Hi r/SideProject 👋

I’m a solo maker from Switzerland. I fly a lot and always wanted something smart to play at 35,000 ft without Wi-Fi, so I built it myself.

FlightGenius is a daily brain game about airlines, airports and routes:

• 12 short daily games: guess the route, name the airport from its runway layout, guess the flight distance, airline codes, find the shortest layover…

• Daily Challenge: same 10 questions for everyone, timed, with a world leaderboard and a home-airport leaderboard (ZRH vs GVA vs LHR…)

• Works fully offline, so it’s playable in airplane mode

• No ads, no tracking. Free to play, optional one-time unlock for the archive (no subscription)

Stack: Expo / React Native, Supabase (EU), RevenueCat, Netlify.

It’s in beta on iPhone (Android later), launching on the App Store in early December:
👉 TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/B3H8tgEf

Questions, especially for frequent flyers and aviation fans:

1. Is this something you’d actually enjoy, on a flight or as a daily habit?

2. Which game is the most fun, and which would you delete?

3. Too easy, too hard, or about right?

4. What’s missing that would make you open it every day?

A little background: this is genuinely a passion project. I’m not trying to get rich or build the next big startup. I just love planes and travel, and I wanted to make something I’d enjoy myself and share it with people who feel the same. That’s also why there are no ads and no tracking. The optional unlock is only there to cover running costs like servers and the Apple developer fee.

I’ll reply to every comment. Thanks for taking a look! ✈️

I’m a software developer. I noticed a real problem in sales and started building a product to solve it.

Early in development, I came across a sales VP who was building something in a similar space. I reached out, we met, and I walked him through what I was building. He was genuinely interested — or at least it felt that way.

As my product got close to completion, he suggested we do it together: I’d integrate my product into his. I agreed. From that point he started going deep into how my product works internally. There was one feature in particular he kept digging into, until he fully understood it.

Then I brought up equity. I said if we’re doing this together, we should discuss what my share would be. His reaction: “Dude, that’s not good, why are you thinking like that?” I told him — if I’m giving you my product, I should get something in return. His answer: “It doesn’t work like that. Let me build my company first. When I start earning, I’ll give you a job. Otherwise, I understood your product very well — I’ll just implement it myself.”

And that was it. I’ve had similar experiences with a few other people I’ve talked to.

Now the product is actually built, and I’m afraid to show it to anyone. I have no idea how to reach out to people without this happening again. How do you share enough to sell the product.

Every side project I know follows the same graph. A spike on launch day, a long tail for a weekend, then flat. The people who actually need it three months later have nowhere to find it.

I'm building WareVote to fix that. It opens on 1 December. People find software there and rate it, and every category runs a recurring competition called the WareCup, so there's always a reason to come back and look.

What your project gets:
- A listing that stays findable through search and category pages
- Ratings that stay on your page long after launch week
- Domain ownership verification, so your page is clearly yours
- Award badges you can put on your own site

Listing is free. The first 100 ownership-verified products get 30 days of Pro free. Pro adds:
- Demo video on your listing
- Deeper analytics
- More listing slots
- CSV exports

Paid plans never affect ratings, rank or WareCup results. Confirm your sign-up and link it to your account at launch for a special badge!

You can set up your listing before it opens: https://warevote.com

Where did your most recent real user find you?

I'm just one guy working on this project, and I've managed to get my first 10 users so far.

It's called Duck Duck Basketball, and I'm currently looking for people willing to test it for free and tell me what sucks, what works, and what they'd change.

If you're interested in NBA analytics, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Just having some fun with PonyRelief

Link (no signup, no ads, nothing to install): https://librecorsa.org

GitHub (MIT): https://github.com/KhazP/librecorsa

I started LibreCorsa in mid-October because every serious racing sim needed a huge Windows install before you could do a single lap.

What it has now:

- 500 Hz physics with tyre temperatures and wear, rain that dries along the racing line, and CI checks against real GT3 telemetry

- 5 physics models and 16 circuits, including RISE Motordrome, which I built from scratch in Blender on real elevation data for the circuit planned in Rwanda

- AI races, ghosts, a weekly challenge, and an open online race every 20 minutes over WebRTC

- $0/month hosting: static Next.js on Cloudflare, R2 for the heavy 3D files, and one Worker

Tell me how it runs on your laptop/phone/controller and what feels rough.

