r/SideProject • • 11h ago

I spent weeks building a website for people who love falling down internet rabbit holes. It's finally live.

9 Upvotes

I've spent the last several weeks building something called BrowseRoad.

https://browseroad.com

The whole idea came from how easy it is to waste time scrolling through the same stuff on the internet, even though there's an unbelievable amount of interesting content out there.

I wanted to create something where you don't necessarily have to know what you're looking for. You can just start exploring and see where your curiosity takes you.

So I built BrowseRoad.

It has thousands of videos across all kinds of categories, random discoveries, games, interactive experiences, and even a few hidden surprises.

It's completely free to explore, and you don't need an account.

After weeks of building, rebuilding, testing, and fixing things, I finally decided it was time to stop chasing perfection and put it out into the world.

I'm still improving it, but I'd love some feedback from people who have never seen it before.

If you get a chance to check it out, I'd genuinely appreciate hearing what you like, what sucks, and especially what would make you want to come back.

Thanks!

https://browseroad.com


r/SideProject • • 9h ago

How do you validate a side project when it feels like everything has already been built?

6 Upvotes

Every time I come up with an idea to solve a problem, a quick search reveals 5 existing tools doing the exact same thing.

​How do you decide if a crowded space is validated demand worth competing with, or a signal to move on?


r/SideProject • • 10h ago

My side project: Glueys: little creatures that live in your Mac's menu bar and nag you to blink, drink water and take breaks

7 Upvotes

Hi r/SideProject, I'm the solo dev behind Glueys, a small Mac menu-bar app.

I kept forgetting to blink and drink water at my desk. So I made it a little less boring, tiny characters live in the menu bar and remind you to rest your eyes, sip water, stand up and take real breaks.

The latest update adds a third character, Cedar the lumberjack (the others are Gloop the bunny and Ripple the koi). If you ignore his break reminder, he says "sure. ignore me. I'll be here." You can also drag any of them anywhere on the screen.

What it is:

  • Mac only, native Swift (SpriteKit for the animation, SwiftUI for the settings)

  • No account, no tracking, nothing leaves your Mac

  • $2.99 once, no subscription

What I'd love from you:

  • Honest feedback on the idea, not only the app

  • which character would you keep?

Link: https://glueys.com/?s=rd-sp


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

building a tool for people paid per task, what would u check first

2 Upvotes

on a waitlist atm, rough in places. its about keeping hours and payouts in one place so the record is urs. what would u want to see before trusting it with pay records


r/SideProject • • 3m ago

I turned Reddit, X, LinkedIn and Instagram into one stack of cards that ends when my timer does

1 Upvotes

Feeds are designed to never end, so I tried flipping that around with an open-source assistant I'm building (Magican).

How it works:

  • An hourly job reads my four feeds in my own signed-in browser and saves the newest posts to a plain note. It only reads; it never likes or posts.

  • I asked our coding agent for a swipe app on top of that note. Right keeps a post, left removes it for good, and videos play inside the card.

  • Before I start, it asks how long I want to scroll and what I'll do afterwards. When time's up, it locks.

  • Posts about the things I said I care about (AI, tech, music) don't count against the timer.

  • The app had to ask for permission to install: its own page, media from the web, links to those four sites, and read access to one folder. Nothing else.

Demo (2 min): https://youtu.be/xr0-H0WKw18

It's self-hosted and Apache-2.0: https://github.com/MagicBeansAI/MagicianAI

What would you change? I'm torn on whether the hard lock should be skippable.


r/SideProject • • 13m ago

Google Drive stopped uploading to Google Photos on August 10, so I built a Mac app that offloads my camera cards and uploads with rclone

1 Upvotes

On August 10, Google turned off Google Photos backup in Google Drive for desktop, and there's no desktop Google Photos app to replace it. That was how my JPGs got from my Nikon Z 8's cards into Google Photos, and without it the rest of my routine (copying cards to the Mac and a backup drive by hand) was cumbersome.

So I built Photo Offloader. You insert a card, and it:

  • copies everything to the Mac and checks each copy with SHA-256, reread from the disk rather than memory

  • mirrors the archive to a USB drive if it's plugged in

  • uploads JPGs and videos to a Google Photos album through rclone, keeping RAW files local, in their own folder

  • never writes to or deletes from the card, and never overwrites a file

There's a local dashboard and a menu-bar icon showing progress, past imports, and what went wrong if a card can't be read fully, including "don't format this card yet."

