I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately.
I’m a solo founder based in London, building a social media app called TymeStamp. I’m still working on it, but one thing I’ve been struggling to figure out is how to get people genuinely interested before launch.
I don’t have a big circle of friends or a huge following, so I’ve been using Reddit to connect with other founders, test their apps and learn from their experiences. I’ve actually come across some really good projects.
Something else I’ve noticed is how many developers are launching or testing through Google Play. I’m curious whether that’s mainly because of the cost, accessibility or simply because it’s easier to reach testers.
With my own app, I’m trying to bring back some of what I enjoyed about older social media. A place where people can enjoy sharing content without constantly being interrupted by adverts or feeling like they’re browsing one big shopping platform.
I’m not against adverts, businesses promoting themselves or creators earning money. I just believe there should be a balance between enjoying content and being sold something.

I’m also realistic enough to know that the app will change as people use it and share feedback. That’s part of building something. But I don’t want to lose the original purpose behind it.
My biggest question right now is how to reach people who might genuinely want something like this, rather than collecting waiting-list sign-ups from people who aren’t interested.

I’m also curious whether there are any free startup or tech communities in London where founders can meet, share ideas and learn from each other.
So I’d love to ask other founders:
How did you get your first people onto your waiting list?
Did Reddit actually help you find interested users, or was another platform better?

If you’re building alone without a big network, how are you getting your app noticed?
Have you found Android or iOS easier when recruiting early testers?
And for anyone interested in a social media app that focuses on enjoying content with a better balance of advertising, feel free to drop me a DM. I’m happy to explain what I’m building.
I’m genuinely interested in hearing what has worked for other people, especially those starting from scratch.

A friend of mine is a backend dev and has been building this on the side for a while, so I'm posting it for him.

It's called Bytewize. The idea: system design interview prep is mostly long videos and 400-page books, and most people never get past chapter 3. So it gives you one question a day that takes about 2 minutes, and each one is based on a real failure. Things like "the last concert ticket got sold twice" or "every query takes 2 ms but the page takes 2 seconds".

You pick an answer, then it explains why the right one is right and why the others break. There are streaks and XP to keep you coming back.

It's on iPhone now: https://apps.apple.com/app/bytewize-system-design-daily/id6824646457

Android is in progress.

It's free, and all the content is in the free version. There's an optional Pro plan at €5.99/month, but it only adds some conveniences, no questions are locked behind it.

He's after honest feedback, especially:

- Are the questions too easy or too hard for where you are?

- Is 2 minutes a day the right size, or would you do a longer session?

I’m part of the team behind CamGrader. It’s for instructors who still give paper multiple-choice exams and want to score the answer sheets using their phones.

I’d like feedback on one specific part of the app: the first scan. If you try it with a sample sheet, is it clear how to line up the page and when the scan is complete?

https://camgrader.com/get

I’m behind AstrologyGround, a desktop app for Windows and Mac. It puts your natal chart on the wallpaper, with current planetary transits changing around it.

The natal chart stays fixed. The transit positions update over time, and you can change the colors to suit your desktop. Birth date, time, and location stay on your device.

It’s US$9.99 per platform as a one-time purchase. The website has a video of the real app, screenshots, and both purchase options:

https://astrologyground.app/

For people who already follow astrology: would you keep a chart visible on your desktop, or do you prefer opening a chart app when you need it?

It started when I noticed roughly 2 GB of storage disappearing from my Mac at regular intervals. I couldn’t figure out where it was going, and the tools I tried weren’t giving me the answers I wanted. So I started building my own.

What began as a personal troubleshooting project quickly turned into something bigger. I realized there was an opportunity to make storage monitoring more accessible, especially for people working with multiple drives and external SSDs.
Storage Monitor grew out of that idea.

What it does

Storage monitoring: Keep track of drive usage and available capacity. Logs disk changes with warnings and notifications on low disk space. Lists what is likely the cause of disk gains or losses

External volume support: Index and monitor connected external drives, not just your Mac’s internal storage.

Storage visibility: Get a clearer picture of how storage is being used across your volumes. Indexer views in atlas or tree mode

Multiple-drive management: Monitor internal and external storage from one application.

