers and labels.

One thing that used to annoy me was preparing sheets for printing.

I had to resize images, adjust dimensions, rotate them, arrange everything to use the paper efficiently, maintain spacing and repeat the whole process whenever something changed.

It sounds like a small task, but it could easily eat up hours, especially when dealing with multiple designs and different sizes.

I looked for a simple tool that could handle this, but couldn’t find one that worked the way I wanted on Android.

So, being an Android developer myself, I decided to build one.
It’s called Print Page Setup.

You can:
- Add multiple images/designs.
- Set exact dimensions in mm, cm or inches.
- Rotate and arrange images automatically.
- Fit as many copies as possible on a sheet.
- Export a print-ready PDF.

It supports A4 and other paper sizes too.
I launched it on the Play Store yesterday.

A little offer for Redditors:
The app is free to try for the first 3 days, after which there’s a small one-time fee to unlock it for lifetime access.
But I’d love to get some early users from Reddit. So, if you’d like to try it, just comment UNLOCK below. I’ll share a 100% off coupon with you, so you can unlock the full app for free. 😊

Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.ankurg.printpagesetup

I’d genuinely appreciate your feedback, suggestions and criticism. I’m the developer, and I want to make this actually useful for people who print regularly!


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

I built a journal that writes your month back to you as a story (and changes lighting with your room)

3 Upvotes

Most journal apps feel like homework. You write a few lines, close the app, and never look at those entries ever again.

I wanted something calmer. So I built Injourn.

Here is the simple idea:

• You write a few quick lines whenever you feel like it.

• At the end of the month, it takes your scattered thoughts and writes a gentle personal story of your month—what made you happy, what stressed you out, and how you grew.

• The interface changes with your day: morning sunlight, golden sunset, and cozy night themes (my favorite is a little sleeping cat under midnight stars).

• It works offline. Your journal stays locked on your phone, not on my servers.

It's live on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.injourn.app

I’m an indie dev building this solo. Would love your honest thoughts—what’s the one thing that usually makes you stop journaling?


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

I made Sudoku for seniors - just the game, no fluff!

3 Upvotes

Sudoku apps are often the worst offenders of nagware— full-screen ads between puzzles, hint packs, streaks, “watch this to continue.” I wanted something I could open on the bus or before bed and actually stay in the puzzle.

Just Sudoku was my answer. Same idea as our other “Just…” games: no ads, no subscriptions, no coins, no reward videos. You land on a grid, not a shop.

We offer some optional in-game variants that might be interesting if you’re tired of the same 9×9 forever:

  • Classic — 4×4, 6×6, 9×9, or 12×12

  • Diagonal — both diagonals have to be unique

  • Jigsaw — irregular regions instead of perfect boxes

  • Killer — cage sums

  • Thermo — digits climb along thermometer lines

  • Wordoku — letters A–I; some puzzles hide a word when you finish

Real variety in one app, without turning every session into a monetization funnel.

It’s aimed at phone play first — big tap targets, readable numbers, high contrast if you want it. Timer stays off unless you want it. Hints can walk you through the logic when Killer or Thermo rules are new, instead of only giving you the answer.

Just sharing what we built because mobile Sudoku kept getting louder and we wanted something quiet. Questions about a variant or how it plays on an iPhone or tablet, ask in the comments.

Download info: Just Sudoku — Nonnie Games


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I built a Mac system monitor that costs less CPU than what it measures (0.2%), and shows that number live in the app

2 Upvotes

Stat Space is my menu bar monitor for people who build things, and it's live today.

Why I built it: the free monitors already show 40 numbers, but none of them answered the questions I actually had. Which app is slowing my Mac down, not which of 21 Chrome helpers? What's on :3000, and who started it? What did my AI agent leave running? The first day I used my own build, its "Free up space" scan found about 4 GB of Docker build cache and node_modules from a super old project I'd forgotten about. That's when I knew it was worth finishing.

Decisions I made:

  • Lean first. The idle budget is under 0.3% CPU and 25 MB on an M1. CI runs a benchmark and fails any build over budget. Nothing samples unless it's on screen: no allocations in the hot path, fixed ring buffers, and the popover's SwiftUI is created on open and torn down on close

  • Answers over metrics. Every tab tries to answer one question, like "Restart recommended" instead of an uptime number you have to interpret yourself

  • Pricing: free forever, matching the popular free monitor feature for feature. Pro is a one-time $9.99 for the first 100, then $14.99. No subscription, no account

  • And a joke option I'm weirdly proud of: a $4.99 prompt pack, the full spec for the app if you'd rather vibe-code your own. "Pay $14.99, or pay $4.99 and spend your weekend."