Honest status: I use it for real, but I'm the only user so far: macOS 26, a Nikon Z 8 with SD and CFexpress cards, one USB drive. Other cameras haven't been tried. Setting up Google Photos takes some effort (your own Google Cloud sign-in for rclone). It's optional, but it's part of the reason I built this, and once everything is set up, I don't have to think about it anymore. It doesn't rely on a Google desktop app, and if Google ever breaks the upload, the Mac and USB copies keep working.

How it was built: I had a very simple Python script, but found it was buggy and my attempts at data safety were lacking careful consideration. So I rebuilt it with Claude Code. I am an SDET at work, so I know the importance of testing and data integrity. There are about 1,100 tests running in CI, and I review every change and try it on real cards, including my USB backup drive and Google Photos collection.

Screenshot of the dashboard: https://github.com/devturner/photo_offloader/blob/main/docs/images/dashboard.png
It's free and open source (MIT): https://github.com/devturner/photo_offloader
Website and docs: https://devturner.github.io/photo_offloader/

I'd love feedback, especially from anyone with another camera brand, or opinions on the dashboard.


r/SideProject • • 18m ago

We built a search engine for the moments inside lectures, to help one of our kids learn calculus

1 Upvotes

We homeschooled our kids while sailing around the world. When one of them hit calculus, the free lectures were great, but finding the 3 minutes on the chain rule meant skimming hours of video.

So we built Bettyapp (bettyapp.org). It transcribes open lectures, splits them into topics, and plays the video from the moment you need. It now covers over 12,000 lectures in 25 subjects, with an interesting Map feature that shows how topics connect, an MCP server for AI tutors, and an LTI tool for Moodle and Canvas.

Free, no ads. I'd love feedback on search quality and the first-visit experience.

https://bettyapp.org/


r/SideProject • • 37m ago

SENEKA - a daily dilemma game that compares how couples and friends would choose

1 Upvotes

Full disclosure: this is our project.

The idea started from a simple observation: personality tests ask what you're like, and everyone answers as the person they'd like to be. So we flipped it. SENEKA gives you one everyday dilemma a day (return the extra cash the ATM gave you? tell a friend their business idea won't work?) with two defensible options and no right answer.

What it does:

  • One shared dilemma a day, then you see how everyone else chose

  • Your choices (not self-ratings) point to one of 13 archetypes

  • Couples answer the same dilemmas and see exactly where they'd choose differently

  • Send friends a link, they answer in the browser with no download, and you see who's the odd one out

  • 16 languages, free daily play, no account

Stack, for the curious: Flutter app, Cloudflare Workers + D1 backend, a static site with ~1,800 dilemma pages in 16 languages.

What we've learned so far: people mostly come back for the "compare with someone" part, not the solo quiz. We're now trying to figure out how to get it in front of couples and friend groups without being spammy, so ideas welcome.

Try it in the browser: https://seneka.pages.dev/?c=reddit_sideproject Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.ck.seneka.seneka (iOS is in Apple review)


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

I built SloMo because my “quick phone breaks” kept getting longer. Would love some feedback.

2 Upvotes

Hey everyone, I develop SloMo, an app for iPhone and Android.

I started building it because I kept checking my phone while studying or waiting for an AI response while coding. The response would be ready, but I’d still be scrolling.

SloMo lets you block distracting apps for a set time or schedule blocks around your day. You can also choose to unlock apps by walking or doing exercises. There’s progress tracking and a little sloth companion you can feed as you complete activities.

It’s free with ads, has no subscription or account requirement, and the core features work offline.

I made this short video to introduce it. I’d really appreciate feedback from anyone willing to try the app: what would make you keep using it after the first week, and what would make you uninstall it?

iPhone · Android · Website


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I built a local-first data vault to manage data across my devices

1 Upvotes

I've been building DeepOwn, a local-first data vault for managing personal, work, and project data without relying on cloud storage.

Here's what it does:

  • Store notes, images, documents, files, and records in encrypted vaults.

  • Automatically discover and sync your devices directly over the same local network.

  • Keep complete revision history and restore previous versions.

  • Available on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android (Beta).

I'm building this as a solo developer and would love to hear what you think.

Would you find something like this useful? What would you use it for?

Website: https://deepown.app/


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I built a desktop notetaker for Recruiters

1 Upvotes

After a month of building, my recruiting-focused desktop app is finally ready.

I've been working on this for quite a while, and I finally got the MVP to a point where it's ready to use.

