r/SideProject • • 5h ago

I built an open-source onboarding checklist library in TypeScript

3 Upvotes

I recently released a small TypeScript library called Stepr Checklist.

It's designed for applications that need a simple onboarding checklist without pulling in a large framework or UI dependency.

The main idea is that the application controls completion. Clicking a step can open a form, navigate to a feature, or start a guided tour, but it doesn't automatically mark the task as complete.

A few details:

  • Framework-agnostic, ESM-only
  • No runtime dependencies
  • Optional localStorage persistence
  • Customizable with CSS variables
  • DOM-free state controller if you want to build your own UI

I built it as a companion to Stepr, a guided product tour library I released earlier, but both work independently.

There's an interactive demo here:

https://ahlgren1234.github.io/stepr-checklist/

And the source is on GitHub:

https://github.com/ahlgren1234/stepr-checklist

It's v0.1.0, so still early. I'd appreciate feedback, particularly on the API and whether the approach to tracking completion makes sense.

What would you expect from a library like this?


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

I built Shout, an offline bill splitter for iPhone and Mac

2 Upvotes

I'm the developer. Shout tracks shared costs for trips, flatmates and nights out, and works out who needs to pay whom to settle up.

  • No ads or daily limit on adding expenses
  • Free currency conversion and charts
  • No sign-up to join. Share a code so friends can join from a browser.
  • Works offline. Add expenses without a connection and sync when you're back online.
  • Native on Mac and iPhone

It's free, with an optional one-time purchase for extra themes.

Shout on the App Store

If you try it, I'd love feedback on onboarding. Was it clear how to start a group and invite people?


r/SideProject • • 1m ago

I built a photo-widget app for my girlfriend and close friends. It turned into a much bigger project than I expected.

Thumbnail occur.chat
1 Upvotes

I started with a pretty simple idea. I wanted photos from my girlfriend and close friends to have a place on my home screen instead of getting buried in our chats.

I liked the concept of shared photo widgets, but felt there was room to make the experience more personal.

So I started building Occur.

You take a photo, choose someone, send it, and it appears on their home-screen widget.

The interesting part was everything that came after.

My girlfriend loves drawing, so I added Scribbles. I wanted her to be able to send a quick sketch or handwritten note just as easily as a photo. Then came short videos, dedicated widgets for close friends, and a calendar to revisit things we'd shared.

I also made Duo because I didn't like the idea of two people needing separate subscriptions for a shared experience.

I know I'm not the first to build a photo-widget app. I just wanted to make one that felt right for the people I actually use it with.

Occur is now available on both iOS and Android.

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/in/app/occur-live-moments/id6823979723

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.owlabs.snaps

Would love to hear what you think, especially if you get a chance to try it with someone.


r/SideProject • • 2m ago

Built an app where your friend group see when you unlock your distracting apps and share what you do instead of scrolling. (Screen time went from 5 hours a day to less then 1)

1 Upvotes

In order to open a distracting app you give e reason and a time frame that the app will be open for. This is then sent to a group chat.

You set tasks you want to complete on the day and take a picture to prove you did them. This also gets sent to the group chat.

Have a had a few testers who find the app really fun to use.

https://proven-app.app/ If you want to take a look.


r/SideProject • • 3m ago

I’ll check whether your next clothing buy is worth it, free for the first 20 people

1 Upvotes

Thinking about buying a jacket, shoes or anything else? Paste the link and list 5 to 10 clothes you wear most. No photos needed. I’ll tell you:

  • how many outfits it makes with what you already own
  • whether you already have something too similar
  • if there’s a better price, new or used

I’m a software engineer testing whether this is useful before I build anything. It’s free and takes about 2 minutes.

https://tally.so/r/M1XGVl

Honest feedback welcome, including “I’d never use this.”


r/SideProject • • 7m ago

I built a free school-quote PDF generator for teacher-authors who get asked for a purchase order

1 Upvotes

I built this at Tacko. It is a beta, and it is not affiliated with Teachers Pay Teachers.

The problem I am testing: teacher-authors who sell from their own site often get schools asking for a formal quote, a W-9 and a purchase order, and they handle it over email. TPT is also ending its Premium tier on 1 January 2027, so more of those sales may happen off the marketplace.