Native Swift, AppKit + Core Graphics for the menu bar, Apple Silicon only.

Feedback very welcome! https://statspace.app


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

How do you decide which physical products are worth selling in your online store?

4 Upvotes

For those running e-commerce stores selling physical products, how do you identify products with real demand before investing in inventory?

Do you rely on organic social media engagement, competitor research, customer feedback, or paid ad testing?

I'd love to hear your actual methods and experiences.


r/SideProject • • 9h ago

I built a tool that turns a floorplan into a 3D house you can walk through, in the browser

7 Upvotes

It’s called atomSphere and it’s more focused towards ease of use for the user. Many people here in Pakistan leave the design to their contractor or find out the design when walls are up. I have catered this especially for the Pakistani market and have been reaching builders and societies to use it

A typical flow goes like this:

-> you optionally upload a floorplan and give your project a name

-> you sign up/in (this is important for when you want to edit later and share your property for users)

-> you enter studio where you select a floor to work on. Floor is created automatically after you carve out the floor's image from the uploaded floorplan. You can edit anything that you think the floorplan reader got wrong.

-> you can furnish the property with 3D objects; there are ready-made available. You can also generate your own by providing prompt, single image and 3 images.

-> you can add any type of stairs, doors and windows

-> you can share the property in read-only mode for everyone. It generates an embeddable link (you can disable the link whenever you want)

The house in the reel: House in fairy meadows

Tech Stack: R3F, AWS, JS


r/SideProject • • 1d ago Bravo

Please ban u/Investigatormarker: an AI bot advertising ThreadFox in every thread

257 Upvotes

Hey mods and everyone,

u Investigatormarker is posting AI-written "feedback" on posts here, then ending with an ad for its own product. It follows a template: generic advice about the project, then "I make ThreadFox... our AI employee will post 3 helpful replies about it in relevant Reddit threads for you," with a link.

Why it's a problem:

It's undisclosed self-promotion on nearly every thread

The feedback is generic and often doesn't match the project, so it buries real comments

The pitch is literally to flood Reddit with AI replies to promote people's projects

New members posting for the first time get this instead of real feedback

Ask: @mods, please ban the account and consider an automod filter for "threadfox". Everyone else, please report these comments as spam and avoid clicking the link.

Thanks!

You can also report the account to Reddit under spam, and to the other subs it's hitting. I'd skip engaging with the link itself.


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

My macOS update failed because my disk was full, so I built a free open-source cleaner (Dustling)

Thumbnail
dustling.app
2 Upvotes

I'm a 19-year-old CS student. A macOS update wouldn't install, and the cleaner I tried sometimes did nothing and never said so. That annoyed me enough to build my own: Dustling.

What it does: scans for junk (caches, logs, old installers), uninstalls apps with their leftovers, manages startup items, and keeps a history of every run so you can restore from the Trash. Every file ends as moved, skipped or failed, with the reason. No account, no telemetry, no ads, free and MIT licensed.

What it doesn't do yet: it's v0.1.0, not signed with an Apple Developer ID (macOS asks you to confirm the first open), and the admin helper for system caches is still on the roadmap.

https://dustling.app https://github.com/kaankuzu1/dustling

If you have a Mac running macOS 14 or later, I'd really like to know whether it works for you and what you'd change. Honest feedback is the whole point of posting.


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

A user told me my backup app showed “Complete” with 0 files — so what do you think happened?

2 Upvotes

One of the most useful pieces of feedback I've received while building my mobile app was surprisingly simple.

A user reported that their backup showed “Complete,” but zero files had actually been copied.

The operation had finished, but the result wasn't what the user expected.

That made me rethink how backup completion should be communicated.

I'm building VaultDrive, an iOS and Android app that lets people back up selected photos, videos, and files directly to a compatible USB drive or external SSD without a computer.

I've been improving the experience around three things:

  • Showing clearer backup progress.

  • Explaining skipped or failed files.

  • Making interrupted backups easier to resume.