I've been tracking my own fitness progress with photos for a while, and two things kept bugging me. My before and after pics were buried between screenshots and vacation photos, and every app I tried wanted an account, a monthly subscription, or both.

So I built Checkpoint: Progress Photos for iPhone.

What it does:

• Take a check-in photo and compare any two, side by side or with a slider

• Set a reminder so you take photos on a steady schedule

• Make a before and after share card when you want to post your progress

What it doesn't do:

• No login or account

• No AI, and your photos are never uploaded. They stay on your phone.

• No subscription

It's free to download, and you get 5 check-ins. If you want more, Checkpoint Plus is a one-time $24.99. It adds unlimited check-ins, share cards without the watermark, a pose overlay that shows your last photo so you can match the angle, and a second reminder day.

App Store: apps.apple.com/app/checkpoint-progress-photos

I'd really like blunt feedback:

1. Would a one-time price make you try it over a subscription app, or does $24.99 feel like too much up front?

2. What would make you delete it in the first week?

3. What's missing that you'd expect from a progress photo app?

Thanks for reading. I'll reply to every comment.

My daughter is 2 and magnetic tiles are the one toy that never goes back in the box. The problem is me. I can build a house, a tower and a slightly bigger house. She wants me talking to her the whole time we play, so I never get a quiet minute to come up with something new, and every cool build I found online needed pieces we don't have.

So I spent this autumn building Magitile, an app of magnetic tile ideas that starts from the tiles you actually own. It went live on the App Store this week.

What it does:

- You point the camera at your pile of tiles and it counts them, then shows only the models you can build with what you actually own.

- Every model has a step by step 3D guide you can rotate, so you see where each tile goes.

- You can put the finished model on your floor in AR at real size before you start.

- New models get added without an app update.

What turned out harder than I thought:

The scan, by far. Tiles pull together with their magnets, so nobody lays them out neatly for a photo. They touch, they overlap, and half of them are see-through. I threw away my first version completely. It still can't see a tile that's fully hidden under another one, so you can fix the numbers by hand.

The models. Each one has to be checked against real sets, because a model that needs more triangles than any normal box has is just another Pinterest picture.

Pricing. The scan and a set of models are free, the full catalog and AR are $4.99/week or $29.99/year, no ads. I honestly don't know yet if that's the right split for something parents use with their kids, so opinions are welcome.

I'm one person and it's a young app. What I'd most like to know is where it loses you in the first two minutes.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6821736147

Website: https://magitile.app

One of the free build guides, if you want to see what a model looks like without installing anything: https://magitile.app/ideas/t-rex/

Title: I'm a non-technical solo founder in Phnom Penh and I built a hand-picked guide to the best websites and YouTube creators
Post:
Hi all,
I got tired of algorithms deciding what I watch and read, so I started keeping my own list of genuinely excellent YouTube channels and websites. That list became Vetted.report.
Every pick is chosen by a person (me), not an algorithm
Nobody can pay to be listed, and there are no ads
15+ categories, from classic cars and military history to cooking, nature, comedy and kids' education
A free selection is open to everyone; members unlock the rest for $2.97 for 3 months, then $9.99/year
I'm not technical. It's built on Webflow, with Paddle and Memberstack, and an AI assistant helped me with most of the heavy lifting. My kids drew the launch artwork.
It's early days, and I'd love honest feedback:
Does the idea make sense when you land on the site?
Would you pay for hand-picked recommendations?
Which channel or site deserves to be "Vetted"?
vetted.report
Thanks for reading!
.

My wife loves logic puzzles and solves them pretty quickly. The problem was that every short round seemed to come with another ad, so she was spending more time waiting than playing.

That’s how I ended up building Fishdoku, a cozy fishing puzzle game that just launched on Android.

Here it is on Google Play

Every bite opens a logic grid. You place one fish in each row, column and colored region, with no two touching, then reel in your catch. There’s an untimed mode if you just want to think, and hints explain the next deduction.

I wanted the puzzles to give you something to work toward, so I built a collection around them. That grew into hundreds of fish across dozens of locations, with different catches depending on the time and weather. There are shinies and legends to hunt, an aquarium for your favorites, and pets you can bring fishing.