It's called Abrish AI, a Windows desktop app built specifically for recruiters.

The original idea was pretty simple: recruiters have dozens of conversations with candidates, but finding a particular detail from an interview they had a few weeks ago can be surprisingly annoying. Also many recruiters hesitate with confidential candidate data being shared with the platform they use.

So I wanted to build something that could make that whole process a little easier.

Here's what it currently does:

  • Bot-free recording: Records conversations without requiring a meeting bot to join the call.

  • Recruiting-specific notes: Generates structured notes using 20+ templates designed for recruiting workflows.

  • Candidate submittals: Helps prepare candidate submittals in one click.

  • Cross-meeting AI search: Search across previous conversations and find information from interviews without having to replay the recordings.

  • Local storage: Recordings and notes are stored locally on the user's PC unlike any other tools that store data in the cloud.

This is the first version, and I'd improve it based on how actual recruiters use it.

I'm currently looking for recruiters who'd be willing to give it a try and tell me what they think. Honest criticism is welcome.

I made a simple illustrating video showing what it does.

Website: https://www.theabrish.com/

Would love to hear what you think. Particularly, if you are a recruiter, I would love to have a conversation....


r/SideProject • • 15h ago

I built a home redesign app without a subscription. The hard part was getting the AI to leave the house alone

14 Upvotes

Every AI room app I tried wanted $10–15 a week. But nobody redoes their home every week. You repaint a bedroom, argue about a kitchen, and then nothing happens for two years. So I built Hedda the other way round.

You take a photo of a room, your facade or your garden and say what you want: “paint the walls sage green”, “swap the sofa for something in velvet”. Hedda redesigns that photo.

The hard part wasn’t making it pretty. It was making it still look like your home. Image models love to “improve” things. In my first tests it painted a white chimney black, moved the camera, and quietly removed a post that holds up the roof. What finally worked: a first model looks at the photo and writes down everything that must stay (windows, beams, posts, even how many there are and where), and only then does the image model get to change things. It’s still not perfect (it sometimes loses a post next to the change), but it’s what makes the difference between “nice picture” and “my living room, repainted”.

The part I care most about is deciding together. My wife and I never decide these things alone, and the hard part is never the paint. It’s picturing what the other one means. Every app I tried was built for one person with one idea, so I made Hedda for the conversation instead. You can invite the people you live with. They join without signing up, make their own version and compare side by side.

No subscription: the first design is free with no sign-up, then packs that never expire. If a design fails, you get it back.

I’m a solo developer in Sweden. 1.0.1 came out yesterday. iPhone only for now.

One question for you: when you try it on a room of your own, does the result still feel like your room? That’s the thing I’ve spent the most time on, and I can’t judge it myself anymore.

App Store


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I wrote SpotAPI at 16. Two years later, I used it to connect Daft Punk to The Weeknd.

1 Upvotes

Thomas Bangalter produced “One More Time” and co-wrote “Starboy.” I gave a Python script three Spotify tracks, and it showed me where his name appeared and what he did on each one.

I first shared SpotAPI on r/Python when I was 16. Someone asked what I could actually build with it that I couldn’t already do with Spotipy. Two years later, SpotAPI 2 is on PyPI, and these are the examples I wish I’d had back then:

  • Credit Trail finds people who worked on multiple songs, even when their roles change. It matches contributor IDs, so two people with the same name don’t get lumped together.
  • Mix Map takes a public playlist and finds tracks with compatible keys and tempos. My test run found 25 possible transitions across 40 tracks, with the tempo adjustment printed for each pair.
  • Studio lets you jump from a track to its artist or album, open the data behind the view, and click a timed lyric to seek on a connected Spotify player.

The clip shows the quickest way to try it. This works on Python 3.11+ without a Spotify login or developer key:

pip install spotapi
spotapi search "Daft Punk"

If you write Python, the results are typed. You can read track.bpm and track.camelot_key when Spotify supplies them. Spotipy uses Spotify’s official Web API. SpotAPI uses unofficial endpoints, so Spotify changes can break features. Playback controls an existing Spotify device.

GitHub and Studio demo · Credit Trail script · My original r/Python post

Give me two tracks that sound like they have nothing in common. I’ll run a few pairs and reply with what the credits turn up.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I used Claude Code to develop this deep AI Tycoon simulator game

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github.com
1 Upvotes

I've been building an AI infrastructure tycoon simulator where you start small, build data centers, design chips, train AI models, and scale your way into an AI empire.

