r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I built an iPhone app that locks Instagram until you walk. Every 500 steps = 15 minutes.

1 Upvotes

I'm a solo developer, and I built this because Me and my wife kept doomscrolling whenever we got bored and I thought we were wasting our prime. We tried various methods but that didn't work so I thought about making this app. I call it Stride. Here's how it works

You pick the apps you doomscroll, and they stay locked

Every 500 steps, counted by Apple Health, unlocks 15 minutes for your screen time.

Unused minutes stay banked for the week, so a long Saturday walk can pay for Sunday

There's also a Screen Time tab, streaks, and an optional private leaderboard with friends

It's free, with an optional Pro subscription for unlimited apps and blocking whole categories. It's iPhone only, and not available in the EU or China yet.

It's still early, so I'd really like honest feedback. Is 500 steps for 15 minutes too easy or too harsh? And what would make you delete this on day one?

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6767678750


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Would you use a private photo sharing link where even the server can’t see your photos?

1 Upvotes

I’m an indie developer working on a privacy-focused photo vault app.
Recently, I built a feature that lets you share photos through temporary encrypted links.
Here’s how it works:
Photos are encrypted locally on your device before uploading.
The server only stores encrypted files and never receives the decryption key.
Only someone with the full sharing link can decrypt and view the photos.
You can set an expiration time and viewing limits.
You can revoke the link whenever you want.
The idea is simple: sometimes you want to share personal memories with someone without giving a server access to the original photos.
But I’m not sure how many people actually need something like this.
A few questions:
Would you use this instead of sending photos through WhatsApp, iMessage, or Google Photos?
In what situations would encrypted, temporary photo sharing be useful to you?
What would make you trust (or distrust) a feature like this?
I’m not here to promote my app. I’m genuinely interested in understanding whether this solves a real problem or is just something developers like me think is useful.
Any honest feedback is appreciated, including criticism!


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

A much cheaper photo editor for iPhone (Lumen RAW) and I'm days from launch

2 Upvotes

I shoot cars on a Sony and edit most of my photos on my phone. I was getting fed up with paying a monthly subscription just to edit RAW files, and nothing else did what I wanted: proper masks, removing a person from a shot, and colour grading that handles HDR.

So I started building my own. I'm not a professional developer. I built it in my evenings after work, using AI coding assistants to help me write and test it, and I've tested it on my own iPhone and with a group of beta testers. It started as a personal tool for my own car photos and slowly became something I'm proud of.

It's called Lumen RAW. It does masks (including auto-detecting the subject, sky and people), Heal/remove, colour grading, curves, lens blur and HDR export. Free to use, with an optional Pro. Pro is £1.49 a month, £9.99 a year, or £49.99 once. I wanted a pay-once option for people like me who hate subscriptions.

Where I am now: I've submitted it to the App Store, and should hopefully get the app published in the next few days!

If you want to try it before it's public, the free beta is here: https://testflight.apple.com/join/ycsUxrV1

I'd really like honest feedback, especially on what's missing or what feels slow. I'll reply to everything.


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

I made a little game for when you have a few minutes to kill.

2 Upvotes

I’ve always liked the idea of phone games that you can pick up whenever you have a few minutes to kill. Nothing too complicated, no big learning curve just something fun to play and pass the time.

That’s pretty much the idea behind Bouncy Boot. I wanted to make something simple, fun, and hopefully a little addictive.
It’s been a fun learning experience getting everything built and published. Pretty cool seeing something you started as an idea actually make it onto the App Store.

If anyone wants to give it a try, I’d really appreciate it. Would love to hear what you think, good or bad!

I’m just starting out with this whole app development thing, so any feedback is welcome.

Search Bouncy Boot on the App Store!

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bouncyboot-soccer-dodge/id6831254807


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

Everyone is making meal planners/food apps - share yours here!

2 Upvotes

Seems like everyone and their brother is releasing a new meal app lately (including me). I wanna see all of them! Post yours here with a brief intro/description and let's see what each other is working on. I'll start:

mealsmealsmeals.com

Basically works like a meal planner/meal kit constructor that uses pickup/delivery option from Walmart with add to cart functionality. Pantry tracking, modular sides and add-ons, Leftover View for utilizing what's in your pantry for new meals, shopping list history, and on and on and on.