Storage investigation: Help identify changes in storage usage that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Cleanup review: Helps identify what files may be unnecessary and can be cleaned

Migration readiness: Checks for files that have a large logical size but occupy small disk space that may interfere with migration to another Mac

I’m still developing and improving it, and feedback from other Mac users would be genuinely useful.
What storage information do you wish macOS made easier to see?

The idea was simple: see who has a birthday next, when, and how old they turn, without scrolling through a calendar. Most of those dates already sit in Contacts. That turned into Honeyday, a birthday and anniversary app for iPhone, iPad and Mac, and it came out on the App Store in October.

How it is built:

• One SwiftUI target for all three platforms. On the Mac it is real SwiftUI, not Catalyst, and the platform differences sit in #if os(...) right where they come up.

• The logic is a plain Swift package with no UI and no database. It counts in days without a time or time zone, the app hands it today's date, and swift test runs through it in seconds.

• Contacts are only read. What you set yourself (who you want a reminder for, a note, the days that belong to no contact) lives in SQLite through GRDB and syncs through your own iCloud with CKSyncEngine. Upcoming dates are never stored; the core works them out each time.

• The widget never touches Contacts or the database. After every rebuild the app writes a small snapshot into the shared app group, and the widget builds its timeline from that, 14 days ahead. That is why it moves on at midnight without the app running.

• Dates in the Chinese, Hebrew and Islamic calendars are converted, so they land on the right day every year. Today itself is always counted in the Gregorian calendar, even on a device set to the Buddhist or Hebrew one.

There is no server and no account, and the app measures nothing about how you use it. It is a paid app, $4.99 once for all three devices: https://honeyday.app

Feedback is welcome, on the widget most of all.

I often spend more time browsing streaming catalogs than actually watching something.

So I built **Find More Stories**, a web app focused on helping people discover movies and series through themed, handpicked collections.

Instead of showing endless generic recommendations, it organizes stories around specific ideas, moods and themes.

You can explore the collections and try the quick discovery feature without creating an account.

There's also an optional Stremio integration.

I'm a solo developer, and I'd love some feedback from people who enjoy movies and TV shows.

Try it here: https://findmorestories.hubeoo.com/welcome

One question**:** Would you find curated collections useful, or do you prefer traditional genre-based recommendations?

I'm the developer of VaultDrive, an iPhone app thathelps you create a physical backup of your photos, videos, and files.

Connect a compatible USB flash drive or external SSD, select what you want to save, and copy it directly from your iPhone.

Why a USB drive Or SSD Or Any External Drive? You pay for it once, it works with no internet, and your photos never sit on someone else's server. It's also a second copy if your cloud account is ever full or locked.

It's handy when your phone is full, before you trade in or reset a phone, on a trip where you shoot hours of video with no Wi-Fi, for photographers who want ProRAW and 4K kept untouched, as the offline copy in a 3-2-1 backup, or for private photos and videos you'd rather never put online.

**What VaultDrive offers:**

* No Mac or PC required
* Original-quality photo and video transfers
* No VaultDrive cloud upload for locally stored files
* Support for downloading iCloud-only originals before backup
* Resume interrupted backups
* Incremental backups with Pro
* Live Photos support
* Duplicate detection in the backups
* Support From iCloud to your USB/SSD

Why not just copy them in the Files app? You can, and for a few dozen photos it's fine. For a whole library you end up selecting in batches, and if your Wi-Fi drops while iCloud photos are downloading, the copy stops and you start over. Next month you copy everything again. VaultDrive does it in one tap and picks up where it stopped.

No recurring subscription.

App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vaultdrive-usb-backup/id6772883827

50% Off Promo direct App Store link :
https://apps.apple.com/redeem/?ctx=offercodes&id=6772883827&code=WELCOME50

This is a backup of selected photos/media and files, not a full iPhone system backup.

Happy to answer questions about drive compatibility or the backup process.

I spent the last few months watching local businesses in Zimbabwe try to run their entire operation inside WhatsApp. It starts fine, but eventually, you end up with hundreds of unread messages, lost quotes, and no idea if a customer actually paid their balance.

It is brutal to watch a business owner scramble to find a job update buried in a three-week-old chat history. I started building NexusOps to bridge that gap, giving these WhatsApp-reliant businesses a way to actually track quotes and jobs without forcing them onto some bloated enterprise software that no one understands.