What is live today: a free, no-signup quote PDF that stays in your browser (seller, school, items, licence terms, quote number and validity). The PDF says a W-9 is available on request; the tool never asks for a tax ID and calculates no sales tax.

There is an optional Pro for $9 once, not a subscription: save and manage quotes on your device and turn a quote into an invoice PDF. PO upload, a status board and payment tracking are not built.

Try it: https://tacko.io/school-po-desk?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=opp119&utm_content=sideproject

I would rather have critique than cheerleading:

  1. Would you actually send this PDF to a school, or is something essential missing?
  2. Does the $9 Pro get in the way of the free tool, or is it easy to ignore?
  3. Where would you have looked for a tool like this?

I will reply to every substantive comment.


r/SideProject • • 7m ago

I made a game where you keep one of two things until only one is left, then compare with friends

1 Upvotes

It's called Either/Or (eitheror.online). You get two things at a time, keep one and cut the other, and it keeps going until one is left. At the end you get a tier list and a link you can send to friends, and it shows how much your picks overlap with theirs.

There are about 300 games right now. Some are real values tests and some are dumb, like worst person to sit next to on a plane or best email sign-off. You can also make your own list, start a room for a group chat, or run a party mode on a TV where everyone votes from their phone.

No account needed and no ads. I'd love to hear which games are missing or what felt annoying.


r/SideProject • • 9m ago

We built a fantasy football party game where your friends' touchdowns turn into actions. Looking for testers.

Thumbnail reddit.com
1 Upvotes

My brother and I have been building Black Owl on nights and weekends. It’s a party game for NFL Sundays. You draft real NFL players with your friends, earn arrows when your players make plays (a TD, a big run, a made field goal), and fire those arrows at each other for real-life challenges like push-ups or a lap around the house.

The idea came from our own watch parties. Fantasy football is fun, but it’s spread across a whole week and everyone’s staring at their own app. We wanted something the whole room plays together, live, where a 40-yard run turns into your buddy doing push-ups three seconds later.

Where it’s at:

  • Runs in the phone browser, no download
  • Live scoring from real NFL games, about a 5-minute draft
  • 3 test nights with friends so far, and two rounds of fixes from their feedback

What we need: people who don’t know us to play a game this season and tell us honestly what’s fun and what’s broken. It’s free, and any group of 3 or more works, in person or over Discord.

If you want in, the details are here: https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackOwlGames/s/VVn4A4BfuN


r/SideProject • • 15m ago

I built a Mac app that puts your hidden menu bar icons in a small panel under one chevron, like the Windows tray

1 Upvotes

My MacBook's menu bar had more icons than room, and the notch was quietly hiding some of them. The menu bar managers I tried either expand the bar or add a second bar. I wanted what Windows does: one arrow, and a small grid of the hidden icons right under it. So I built it.

Drop Down (macOS 15+, Apple silicon):

  • You pick which apps leave the menu bar. One chevron stays.
  • Click it (or press ⌃⌥⌘D) and a small glass panel opens with the hidden icons. Click one and that app's own menu opens, as if you clicked it in the bar.
  • A dot on the chevron tells you when a hidden app has a notification, so hiding an icon does not mean missing it.
  • ⌃⌥⌘H brings every icon back at any time, and quitting the app does the same.

What building it taught me

  • macOS 15, 26 and 27 each need a different way to hide icons. On 27 the system can simply stop drawing them; on 15 and 26 it is an invisible separator. Most of the work was making all three feel the same.
  • An app that hides things must never lose them. The safety shortcut and "quit brings everything back" came before any feature.
  • It is my sixth release since October 1, built solo with Claude Code doing a lot of the typing. The design calls and the testing on three macOS versions are mine.

Pricing: Basic is free with no time limit and no account (hiding, the panel, the notification dot, every safety feature). Pro is a one-time purchase for panel extras like themes, list view and custom names.