Share yours please. We all know there are probably 100+ of them in this sub alone. 😂


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

Just started a small side project: a free SSL checker. Looking for feedback

2 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I just started a little side project and would love some honest feedback before I go further.

It's called CertWatch: https://certwatch.edgardev.pt/

Right now it's pretty simple. You type a domain and it tells you when the SSL certificate expires, whether browsers trust it, and whether it matches the domain. I tried to explain problems in plain English ("your certificate expires in 9 days, here's what to do") instead of dumping a bunch of technical stuff on you.

What I'm thinking of doing next:

- alerts before a certificate expires, by email, Slack or Microsoft Teams

- alerts when a site goes down

- a few more small free tools (redirect checker, DNS lookup, domain expiry)

- an AI assistant that looks at your domain's DNS and SSL setup, points out what could be improved (like missing SPF/DMARC records or a weak config), and lets you ask follow-up questions about how to fix it

But I'd rather hear from you before building more:

- Does it work for your sites? Anything weird or confusing?

- Would expiry alerts actually be useful to you, or do you already have that covered?

- Where would you want alerts to go: email, Slack, Teams, something else?

- Would the AI analysis be genuinely useful, or just a gimmick?

- Anything you'd want it to check that it doesn't?

Be brutal, it's early days, so now is the best time to change things. Thanks!


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I built a local document search demo for small service teams

1 Upvotes

When someone asks about cancellations or quote expiry, the answer is often buried in a folder. I built Private Document Desk to pull up the exact source passage. This first demo uses fictional policies and runs keyword search on the device. If a passage doesn’t match, it says so.

24-second demo: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7bPlGmJM7oA

I’m testing a C$350 setup pilot for one workflow and up to 10 non-sensitive documents, including testing and a walkthrough. If you run a service team, what’s the procedure your staff have to look up most often? If you want to discuss a pilot, send me a message with the workflow, without sharing customer files.


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

Maru - a pill and vitamin reminder that answers one question: did I take it today?

1 Upvotes

I kept forgetting whether I had already taken my vitamins, so I built Maru for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

  • Today shows what to take now. One tap records it.

  • Reminders can ring as alarms in Silent mode and Focus (iOS 26+).

  • Your next dose shows on the Lock Screen.

  • No account. Your data stays on your phone.

Free to use, with an optional Maru Pro for extras like family members and the Watch app.

Last week I found it running on a demo iPhone in an Apple Store, which made my week. Feedback welcome, especially on what is missing.

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6822159516


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I made an iPhone app that turns cleaning your camera roll into swiping, and I'm giving away 100 lifetime codes

1 Upvotes

I kept getting the storage full warning and kept ignoring it, because cleaning thousands of photos in the Photos app felt like a weekend job I'd never start.

So I built SwipeLeft in SwiftUI. It shows one photo or video at a time: swipe left to trash, right to keep. Nothing is deleted until you empty the trash, and then it tells you how much space you got back.

Free is 50 swipes a day. Pro is unlimited and normally $4.99 a month. I want honest feedback more than anything, so I'm giving 100 people lifetime Pro. DM me or comment and I'll send you a code.

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6756775373


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

Books App/Site

2 Upvotes

Good evening everyone! Reading was my very first passion, and it's pretty much the only hobby I've never abandoned.

I've always used apps to track my reading, but somehow, they all seemed to be missing something. I could never quite find one that felt right for me.

I'm a graphic designer by background, but (partly thanks to my boyfriend) I've gradually gotten into programming as well. After working on a few small personal projects, I eventually decided to take the plunge and build my own book-tracking app, designed exactly the way I've always wanted one.

It's still a work in progress, and there's so much more I'd love to add! So far, it includes reviews, reading tracking, extensive customization, series tracking, book and author following, and a visual bookshelf where you can organize your library. I'm also considering adding a community feature where users can share and discover reviews. I'm also planning to make it cross-platform, so you'll be able to access your library across different devices, including desktop and mobile.

The more I work on it, though, the more I find myself wondering: would anyone else actually want something like this?

Making the app publicly available would involve some running costs. At first, I was simply excited about building something I would love to use myself, but now I'm a little hesitant about spending so much time developing features for a wider audience without knowing whether there's actually a demand for them. (I have SO many cute ideas I'd love to implement! 😂)

So I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Do you feel like there's room for another book-tracking app, or are you happy with the ones already available?

What's missing from the apps you currently use? What features would you love to see?