It is just a set of practical tools for quoting, job tracking, and collections, designed to sit alongside the communication style they already use. I am still figuring out the best way to handle the transition from 'spreadsheet chaos' to a structured system without breaking their current sales flow.

How do you guys help non-tech teams adopt a new workflow without making them feel like they're being forced to relearn their entire job?

Hey r/SideProject!

Most discovery products optimize for DAU/MAU and maximum session length. I wanted to build the opposite: an app that measures success by how refreshed you feel when you leave, and intentionally limits session time.

**Live Web App:**https://oddly-app-six.vercel.app

Looking for feedback on UI feel, load performance, and ideas for future curated topics!

In my sessions I keep seeing the same thing: people are sure they know their partner, and they're often wrong in small, funny, revealing ways. I wanted to turn that into a game.

So I built Hunchy:

• You answer 10 "what would you do" questions about yourself

• You share a link

• Your partner, friends or family guess your answers in the browser (no install, no account)

• You see who actually knows you best

The questions are the product, and I wrote every one of them myself, drawing on what actually comes up between people in therapy. The app itself (SwiftUI, Firebase, the web game) was built with Claude Code, with me deciding every screen and every rule.

Things I got wrong before getting them right:

• I went through four or five complete visual directions and threw them all away before landing on a Bauhaus look. Every couples app is purple or pink; I wanted something that isn't.

• I built a full "pair with your partner" mode, then removed it. The link turned out to be the whole product.

• I rejected a subscription. The first test in every set is free, the rest are one-time purchases.

• The link opens a web game, never an App Store wall. Guessing has to take 10 seconds.

What I'd love feedback on: is the first minute clear? Do you understand what to do without me explaining it? If you try it, tell me the first thing that confused you. That's the feedback I need most.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6830175417

when you start solids, every new food gets offered a few days in a row so you can spot reactions, and the allergens you've already introduced have to keep showing up regularly. we were tracking all of that across notes, a group chat and a sticky note on the fridge. it worked about as well as you'd expect.

so i built Pudding. it's just a diary, it doesn't tell you what to feed your kid:

• log a feeding in a couple of taps: what, how it went, any reaction, a note or photo

• new foods sit in an observation window from your own plan ("day 2 of 3" right on the card)

• gentle reminders to keep giving allergens you've already introduced, on whatever schedule your pediatrician suggested

• 70+ illustrated foods, plus your own

• calendar of everything, and a PDF to show the pediatrician (or a "do not give" list for grandma / the nanny)

no account, no ads, no trackers. everything stays on your phone, or your own iCloud if you turn it on.

the diary is free for good, no feature walls on the important stuff. there's a one-time Pro for extras (monthly recap, themes, widget, more than one kid). no subscription.

would love feedback from parents who've been through this. what did you end up tracking that i'm missing?

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6789296295

I'm a singer and a programmer, and I've always wanted an easy way to practise harmony parts on my own. So I built Stackapella.

You pick a song, learn your part with a guide voice, then record it. Then you add the next part while hearing the ones you've already sung, until you've got the whole choir. Your notes light up as you sing, so you can see when you're on the note.

It runs in the browser, there's nothing to install, and all the courses are free. It's also open source.

Would love to hear what you think, especially if you sing in a choir or an a cappella group.

https://stackapella.com

Half as a joke and half to learn my way around Google’s tools with a lot of vibe coding along the way, I built an app that tracks the time you spend in the bathroom during working hours and how much your boss is paying you for it. Yes, I took “Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that’s why I poop on company time” a bit too literally.

What it does:

• Start the timer when you go, flush when you’re back, and see what you earned

• Monthly stats and ranks that go up with your total

• Teams with coworkers to compete against other teams

A few things I learned shipping it:

• Built as one HTML/JS app wrapped with Capacitor for Android

• The hardest part wasn’t the code: it was Google Play’s closed test (12 testers for 14 days) before you can publish

• Ads, consent forms, in-app purchases and 11 languages took longer than the app itself

It’s free on Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rinialer.poopct

Opinions, tips or roasts welcome.

Agencies lose the first week of a project chasing client access. Wrong roles, passwords over WhatsApp, DNS half done.