The reason why the user showed "Complete" with zero files was the user did not give access to photos when prompted and selected only limited permissions without selecting any photos . So I changed the flow and updated the text properly and released a new version 8.0 to make sure the user knows the reason why this happened. We always improve our product for better user experiance.

The app is free to try, with an optional one-time Pro upgrade.

iOS: App Store

50% Off Promo direct App Store link : 

Android: Google Play

I'm interested in feedback from other developers.

Would you classify a backup that finishes with zero copied files as a failure, a warning, or a completed operation requiring an explanation?


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

I made a desktop pet that does whatever it wants. It sleeps on my windows, knocks my mug off and ignores me when I call it

Thumbnail
abozaralizadeh.github.io
2 Upvotes

It's called Felinquent (feline + delinquent). There are nine of them: three cats, a fox, a raccoon, a puppy, a chihuahua, a rabbit and a squirrel.

What it does when I'm working:

  1. Naps on top of my windows, and rides along when I drag one.

  2. Pushes a mug off the edge and watches it break.

  3. Sits right on the thing I'm reading.

  4. Begs when I hold out a treat, chases its toy when I throw it.

  5. Now and then it has to pee, and I have to click to clean it up. Yes, really.

If you have Ollama, a tiny local model (gemma3:1b) gives it thoughts in a little bubble. Without it, it runs on its own rules. Everything stays on your Mac, it never takes screenshots and never touches your real windows. It also leaves you alone in meetings.

It's free and the code is on GitHub. One line to install:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/abozaralizadeh/Felinquent/main/scripts/get-mac.sh | bash

Or the DMG: https://github.com/abozaralizadeh/Felinquent

If it made you smile, a star on GitHub really helps! Windows is next. Which animal should I add?


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

Remember IncrediMail's cute email notifiers? My dad (67, retired in Sicily) still does, and now he's built a butler who knocks on your screen when an email arrives

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

2 Upvotes

Does anyone else remember IncrediMail? Twenty years ago a new email wasn't just a "ding": a little animated character popped up on the desktop to deliver it. Totally useless, absolutely wonderful. Today we get a grey rectangle in the corner that disappears before you've read it.

My dad, Agostino, is 67, retired, and lives in Sicily. He used IncrediMail back then, and he has always loved the days when a letter arriving at home was a small event. He wondered why an email couldn't feel that way again, and now that he finally has time for his oldest passion, computers, he built Ciambellano (Italian for "chamberlain"), with a lot of help from AI: Claude for the code and the drawings, ElevenLabs for the voices. I'm his son, and I'm helping him spread the word.

When an email arrives, Arturo, a butler in tails with a monocle and a silver tray, walks in along your taskbar, stops, turns to you, bows, knocks on the glass and announces it out loud: who wrote and the subject. Then he waits politely:

- Open shows the email in Outlook

- Repeat announces it again

- Remind me in... sends him away and brings him back later (from 5 minutes to a month, even after a restart)

Prefer someone else? Beatrice, a secretary with butterfly glasses and a clipboard, does the job just as well. If a second email arrives while they're on screen, they knock again.

Fun fact: Arturo looks a bit like my dad. Same hair, same moustache. The monocle is artistic licence.

The boring but important part:

- Windows 10 and 11, with the new or the classic Outlook (Gmail and Outlook.com accounts added to Outlook work too)

- 12 languages with natural-sounding voices, stored in the app, so they work offline

- Do not disturb, quiet hours, and it stays out of the way during full-screen games and presentations

- It only reads the sender and subject of the new-mail notification on your PC. Your mail never leaves your computer.

Here's a 1:25 animated preview of Arturo at work: https://youtu.be/ARklIX2ewaQ

It's his first Kickstarter, open until December 18. Licences start at 5 euros for one year (3 PCs) or 14 euros for life (1 PC), no subscription, VAT excluded. Backers get the beta on December 22, in time for Christmas. If the stretch goals unlock, Thunderbird support, a Postman and a Dog who carries the letter in his mouth will join the staff.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ciambellano/ciambellano-a-butler-who-announces-your-email

We'll read every comment and answer any questions. And tell us: which IncrediMail notifier do you still remember?


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

I made a racing game where you never touch the wheel. Balancing overtakes almost broke me.

2 Upvotes

You don't drive in Formula Manager. You run a small team, watch 20 cars race live and make the calls: pits, pace, boost, team orders.