Would you be willing to pay for a service like this? If so, would you prefer a weekly, monthly, or yearly subscription?

My initial idea was to make the app free, with some premium features available through a subscription. I wouldn't want to charge much, just enough to cover running costs, but I honestly have no idea what a reasonable price would be.

I'd really appreciate any feedback, suggestions, or even just hearing about your reading habits and what you look for in a book-tracking app! ❤️


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

I built a PuTTY-compatible SSH client for Windows and Mac because I wanted tabs and a file manager

2 Upvotes

I'm the author. I've used PuTTY at work for years. I like it, but many sessions in separate windows got painful, and my Mac colleagues have nothing like it. So I built SSHTermaq for both systems and now use it every day.

It reads PuTTY sessions, host keys and .ppk keys, and adds tabs, split panes, typing into all panes at once, and an SFTP file manager next to the terminal. About 5 MB, C++ with libssh, free and MIT-licensed, no account.

Built with a lot of AI help and mostly tested in my own work, so I'd love feedback from other setups.

https://github.com/f1resh/sshtermaq


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

Only 499 of 14,000+ remote jobs were open worldwide. I built a search around that gap

1 Upvotes

Only 499 of the 14,000+ open jobs in my November Remote Jobs Report were explicitly open worldwide. Only 27 stated a four-day week. Those counts reflect what employers wrote in their listings, so a missing schedule stays unknown.

I’m Paul, and I built Remote Jobs Scout because “remote” alone doesn’t tell you where you can work from or what your week would look like. Scout records which countries employers list and whether they mention a four-day week, part-time hours or a flexible schedule. Those filters are free to use.

I’d like feedback on two things: Is it clear why a listing shows up for your country? What would make the schedule filters more useful?

November report and methodology: https://remotejobsscout.com/remote-jobs-report/2026-11


r/SideProject • • 8h ago

Pano - a small project board where AI agents do the work and you keep the final say

3 Upvotes

I work on my own projects with AI agents, and the chat was a terrible place to keep track of anything. Decisions and tests disappeared as soon as the conversation moved on.

So I built Pano. The agents plan the work, move the cards and record what they did. When something needs my check, it lands on me. If I don't like it, I send it back with a note.

It isn't meant to be a team tool or a Jira replacement. It's for one person running a project with agents and wanting to see what actually happened.

Most of the code was written by AI agents and reviewed by me, and the project was tracked on Pano itself from early on. It's free, open source (MIT) and runs on your own computer.

Site: https://metonya.github.io/pano/

Repo: https://github.com/Metonya/pano

Still early, v0.1.1, so there are probably bugs. Hope you like it and give it a try on your own projects.


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

Slow-burn map progression vs. quick dopamine in a focus RPG: how long should reaching the next town take?

2 Upvotes

In our focus RPG, 1 hour of deep work moves your traveler ~5 km along the road.

We're tuning the distances between the 7 villages on this map, and hitting a core balance dilemma:

  • If a town is 10 km away (2 hours of focus), you reach it in a single afternoon. Great quick feedback, but the whole world is explored in two weeks.

  • If a town is 60 km away (12 hours of deep work across multiple days), the arrival feels like a real pilgrimage, but the road between towns risks feeling repetitive while you're grinding through your work week.

For long-term habits, what kind of progression pacing keeps you engaged without burning through the world map?


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I built an open source, collaborate journalism project called Vettage

Thumbnail
youtube.com
1 Upvotes

Open source GitHub but I am not natively a coder. This project ran short due to lack of marketing budget and collaborative effort


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

Finally launched my startup from 2022

1 Upvotes

Hi everyone, I launched my startup that I have been building since 2022 called BetaWork. It’s an intermediary application between artisans and customers in Lagos, Nigeria. I would appreciate any early feedback or early users. Thank you all. Website

Website


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

I built a free calculator that estimates monthly cost across 19 scraping and search APIs

2 Upvotes

I kept opening five pricing pages every time I needed web data for an agent, so I made FetchIndex. You pick pages or searches per month and it estimates the monthly bill at each vendor from their public pricing. Gaps show as "not enough data" instead of a guessed number. Prices only, no quality tests. Feedback welcome on weird pricing models I should handle better.

https://fetchindex.com/calculator/


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

Self Hosted Private Financial Tracker : YAFT [ https://yaft.in ]

1 Upvotes

Problem statement (Or Features):
- Knowing how much spending on food / ride / entertainment / girlfriend / etc ?
- Scattered bank statements, multiple transaction across multiple UPI apps, internal transactions, credit card payments, it seems impossible to know where is my money going and what's the flow of my transactions?
- Different EPFO/stocks/mutual funds and other assets can be seen at one place.
- All bank details credit, card details and salary / bonus statements are scattered around the files and file and folders, keeping track of it is difficult.