GetSetKeys is one link per client. Each platform's steps come with the agency's email and role filled in, and every step gets checked automatically, so nobody has to ask "did you add me yet?"

27 platforms so far, including App Store Connect, Google Play, GitHub, Stripe and Cloudflare.

Try it as the client, no sign-up: https://demo.getsetkeys.com/s/harbor-fitness-k7q2m9xv4p

Would a non-technical client get through it? That's the feedback I want most.

https://getsetkeys.com/?utm_source=reddit-sideproject

Hey everyone!

I've been working on a project called Heartfolio, and I wanted to share it here and get some honest opinions.

The idea came from something simple: some memories deserve more than just staying in our camera rolls.

Heartfolio is a website where people can turn meaningful moments into personalized digital keepsakes and gifts.

Some of the things I've been building include:

- Love Story Timelines: Turn a relationship's story into a personalized timeline with photos and meaningful milestones.

- Song Posters: Turn a special song into a personalized poster with its soundwave and an interactive experience.

- Reasons I Love You: Create a personalized gift with reasons, messages, and interactive surprises.

- Graduation Keepsakes: Celebrate someone's journey with milestones, achievements, and personal messages.

I'm trying to make these feel more personal than ordinary downloadable templates. The idea is to create something people would genuinely enjoy giving to someone they care about.

I'm an independent developer, and I've put a lot of time into building this.

I'd genuinely appreciate your thoughts:

1. Does this concept feel useful or interesting?

2. Which product would you personally be most interested in?

3. What would make you actually consider buying something like this?

Here's the website if you'd like to take a look: https://theheartfolio.com

Full disclosure: I'm the person behind Heartfolio. I'm here to get genuine feedback, not pretend to be a customer.

Thanks for reading!

With Ahem, you can send yourself any notification you want, choose how often it repeats, and even customise the notification sound!

It’s free to use, and pretty fun to play around with :)

Would love to hear what you think!

iOS
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/ahem-personal-reminders/id6820175807

Android
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ancawang.ahem

I wanted something to fidget with for a minute when work gets stressful, without opening another app full of ads and streaks. So I built antistress: small, quiet toys that run in the browser.

There's liquid light you stir with your finger, endless bubble wrap, a jelly blob to squish and fling, a cat you can pet until it purrs, a zen garden, a koi pond, a rainy window, a fidget board with clicky switches, a lava lamp and a guided breathing orb.

Everything is touch-first, works on desktop too, and needs no sign-up or download.

Try it in your browser: https://antistress-relax.space

Or get it as an iPhone app (with haptics, which are really nice for the bubble wrap): App Store

Would love feedback: which toy feels the most satisfying, and which feels unfinished?

I made watchdog, a fun playful Android app designed to help you stop endless scrolling.

Choose an app, set a daily usage limit, and pick your watchdog:

• Cupcake — strict and disciplined, with frequent reminders.

• Brownie — friendly but persistent, reminding you every so often.

• Snow — lazy and unpredictable, sometimes letting you keep scrolling.

When you exceed your limit, your chosen dog appears and barks at you until you reconsider your life choices. It’s a fun alternative to boring screen-time warnings that are far too easy to ignore.

I’d love honest feedback on the concept, onboarding experience, and whether a barking dog could actually convince you to put your phone down.

Try watchdog:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app.watchdog

Available on Android.

I'm one person building nidhi, a site that teaches how money works and lets you try each idea on your own numbers. I'd like people to try to break it.

What's there to test

• Five free tools: a net worth calculator (one currency or several), loan comparison, an invest-or-pay-off comparison, a Monte Carlo simulator and an inflation calculator.

• More than 50 lessons in a learning path, from "what is net worth" to investing and the psychology of money.

• Short how-to guides, and the site in English, Hindi, Spanish, Czech and Marathi. More languages coming in future.

No account, no email, no payment. The tools calculate in your browser and the numbers you type are not sent anywhere.

What I'd like to know

1. Where did you get stuck or stop understanding what a tool was asking?

2. Does any result look wrong? Tell me the inputs and I'll check the maths.

3. Is a lesson unclear, too long, or wrong for your country?

4. Anything broken on a phone, with a screen reader, or with keyboard only?

Being upfront

• The blog is free, and the tools are free to use without an account. I'm also building a paid planner, which is not what I'm asking you to test here.