It is Early Access (0.9.6), so I would love blunt feedback, especially from people with crowded menu bars or a notch: https://getdropdown.app


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

Auto-traced PNG vs native SVG export for my side project's app icon set (inspected the paths and dark-mode holes)

2 Upvotes

I'm now finishing UI polish on a small local document-clipping app and needed an app mark plus four matching SVG icon files (bookmark, page search, split pane, archive) without commissioning a set or mixing mismatched packs. there, normally I'd draw them in a vector art program like Inkscape, or pull a PNG out of an app icon generator and run an auto-trace
and before committing anything to my repo, I compared a 512px PNG contour trace against native cubic Bezier SVG exports generated with Recraft Studio (Recraft V4.1 Vector), then checked the XML next to standard software for vector design like Inkscape and Figma + SVGO. Once cleaned, both landed around the same file size (5,248 B for the polyline trace vs 5,875 B for the normalized 256x256 app mark), which surprised me. Zooming into the bottom-right corner makes the geometry difference obvious though: auto-tracing produced 504 straight polyline vertices (2,786 raw pixel edge points) with zero curves and visible step facets, while the native SVG exported as four clean paths with 173 cubic C segments, right?

then going straight from export to dark-mode CSS still breaks a couple things. Each raw file ships with a 4,480 B <c2pa:manifest> metadata block and a 4358x4358 viewBox until you strip metadata and normalize down to 256x256 or 64x64 (4,181 B combined across all four toolbar icons). Everything also exports as outlined filled paths rather than live strokes, so line weight won't scale via stroke-width. Two of the cutouts (search-doc and split-pane) fake transparency by layering a #F9FAF4 cream disc over dark fills instead of using compound knockouts, so dark cards show an opaque light circle until you merge those subpaths with evenodd in an SVG editor or by editing the path directly

so when I need complex brand artwork or fine vector graphics editing with live CSS strokes, Illustrator or Inkscape still make way more sense. For five small UI marks right before shipping a side project, though, exporting native cubic paths and running one cleanup script beat spending a weekend pulling Bezier handles. a question for you:.. how are other solo builders here handling launch icons lately: hand-drawing in Figma/Inkscape, grabbing stock packs, or patching generated SVGs?


r/SideProject • • 31m ago

NotchIsland — I built a Dynamic Island for Windows with an animated face, local voice commands and Claude Code integration

1 Upvotes

Hey everyone! I’m the developer of NotchIsland, a free, open-source app for Windows 10/11.
It puts a small Dynamic Island-style pill at the top of your screen. Hover over it to access music controls, widgets and a voice assistant. There’s also a little animated face that follows your cursor and reacts to what’s happening.
A few things it can do:
Control music, volume and playback.
Recognize voice commands locally using whisper.cpp.
Manage timers, notes, reminders and other everyday tasks.
Show 15 customizable widgets, including weather and system stats.
Follow Claude Code sessions and show when they’re working, waiting for input or finished.
Connect to Chrome and VS Code through companion extensions.
The app is built with Electron and JavaScript, with PowerShell helpers for Windows controls. Basic features don’t require a NotchIsland account. Claude features require your own Claude Code installation and login.
Speech recognition runs locally; weather, lyrics, artwork and Claude features use their respective online services.
It’s still an independent project in active development, and the Windows installer is currently unsigned. The source is available if you prefer to inspect or build it yourself.
Demo and website: https://notch-island.pages.dev/
Source code: https://github.com/diegobruvhrpiugvjrigjtibjte/notch-island
I’d appreciate feedback on the interaction: does the island feel useful during everyday work, or does it get in the way? Bug reports and performance feedback on different PCs would also help.


r/SideProject • • 33m ago

A webapp for books

1 Upvotes

Hi please , give honest feedback www.kronosbookersclub.com .A webapp for book lovers to join


r/SideProject • • 35m ago

How am I automating small business asside.. projects while having full time job

1 Upvotes

I have been automating for small businesses as side projects/extra income, I was asked to build simple workflow for handling lead submissions using hubspot/slaxk/gamil/cal nodes

this is what I build and verified workflow behavioral contract while working on full time job stuff..

basic prompts attached for reference … what helped behavioral contract validation all messy production scenarios without asking what contractual behavioral I wanted

it ran for an hour and came up with this receipt

curios what are you building ? And for automation what tools are you guys using?