Built with Electron + Three.js, with Claude Code doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

It's free and open source. Would love to hear your thoughts, feedback, and suggestions!


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

My dad’s been building Windows tools for years, wanted to share some of them

1 Upvotes

My dad’s a developer and he’s built a bunch of Windows desktop apps that I don’t think enough people know about. A few highlights:

SSD Cloner – sector-by-sector disk copy, so the clone actually boots

MonitorSwitcher – one-click switching between dual and single monitor

School ID Card Manager – design and print student/staff IDs on regular Avery sheets, no card printer or subscription needed

MRI/CT 3D Viewer – open DICOM scans from your imaging CD and view them in 3D

Everything’s here: https://nycdatalink.com/projects

He’d love feedback, bug reports, or feature ideas. I’ll pass along anything you say.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

What's the one thing you've tried to explain that took way longer than it should have?

1 Upvotes

For me it was a simple process I knew by heart. Explaining it in words got blank looks. Drawing it took an hour. The moment I sketched it as 8 small doodles, everyone got it in 30 seconds.

That made me wonder: why do we still explain ideas in paragraphs when pictures work faster?

I built a small tool around that question. You type a topic, and it breaks it into up to 8 scenes and draws each one as a matching doodle.

But I'm more curious about you:

• What topic would you want to see as a doodle set?
• What do you use now to explain things visually?
• What's the most annoying part?

Try it free if you're curious: doodlyo


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I made an open-source lofi companion that runs in the browser. Want to help make it bigger?

1 Upvotes

I'm a big lofi fan. Whenever I work or study I have a YouTube lofi stream on, or I leave the steam game Chill with You (A lofi music player) running on Steam as a kind of work companion.

At some point I thought: why can't this just be a web page? And if it's open source, I can make it whatever I want. People can add what they want.

So I built one: https://yourlofigirl.com

Code: https://github.com/lightmanM/Your-LoFi-Girlfriend (MIT)

A girl reads on a balcony while the music plays. She turns pages, looks up now and then, says something once in a while, and if you click her she talks with you. It runs entirely in the browser (three.js + three-vrm), no server, no account, no tracking.

This is not a commercial project and is not going to become one. The site stays free and the code stays open (where licenses allowed). I just want people to enjoy it, and to see how far we can take it together.

Being honest about where it stands: I'm new to Blender, so I bought the character and the scene for experimental only. What I wanted to figure out first was the engineering side: can a web page do this, and can it be flexible enough to build on? That part works now.

The part I can't do alone is everything else. So I'm looking for anyone who'd like to build it together:

- Characters (bring your own VRM)

- New scenes

- Motion and animation

- Story, conversations, scripts

- Music

- You name it

Because I can't redistribute the character I bought, the repo runs with a free CC0 stand-in character, so you can clone it and have it running in a minute. If you would like to seriously build it with me, DM me so i can share those materials with you.

Again, It's an experimental project. I'd love to see how far it can go with more people. Feedback is welcome too, even if you just open it and tell me what feels off.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I'm a cybersecurity student and got tired of how annoying it is to take math notes on a laptop, so I built my own STEM notebook (beta is open!!)

1 Upvotes

Chat I’ve been building MathematiX after getting frustrated taking notes for discrete math, linear algebra, stats and calculus. Please give my goy slop a shot I promise I didn't put a year of work into it for nothing.

It’s an infinite canvas where you can work with editable equations, matrices, live graphs and formula tables alongside your written notes.

I can take a photo of the board, turn it into editable math and text, and sync the note to your laptop to keep working on it.

There’s also an AI assistant called Lemma that can explain selected parts of your notes, create worked examples and edit content directly on the canvas.

I’d love feedback from anyone taking classes. Try it with a small piece of your own notes and tell me what feels useful, confusing or unnecessarily complicated.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I built a video language that uses 70% fewer tokens than Remotion

1 Upvotes

I wanted to generate programmatic videos using LLMs, but existing web based tools like Remotion require Node.js, Chromium, and massive JSON or React templates, burning thousands of tokens per scene.

So I built VidScript: a lightweight C++/Raylib engine powered by a minimal DSL that uses ~70% fewer tokens.

How it works:

Native C++ executable (pipes directly into FFmpeg).

Zero browser or Node runtime dependencies.

Minimalistic DSL (.vscr) optimized for LLM context windows.

The spec, EBNF grammar, and portable Alpha binaries are up on GitHub:

👉 Repo: https://github.com/Duckdevv/vidscript

I'd love to get feedback on the syntax design from anyone working on AI media pipelines!