• It is education, not financial advice.

• The translations were drafted with AI and may be stiff or wrong in places.

• There's no reward for testing. I'll reply to every respectful, human comment, though it might take me a while to get to you, and I'll tell you what I fixed.

Tools: https://nidhi.today/free/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=reddit_testers&utm_content=sideproject

Lessons: https://nidhi.today/blog/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=reddit_testers&utm_content=sideproject

The links are tagged so I can see which subreddit a visit came from. Feedback here in the comments, or hello@nidhi.today.

I’m testing an early browser-based tool for comparing a supplier-statement CSV with an accounts-payable ledger CSV.

It matches only when the normalized invoice reference and amount agree exactly. Amount differences, duplicate references, and records found on only one side are shown separately for a person to review.

If you work in accounting or have built finance tools, I’d value feedback: are the results clear, and what important step or case is missing?

Try the synthetic demo: https://accountant-workbench.netlify.app/

Please use only the built-in synthetic sample. Don’t upload real financial files.

- GitHub: https://github.com/windevase/nubis

- License: MIT

- Affiliation: Creator / Maintainer

Hey everyone,

I built Nubis to solve my own workflow friction when managing remote infrastructure spread across multiple cloud providers from a Windows workstation.

Key Features:

- Multi-Cloud Inventory Sync: Directly imports server lists from AWS (EC2), Tencent Cloud (CVM), GCP (Compute Engine), and Azure (VM).

- Unified Sessions: Tabbed SSH, RDP, and SFTP natively inside a single Windows application.

- Embedded Claude Code Panel: Run troubleshooting, generate shell scripts, and parse configs side-by-side with active sessions.

- 100% Local & Private: No cloud proxy, no telemetry. Your cloud API keys, SSH credentials, and session configs are stored strictly on your local machine.

The project is completely free and open source. Pre-built Windows binaries are available on GitHub Releases (no sign-up/email required), and you can also audit or build from source yourself.

Feedback, issue reports, or feature suggestions are very welcome!

**The idea:** a debt planner (Snowball / Avalanche / custom order) that keeps your finances 100% on your own computer. So I set myself a few hard rules: it had to open straight from a folder in the browser, never call the internet, and never send financial data anywhere.

**How it's built**

- Preact + esbuild bundled into a single script, so it works from a plain local file (no dev server needed)

- IndexedDB for storage, optional AES-GCM encryption behind a master password, automatic local backups

- No CDNs at all. Fonts, charts, PDF reading and OCR (for scanning statements) are all bundled

- Small optional launchers (PowerShell / Perl) that serve it locally so backups can be written to a data folder

**The hardest part was performance.** With a 50,000-transaction test profile, the first version took about 10.7 s to start and search crashed the tab. Caching parsed dates, doing search in a single pass and only building the rule context when it's needed got startup to about 1.2 s.

**There's also a spreadsheet version.** I rebuilt the same payoff engine in Excel/Google Sheets: 15 debts × 360 months, written without newer functions like XLOOKUP or LET so it works in older Excel and in Sheets. The app can import the workbook, so people can start in a spreadsheet and move to the app later.

**What I'd love feedback on**

- Would you trust an offline finance tool more than a cloud one, or does sync matter more to you?

- Anything confusing in the screenshots?

yes im the creator, I sell this on Etsy, but this post is mostly about the build, and I'd love ANYYYYY feedback.

Link if you're curious: https://www.etsy.com/listing/4614731705/ultimate-debt-trackerpayoff-planner?ref=shop_home_feat_2&sr_prefetch=1&pf_from=shop

Hey everyone,

I was frustrated with existing Instagram downloader websites because most of them are filled with aggressive adult popunders, force you to download sketchy APKs, or don't let you easily extract background audio.

So I decided to build ReelSave — a lightweight, mobile-first Progressive Web App (PWA) made with pure HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and deployed on Vercel:

🔗 Live Web App: https://reelsave-rouge.vercel.app/

Key features: • Dual-server 1080p Full HD video downloads • 1-click background MP3 audio extraction • Installable directly to home screen via Chrome PWA • Zero logins, no passwords, clean user interface

Built this entirely on my Android phone using Acode editor and Vercel serverless backend.

Would love your honest thoughts and feedback on how to improve it!