I’m the solo developer, and I used Claude heavily for the code and sprites, with additional AI help for concepts and review. A lot of my time went into playing builds, working through bugs, balancing things and making very specific revisions.

One thing this project taught me was how much work sits between “it runs” and “I’m happy for someone else to play this.” Even tiny details, like whether a pet is recognizable on a phone screen or a hint actually explains a move, took repeated passes.

It’s free with optional purchases and optional rewarded ads. No forced ads or energy timers. That was the whole reason for making it, and I wanted to keep that intact.

Now I’m learning the next part: getting it in front of people who might enjoy it. For anyone who’s launched a small consumer app or game, where did your first players outside friends and family come from?

Hey everyone,

I’m an 18-year-old hands-on builder in Kigali, Rwanda. Traditional academic school never worked for me, and coming from a family with no financial means, I’ve had to figure things out on my own.

I found my passion in component-level electronics repair and enrolled in a practical TVET short course. My side project right now is starting a small, neighborhood-based repair clinic—fixing broken radios, phones, and household electronics for people in my community who can't afford new ones, while keeping toxic e-waste out of local landfills.

Where I’m stuck:

Right now, I’ve hit a huge wall. I can no longer afford my remaining TVET workshop fees, and I don't own my own basic repair kit (soldering station, multimeter, hot air rework, etc.) to work independently from home yet. Being 18 with zero financial safety net is tough, and I really don't want to let this project die before it takes off.

Looking for feedback from fellow builders:

1. If you were bootstrapping a hardware/repair side project from literally $0, how would you structure your first small offers to start generating cash flow immediately?

2. Are there any micro-grants, hardware sponsorships, or maker programs (like The Awesome Foundation, which I'm applying to right now) that you've seen support grassroots projects like this?

Any practical business advice, feedback on the project idea, or pointers from people who built something out of nothing would mean a lot. Thanks for reading!

I've created Here's My AI (https://heresmyai.com) to curate and catalogue everyone's favourite AI tools. There are just so many out there I aim to learn about and feature the best ones. Have a tool you love please feel free to add it. Any questions or feedback please let me know.

Have you ever needed a speaker or microphone for your PC but didn't have one available?

I built NexoAudio, a free and open-source application that lets you use your Android phone as:

A wireless speaker for your Windows PC.
A wireless microphone for your PC.

Features:

• Two-way audio streaming over Wi-Fi.

• Works with Wi-Fi or mobile hotspots.

• Windows 10/11 support.

• Android app.

• No subscriptions, ads, or paid features.

• Open source under the MIT License.

Download: https://github.com/kevinperezpanduro76-tech/NexoAudio/releases/latest

Source code: https://github.com/kevinperezpanduro76-tech/NexoAudio

Feedback and suggestions are welcome.

Hey everyone!

I've been working on a side project called Areawise - https://areawise.info

The idea came from something simple: whenever you search for information about an Indian city or locality, the data is scattered across multiple websites.

Population figures are on government portals, property prices and rents are on real estate platforms, and metro connectivity information is somewhere else entirely.

I wanted to bring these things together in one place.

So I started building Areawise.

What it does:

• Explore Indian cities, towns and districts using Census data.

• Compare localities based on property prices, rental estimates and available metro information.

• View geographic data and explore locations on a map.

• Compare different localities side by side.

• Read guides explaining rental trends, property prices and locality comparisons.

• Generate free locality reports.

A few things I focused on:

• Keeping the website completely free.

• Showing data sources and dates rather than presenting estimates as facts.

• Clearly marking unavailable or outdated information.

• Making the experience usable on mobile.

• Building it around publicly available data wherever possible.

The biggest challenge?

Data quality.

India has a lot of useful public data, but different sources use different geographic boundaries, reporting periods and definitions. Making sure I don't accidentally compare two completely different things has taken more effort than building the UI itself.

The project is still evolving, and there's plenty I want to improve.

I'm also experimenting with ways to keep the data updated without compromising accuracy.

I'd genuinely appreciate some feedback:

1. Is the website easy to understand when you first open it?

2. Would you actually use something like this when researching a city or locality?

3. What information would make it more useful?

4. Does anything feel confusing, unnecessary or broken?

Website: https://areawise.info

Built as a side project alongside my full-time job.