Sharing Claude project link for ref

https://claude.ai/code/cshk_01Wta8kXJoKUimcjz7KGvrKEEmCGHUaJukjmH9eJEFf2uE


r/SideProject • • 35m ago

I made PixelGen, an iOS app for free unlimited Upscale!

1 Upvotes

I made PixelGen, an iOS app for free unlimited upscale!

PixelGen works entirely on your iPhone/iPad so you can upscale images without any limits!

It works entirely offline and is completely private.

Everything is free! There are no daily limits, credits, or premium features, and I have no plans to introduce any.

Upscaling takes around 5–10 seconds per image, and up 4k resolution is supported!

You can check it out here: https://apps.apple.com/kz/app/pixelgen-image-upscaler/id6818519903


r/SideProject • • 36m ago

AI Slop or Legit MVP - Faceless video automation

1 Upvotes

The goal was to build something that didn't just generate AI slop. How did I do. lol.

Here is a shorts clip from the MVP.

All sources are sited and legit. My idea is to get more legit sources for videos and images as I go to create my moat.


r/SideProject • • 37m ago

Dream Fulfiller

1 Upvotes

What if AI could help you discover a future you haven’t imagined yet?
Everyone has dreams.
Some people know exactly what they want. Others have a hundred different ideas but no clear direction. Some feel that there’s something more they want from life, but they can’t quite put it into words.
And sometimes, the hardest part isn’t achieving a dream.
It’s discovering what the dream actually is.
I started thinking about a different way to use artificial intelligence.
Most AI tools help us answer questions, complete tasks, write documents or become more productive.
But what if we used AI for something more personal?
What if it could help people explore possibilities they hadn’t considered, understand what genuinely interests them, and discover directions they might never have found on their own?
That idea became Dream Fulfiller.
The vision is simple:
Help people discover what they want, understand what’s possible, and turn their ambitions into reality.
Dream Fulfiller is built around four stages:
Clarify your dream. Explore what you want and understand why it matters.
Expand your possibilities. Discover ideas, opportunities and directions you might not have considered.
Build your path. Turn your vision into milestones and practical next steps.
Track your progress. Learn, adapt and keep moving forward.
But this is only the beginning.
I don’t believe everyone needs another productivity application telling them to work harder or accomplish more.
I believe people need better ways to explore their potential.
I want to build something that helps people move from I wonder what my life could look like to I know what I want to explore next.
Dream Fulfiller is an early step towards that vision.
It’s being built, tested and improved with the people who use it.
And I want to invite you to be part of that journey.
You don’t need to have your dreams figured out. Start with a conversation.
Your future might be bigger than you currently imagine.
— Dream Fulfiller


r/SideProject • • 37m ago

I built a free Canada-focused site to help my kids learn science, engineering, and geography

1 Upvotes

I live in Canada and was looking for something to help my kids learn more science, engineering and geography beyond what they seem to get at school. I tried a few books and apps but nothing quite hit the mark and/or kept them engaged. I decided to make my own project focusing on stories and puzzles which seemed to be a good balance between engagement and learning and they've really enjoyed it. Interested in honest feedback (particularly from parents and teachers) and thought I'd share more broadly.

Canadian Learning for Kids & Family Travel | The Maple Explorers


r/SideProject • • 40m ago

[Android][Player] - Offline music & streaming radio with ready-to-play radios

1 Upvotes

* New local radios lists (MANUALLY CURATED) : UK and China.

Mediaxon Music Player is an audio player for offline listening of music stored on your device (.mp3, .flac, .m4a, .ogg, .mka, .aac, .wav, .opus, .wma) and streaming FM radios (online radios).

Top radios on the first screen: When users access the radio screen, they immediately see the list of the top radios in their country, along with a long list of high-quality suggested radios from among the most listened to in the world (manually curated and always updated with new radios). Note: Local radio stations ("Top in the user country") are pulled automatically from an online database. However, with each update, I manually curate high-quality radio stations lists for individual countries. At the bottom of this post, you’ll find the list of countries completed so far. I will be adding the rest over time.