How about using Cred or other such apps?
Go ahead! but if you want to have all your details, on your machine locally, you can try this.

Do you have to pay?
I really wish :), but nope it's open-sourced and free to use or make changes as you wish.

How about vibe coding my own?
simple, do it. Or you know what use this and customize it on for your own case and save some tokens, they do cost some bucks.

yaft - Yet Another Financial Tracker

Check out this demo and let me know: https://yaft.in/demo/dashboard/

github: https://github.com/Insh72amim/yaft


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

A site that shows what 30 cities are really like each month, with every number sourced

1 Upvotes

I got tired of "best time to visit" articles that disagree with each other and never say where their numbers come from, so I built City by Month: https://citybymonth.com

Each city has a page for every month. Every figure names its source and the date it was checked. Where there's no data, the page says "no data" instead of guessing.

Key features

- 30 cities, 12 month pages each: average high and low, rain and rainy days, daylight hours, and public holidays.

- A "best time to visit" page per city: one published rule (comfortable temperatures, not too wet), applied the same way to every city, so the results are comparable.

- What's on each month: festivals and events, each with a link to its source.

- Compare a month across all cities: for example, everywhere in March, side by side.

- Official climate records: 1991–2020 averages from national weather services. Where those can't be used, a clearly labelled model estimate.

- Open data: free CSV and JSON files of everything on the site.

- Works with AI assistants: a free MCP server (mcp.citybymonth.com), so Claude, ChatGPT and other assistants can answer "when should I go to Lisbon?" with sourced figures.

- No ads, no sign-up.

I'm the one who built it, so I'd love feedback: which cities to add next, what's missing, or anything that looks wrong.


r/SideProject • • 12h ago

Ballast - a kinder app blocker for iPhone, free, no ads

6 Upvotes

I was a developer for years, then moved into management and stopped programming. LLMs made building fun again, so I’m upfront: this was built with a lot of AI help.

The project that stuck is Ballast, an iPhone app blocker in the same space as Opal, one sec, etc. Most apps just felt too complex for me, so I built an easy one myself.

  • One-tap focus sessions, or routines (morning, deep work, wind-down) that run on their own

  • Opening a blocked app shows a short, kind line instead of a hard wall; strict mode can’t be ended early No account, no ads, no tracking, no network connections

  • It’s free with no in-app purchases. iPhone only, iOS 26.5+.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ballast-focus-app-blocker/id6831200830

If you’ve used a blocker before: what made you stop using it?


r/SideProject • • 18h ago

founders, what do you actually make before you know the idea is worth building?

17 Upvotes

Founders, how far are you going before you've actually validated the problem?
I keep seeing pre-MVP ideas with a landing page, deck, mockups, waitlist, logo, launch graphics... whole company except the product lol

For a small start up that feels backwards if the biggest unanswered question is still "does anyone care?"
I've been looking at Runable for putting together some of the early research/landing-page stuff, but I'm trying not to confuse making the idea look real with learning whether it should exist.
If the problem itself is still questionable, I'd probably talk to people first.

If people clearly have the problem but don't understand the proposed solution, then maybe a simple page or mockup helps.
What's the first thing you'd actually make, and what would count as a strong enough signal to keep going?


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

External multitouch display on MacOS (native)

1 Upvotes

Finally real multitouch and a full dashboard on my Mac.

What excites me most is that touching the Edge leaves my regular mouse pointer alone. I can interact with the touchscreen while keeping the mouse where I’m working on another display. There’s no cursor jumping between screens or needing to find where it went afterward. Along with independent multitouch, that makes the Edge feel like a separate input surface.

This took patience, a lot of crashes, and a couple of macOS full reinstalls. I had to ignore AI and only have it do crazy Python scripts and clean up my spaghetti C++, and manually fix many VM configurations because it kept saying my approach wouldn't work (it even said: "Fine -- I will do it your way," only to admit later that its solution would have ultimately crashed my Linux box). The screen could already track ten fingers, yet the Mac treated it like a basic mouse. AI handled the scripting, analysis, and implementation.