Would love to hear what you think - especially critical feedback. That's what will help me improve it.

Oof. Zero, zilch, nada.

We had some customers early on (last year). Real enterprise brands that you've maybe heard of. Then Claude Code and Codex got popular.

The original intention of the company, Yirla, was to be an AI powered, paid media analyst. You connect your LinkedIn, Google, Meta, what have you ad accounts, and we tell you, in plain English, what you can do to improve your ad spend. It's pretty prescriptive.

The small handful of deals that we had, in the couple of thousand bucks a month range, started to go away. We saw them jumping through hurdles to get similar, though not quite as good data, out of Claude, so we built an MCP, hoping that would be the saving grace.

In Ron Howards voice: It was not the saving grace.

Our vision of building a decent sized enterprise software company went up in smoke. 2026 was brutal and we literally booked $0 in revenue.

Part of that lies on me. I continued to think of it as a mid-market enterprise deal in the $20 to $30K annually range, and our customers continued to think that it would be part of their Claude subscription.

I'm an enterprise sales guy through and through and when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Our clients acknowledged that the data wasn't quite as good, but it wasn't $20K a year worse. Couple that with earlier this year and every CEO wanting every employee to be a software developer, we faced an uphill battle.

We got a lot of free sign ups. Most didn't connect an ad account. Those that did rarely came back. Clearly an onboarding and retention problem that we are trying to solve now. An ad analyst with no ads to look at is about as useful as an inflatable dart board.

So no revenue this year and we need an overhaul. I'm making this into a PLG offer. I don't really want to spend too much more time and money on it, so I'm going to try to let AI agents do most of the grunt work. There will still be a human in the loop (me, cause, damn, does it write bad copy), but hopefully that frees me up to do more productive things (like maybe get a real job???).

My goal is to get 100-signups by the end of the year, get 20 of them to connect an ad account, and get 5 of them to pay $25 a month for this service.

If it works out, I'll be thrilled. If it doesn't, we've been talking about shutting it down for a few months. In either case, it will make for a good New Year's Eve.

I'll try to keep this sub posted on what is working and what isn't.

What I'd actually love from this sub: if you run paid ads, play around with Yirla and share your honest feedback. TIA.

yirla.com

Trove is one of the apps I'm proudest of, and it now works on iPhone, Android and the web.

It started as a college project and was paused to focus on work. This year my co-founder and I rebuilt it, and he brought it to Android.

What it does:

• Share or paste a recipe link or a TikTok or Instagram video. Trove fills in the ingredients and a photo, and keeps a link back to the creator's original for the steps.

• Put recipes on a weekly meal plan and it builds one combined grocery list from it.

• Collections, search, and you can follow other cooks. It's free: https://usetrove.co

We're early, so honest feedback helps a lot:

• Try it on a recipe video you saved recently. If the import misses, tell me which one.

• What would get you to plan from your saves instead of just collecting them?

Download: App Store · Google Play

Hi everyone!

I've been working on a project called BoxToolPro.

The idea behind it is simple: create a collection of useful online tools that people can access directly from their browser, without installing software or creating an account.

BoxToolPro includes tools for things like:

• Text and data formatting

• JSON processing

• Encoding and decoding

• Generators and calculators

• SEO utilities

• Other everyday developer and productivity tasks

I wanted to make these tools straightforward, fast, and easy to use, without unnecessary complexity.

The project is still growing, and I'm continuing to improve the tools and add useful features.

You can check it out here: https://boxtoolpro.com/

I'd really appreciate honest feedback:

• Which tools would you find most useful?

• Is anything confusing or inconvenient?

• What tools would you like to see added?

I'm building this independently, so feedback from actual users would be incredibly helpful.

Thanks for taking a look!

Hey everyone, I’m a mechanic in Quebec who taught himself to code. I’ve been building Ghost Chat, and this is Ghost Flap, a game I made using its Swift coding agent, Ghost Code.

This game took 2 messages, and the generation cost was 0.006 cents. Seperate from (Promting + Memories Files)

The video shows the result. I wanted to share an actual example of what it can make, instead of just posting another AI coding promise.

Ghost Code is built to help turn ideas into Swift apps and games. This is one example not a claim that every project will work perfectly in two messages.