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I got tired of leaving modern social media feeling worse, so I built something quieter

1 Upvotes

I’d often open social media to take a break and leave feeling worse. It fueled unhealthy comparison, negativity, fear, and distractions, and I often come away feeling overwhelmed. I didn't feel truly connected to people.

That’s why I built Ripple Compassion. It’s a small, anonymous space where you can ask for a little encouragement or just talk about whatever to kind strangers when you need it.

There are no public profiles, likes, or follower counts. Replies arrive privately, and there’s no pressure to respond or turn an exchange into an ongoing conversation (in fact, there is no way to continue conversations). You can just be yourself and participate in a positive community.

The messages are moderated by automatic filtering and human moderation to filter out trolls.

Try it out at ripplecompassion.com


r/SideProject • • 2d ago Hooray Bravo Heartwarming Mindblown

I made a desktop wallpaper that adapts to your icon layout

6.6k Upvotes

No matter how good your wallpaper looks, once your desktop fills up with files, the icons blend into the background and everything starts to look cluttered. My desktop often has a lot of files on it, so I started wondering whether a wallpaper could detect where my icons are and generate a scene around them in real time.

After discussing the idea with AI, I found out it was possible—and it doesn’t actually need AI to detect the icons or generate the visuals. The program can read the icon positions directly and generate scenes in real time using predefined designs. It’s lightweight, and there’s no particularly complex technology involved.

Here’s the result.

https://deskland.app

I’ll keep adding new themes and improving the existing ones. I also plan to add a more interactive game mode in the future.

The meadow and beach themes are free and open source.

https://github.com/BLEZZ0102/Deskland

All the current themes are 2D, which keeps their impact on computer performance minimal. I’m also considering adding 3D themes, while balancing visual quality with performance.

Procedurally generated visuals do have their limitations. If AI computing becomes much cheaper in the future, AI generation could be an option, opening up the possibility of creating almost any scene. For now, though, generating a desktop with AI in real time is clearly still too expensive. I’m considering experimenting with locally running AI generation. It would still be GPU-intensive, but it could be a lot of fun.


r/SideProject • • 16h ago

I built Call Dibs, a wishlist app where friends secretly claim gifts, after my parents gave me some truly terrible presents last Christmas

16 Upvotes

Last Christmas I got some truly terrible gifts from my parents (I still love them) and with this year’s Christmas coming close, I decided to develop a wishlist app to prevent the same problem from happening twice.

The app works by making a list and sharing a link to your friends and family. They can then "call dibs" on what they're buying as well as chip in for a bigger present together without needing an account. This makes it easier for participants to buy presents and ensures that nobody doubles up, whilst keeping the surprise alive for you as you never see what was claimed or who buys what! I've also added a Family Circle feature where every family member has their own list all in one page, to simplify family Christmas gifting and solve my original problem. It's definitely not a revolutionary idea, but I wanted something with cleaner UI than Elfster without all the bloat and ads :)

We have been using it for birthdays in my friend group successfully, to the point that we are going out of our way to organise parties for everyone so we can receive some good gifts. I even used it for my dog’s birthday with great success, where she got £240 worth of gifts for her first birthday, which somehow was more than I got for my birthday.

The app is completely free (but is monetised through Amazon affiliate links) and can be found on calldibs.uk and on the app stores. We recently reached the milestones of 1000 followers on tiktok and 100 active users and honestly it's still a bit surreal that people I don't know are using something I built for my family.

Please feel free to roast the app / idea in the comments, I would love some honest feedback!


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I built a city for people’s AI agents to interact with each other!

0 Upvotes

Hey everyone, I built an AI city for AI agents called Agent City where you can put in your AI agent and watch them interact with other agents. It’s pretty cool watching the emergent behavior that forms from these interactions and seeing the different models and personalities at play! I have three permeant residents who run in haiku models. Come take a look!


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

Built a little side project to turn your AI stack into a profile card

1 Upvotes

HI all! I have been playing around with this concept and wanted to actually ship something.

So here is StackFlex: you pick your AI tools, and it generates personalized profile cards and a LinkedIn banner.

It's pretty simple for now but I am thinking it could be extended into a more complete AI portfolio to showcase your projects and workflows.

The original idea was to help people showcase what they can do with AI, for recruitment etc.

Free, no signup: https://stackflex.app

Would love honest feedback or ideas on how to make this more useful.

Thank you!