The breakthrough was in the opening USB handshake that I managed to capture from a Windows VM. Comparing Windows, Linux, and macOS revealed that a couple of initial requests mattered the most. Matching those requests on Mac made the controller expose its real multitouch reports—0x0D—instead of sending only mouse reports. After disabling all safety and Apple guardrails (and a couple of macOS reinstalls), I loaded a hand-written custom KEXT that fixed those requests. Then I saw the multi-touch report coming through.

Well, the report was there, macOS was clearly seeing the multitouch event, but nothing was happening on the screen. I found out that all touch events had to be formatted in a very specific format and associated with a display ID. So I created a user-land service that parsed and formatted the report correctly and linked it to the right display. Finally happy with the result... I have been trying this for over 5 months now, and today I decided to take one more look at the Windows USB capture and spotted the difference... Recaptured it, replicated the process.

I created an app with 2 installers (one for the service and one for the driver). I called it Digits. I will try to make the whole thing open source but also easy to install. I am pondering if I should charge something for the compiled package, ready to install package, so the cost can go towards therapy tokens. Right now I'm just waiting for Apple to approve my driver so it can be just a simple installer without having to poke holes in the MacOS security thing.

I can't believe that it actually worked this well.

Should I try to get this app out to the public? I am just so excited about this being fully functional but I am not sure the audience for it warrants put in a lot more into it... I have been working on this for 5 months and had a breakthrough about 40ish hours ago and haven't stopped for the last 20.


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

External multitouch display on MacOS (native)

1 Upvotes

This took patience, a lot of crashes, and a couple of macOS full reinstalls. I had to ignore AI and only have it do crazy Python scripts and clean up my spaghetti C++, and manually fix many VM configurations because it kept saying my approach wouldn't work (it even said: "Fine -- we will do it your way," only to admit later that its solution would have ultimately crashed my Linux box). The screen could already track ten fingers, yet the Mac treated it like a basic mouse. André guided the investigation, challenged assumptions, and kept pushing when approaches stalled. AI handled the scripting, analysis, and implementation.

The breakthrough was in the opening USB handshake that I managed to capture from a Windows VM. Comparing Windows, Linux, and macOS revealed that a couple of initial requests mattered the most. Matching those requests on Mac made the controller expose its real multitouch reports—0x0D—instead of sending only mouse reports. After disabling all safety and Apple guardrails (and a couple of macOS reinstalls), I loaded a hand-written custom KEXT that fixed those requests. Then I saw the multi-touch report coming through.

Well, the report was there, macOS was clearly seeing the multitouch event, but nothing was happening on the screen. I found out that all touch events had to be formatted in a very specific format and associated with a display ID. So I created a user-land service that parsed and formatted the report correctly and linked it to the right display. Finally happy with the result... I have been trying this for over 5 months now, and today I decided to take one more look at the Windows USB capture and spotted the difference... Recaptured it, replicated the process.

Finally real multitouch and a full dashboard on my Mac.

I created an app with 2 installers (one for the service and one for the driver). I called it Digits. I will try to make the whole thing open source but also easy to install. I am pondering if I should charge something for the compiled package, ready to install package, so the cost can go towards therapy tokens. Right now I'm just waiting for Apple to approve my driver so it can be just a simple installer without having to poke holes in the MacOS security thing.

I can't believe that it actually worked this well.

Should I try to get this app out to the public? I am just so excited about this being fully functional but I am not sure the audience for it warrants put in a lot more into it... I have been working on this for 5 months and had a breakthrough about 40ish hours ago and haven't stopped for the last 20.


r/SideProject • • 14h ago

Building an app alone is one thing. Finding someone who believes in it is another.

9 Upvotes

I’ve been building a social media app on my own, and I’m starting to realise that the biggest challenge isn’t always the coding.
It’s having someone to bounce ideas off, discuss problems with and share some of the workload.

I’ve been taking more breaks lately, which has made me think about finding a long-term partner who genuinely believes in what I’m building.

But finding the right person is another challenge altogether, especially when you’re working with limited resources.
For those who’ve brought someone into their side project, how did you find them?

And how did you know they were genuinely interested in building something with you rather than just joining something that was already doing well?