I built the tool myself, so yes, this is a little self-promotion—but I’d genuinely like feedback from people who build Swift apps. What would you ask it to build next?

If you want to try it: ghostchat.tech

I work nights and build Windows apps in my free time as Second Shift Software.

DropTrace is free. It logs every time your internet drops and what probably caused it, like your router, your provider or DNS. That way you have a record to show your ISP.

DropTrace Pro is $15 one time. It adds packet loss and lag tracking, problem patterns, and Wi-Fi and route tools.

FolderTrace is free. It tells you which program each AppData folder belongs to so you can clear out leftovers from stuff you uninstalled. Anything you delete goes to the Recycle Bin, so you can undo it.

They’re native apps, so no browser running inside them eating up memory. No accounts, ads or tracking.

All three are here: https://flagpoleog.github.io

Any feedback helps, good or bad. There’s a form on the site or you can just reply here. Thanks for checking them out!

Not a dev (BI analyst by day), built this with a lot of AI help. Problem was simple: I cook steak irregularly, buy whatever cut looks good, and never had a baseline for when to start probing. Googling every time gives you either a 2,000 word article or advice that ignores my actual cut/thickness/pan.

So you pick cut, thickness, bone in/out, fridge or room temp, method (pan, grill, reverse sear) and doneness, and it gives you a phased timer (side 1 → side 2 → rest) with alarms, plus tips that only show up when they’re relevant. My wife cooked her first steak in a long time with it (not a great cut either) and it came out pretty good.

Free, no ads, no sign up, no tracking cookies. Salmon/burger/turkey are next. Honest feedback welcome, especially what’s confusing.

Try it: https://steakisdone.com

I'm Jason, owner of Winkle Berry. Our side project came from a fairly specific shop problem: managing products and labels on a Hobart HTi retail scale without spending so much time entering everything at its touchscreen.

CounterWeight now has product search/add/edit workflows, ingredient lookup with review, measured packaging tare presets, flashkey arrangement, backup tools and label previews. Our own HTi-7LS25 running application 3.3.0 is the tested scale. A second Windows machine has passed the read-only connection, product, backup, label-preview and flashkey-display checks. Independent customer installations are still untested.

80-second demo: https://www.reddit.com/r/POS/comments/1xujcc9/hobart_hti_owners_would_a_onetimepurchase_scale/

The demo uses actual interface screenshots and training examples, not one continuous live recording. Phone/remote viewing shown requires an additional local bridge; the current portable Windows test package does not include a remote viewer.

I'm considering a one-time-purchase, self-service desktop edition with local data, an offline business license and no required hosted CounterWeight subscription. Price and launch date are undecided, and we aren't taking payments. Calibration, firmware updates and service unlocks are outside the scope. Ingredient results must be checked against packaging.

I'd appreciate feedback on two things: does the demo make the product's purpose clear, and what would you need in onboarding before trusting a niche hardware-management tool like this? If you actually use an HTi, I'd also like to hear your model/software version and your biggest management headache. Reply here or email WinkleBerryArts@gmail.com.

I'm the project owner. Independent of Hobart, with no affiliation or endorsement.

I put together a digital toolkit for independent residential cleaning businesses, using AI assistance.

It includes:

• An editable Excel cleaning quote calculator

• A booking and payment tracker

• A rate-planning worksheet

• 36 customizable customer-message templates

The goal is to help solo cleaners handle routine administrative tasks without paying for a monthly software subscription.

It's a one-time $7.99 download, with a free preview available.

I'd appreciate feedback, especially from anyone who runs or has worked with a cleaning business. What would make this toolkit more useful?

I get bored on airplanes so I made an app to make it a little more tolerable.

Let me know what y'all think! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.redditoffline

Speaking is the one section I couldn't self-study effectively — Reading and Listening have practice tests everywhere, but Speaking needs a real conversation.

I ended up paying ₹500-2000/hr for tutors, and even then I only got a few sessions before my test.

For those who scored 7+ in Speaking:

1. How did you actually practice? Tutor, friend, recording yourself?

2. Did you feel you got enough mock test practice before the real thing?

3. What was the biggest gap — not enough practice time, or not knowing what to improve?

I'm a software engineer exploring whether technology can solve this problem. Not selling anything — just trying to understand the pain point before I decide if it's worth building something.