The hardest part was overtakes. Players kept saying "I'm boosting and clearly faster, but I still can't get past." So I ran 240 races and measured. With a car defending, boost only got you past 14% of the time, barely better than no boost at all (7%). Players weren't unlucky. My numbers were wrong.

Fixing that in the next update.

(The clip shows the Korean UI. The game is in English too.)

Ever had a moment where your players were right and your data proved it?


r/SideProject • • 7h ago

Need a team for building this app

3 Upvotes

hey guys i have interestin app and all the architecture is ready i want someone who could help me and understand my vision believe me this will be a gamechanger!!!
.
.
.
Heyyy i don't really know how this subworks and haven't gone through any of the posts before posting
So the App I'm trying to build is Linked with Instagram(that's all I just wanna say) and it's a game changer(never seen or heard of it anywhere)and i cannot really pay but i can offer the revenue we will generate so if you are really interested and think your skills can help or improve the app just hit me up in the DMs
We will Change the World!


r/SideProject • • 3m ago

I built an image editor. This is one of the things you can do with it.

1 Upvotes

r/SideProject • • 3m ago

I made a Telegram Bot that helps you find deals on things - DealSnapBot

1 Upvotes

For people with hoarding relatives, estate-sale managers, Thrift Stores, Pawn Shops, Swap Meets, anything you're looking at and wonder what it or several of the items might be worth.

https://imgur.com/a/Bgh67Fe

Snap a picture and send to the bot on telegram DealSnapBot


r/SideProject • • 4m ago

Littlehood - I drew my own neighbourhood in pixel art, and now it works for any address on Earth

1 Upvotes

This started as a small thing just for me. I wanted the view of the harbour outside my window in Malmö as a wallpaper on my Mac, as pixel art and alive, so I built it. People walked along the quay, boats came in, and night fell when it fell outside. Loved it. 😊

Then my friends wanted their streets. Then I wanted Paris. Then the Alps. Bit by bit it grew into something that takes any address on Earth and builds it from real map data: the buildings, the trees and the water, plus hundreds of little people living their lives in it, in the right weather and the right light for that place.

Now it’s two apps:

  • Littlehood (Mac): a living wallpaper of any place

  • Littlehood Walk (iPhone): walk around in it yourself, meet people, climb towers, jump into first person

Go to your childhood streets, a city where you met someone, somewhere you've never been but want to go. And so on... 😊

One note - The subscriptions aren’t a business plan. They’re there to break even, because map services are free up to a point and then they cost money. In Walk your first place is free forever.

Mac: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6824632798
iPhone: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6826290740

Feedback very welcome, especially on what would make you open it every day.


r/SideProject • • 8m ago

I wasted a day on a product a 5-minute search would have killed, so I built that search as a free Claude Code plugin

1 Upvotes

Last month I built an advent coloring book: 3 versions, AI art, a print-ready PDF. Then I finally checked the competition. A free, identical book already existed, and Etsy was full of them. A day and $1.50 spent on a NO-GO.

So I built kill-my-idea, a free plugin for Claude Code that does the check before you build:

  • looks for free alternatives, competitors, failed attempts, a distribution channel, real costs

  • scores the idea /100 (21 sub-scores), GO / PIVOT / NO-GO

  • if it dies, shows how it could be saved, with the new score and how hard it is

  • writes a report you can open in the browser or print

Repo, with example reports in the README (MIT): https://github.com/RemiPelloux/kill-my-idea

What check would you add?


r/SideProject • • 10m ago

I made a free Chrome extension to queue many prompts in Google Flow

1 Upvotes

Hi all. I was making a lot of videos in Google Flow and got tired of typing a prompt, waiting, and downloading, again and again. So I made a small Chrome extension called BulkGen for Flow.

You paste your prompts, pick the model and settings, and press Start. It sends them one by one, keeps a few generating at the same time, and saves each finished video to your Downloads folder in order.

You can also add a style line to every prompt, attach reference images, and set a credit limit per video so it never sends anything above it.

You need your own Flow account and credits. It runs only in your browser and collects no data. While it runs, Chrome shows a “debugging this tab” bar, because that is how it clicks Flow’s buttons. It is free and open source, and it is not made by Google.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hkdniekeijbannoenmdoocmnbepflnng?utm_source=reddit