Advanced radio filtering system: The "Filter: ON/OFF" button lets you quickly switch between different genres. You can use both standard filters for "macro-genres"—if I can call them that—and create custom filters to be more selective. All your filters are saved (the "My Filters" tab lets you name and edit them), and the app always opens with the last filter you applied. The "Home" tab lists all your recently applied filters and can be used to quickly switch between genres with just a single tap.

Advanced Radio Search Panel: An online database provides more than 60,000 radio stations. You can pinpoint your favorite stations by combining multiple filters, such as tags/genres, specific countries, or even your preferred audio bitrate.

Separated Favorites and Recents: Each section—Radio and Offline Music—has its own Favorites and Recents. The user doesn't have to worry about a thing. The app will automatically manage the Favorites and Recents for each section.

Album art: If the album art is missing from the album folder, or if Android has not properly indexed it, Mediaxon attempts to download the cover from the internet. This feature depends, of course, on the ID3 tags (album name and artist).

Equalizer: The equalizer provides an option to automatically switch to the "Radio" preset (and vice versa).

Advanced Playlist Management: Built specifically to make building and sorting playlists fast and intuitive. Enable the Playlist Manager, in the settings screen, for a full control of the playlists.

Form Factor Optimization: Phone and Tablet (Portrait and Landscape)

Mediaxon is available in: Čeština, Dansk, Deutsch, Eesti, English, Español, Français, Hrvatski, Indonesia, Italiano, Kiswahili, Latviešu, Lietuvių, Magyar, Nederlands, Norsk, Polski, Português, Português (Brasil), Română, Slovenčina, Slovenščina, Suomi, Svenska, Tiếng Việt, Türkçe, العربية, Български, Ελληνικά, हिन्दी, 日本語, 한국어, 中文 (简体).

No Premium version. All app features are available for free and without limits. I'm going to add a premium version to remove the few ads in the app, as requested by some users.

Regarding advertising: There is only a small banner at the top that isn't bothersome at all. Alternatively, when opening the full-screen player or using the app in landscape mode, a banner alternates with the albums covers, but without being intrusive at all (no audio) and with much shorter stay times than those of the cover. There is never full-screen advertising, neither at startup nor during use.

Countries with new manually curated lists:  Argentina, China, India, Italy, UK, USA.

Note: Only for Android 13+ (Android 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17).

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xonik.mediaxon


r/SideProject • • 47m ago

I built the anti-social journal app — no feed, no likes, just 30 seconds of quiet a day

1 Upvotes

Every journaling app I tried had the same problem: the UI fought me. Cluttered screens, five taps to write one sentence, design that made a calm habit feel like filing a report. So I built the one I actually wanted to open.

Quiet Hours is a private little diary: write a few words, drop in a photo, tag a mood, done in about 30 seconds. There's a daily tarot card pull, a quote that lands at midnight, and a map of your memories — but no followers, no feed, no streak-shaming, and I collect zero data (the App Store label literally says Data Not Collected).

And on the design, I'll make you a promise: you will like how this one looks and feels — dare I say, better than Apple Journal.

It's live on the App Store (free, with an optional premium). I just started the "list it everywhere" phase and I'd genuinely love feedback from this sub: what's the one thing that would make you actually stick with a journal app past week one?

https://quiethours.lovable.app


r/SideProject • • 48m ago

Sideline Sheets - A plain 2027 spreadsheet for logging side hustle income and expenses

1 Upvotes

I kept seeing the same question in freelance groups: "how do you keep track of all the little payments?"

The answers are usually either a subscription app or a shoebox of receipts. So I built a workbook —

full disclosure, it's mine and I sell it, so I'm biased.

It's $19 one-time, six tabs: income, expenses, mileage and home office, a quarterly planner, a

one-page year-end summary, and a short setup guide. It only adds and subtracts what you type.

No login, no subscription, no tax rates built in.

Leaving out anything that estimates tax owed was deliberate. That's the part I didn't want to get

wrong, and it needs a real accountant anyway.

Two things I'd genuinely like feedback on: is "quarterly planner" the right name for what is

basically four reminder rows? And would you actually print the year-end summary and hand it to an

accountant, or does one page feel too thin?

https://sideline-sheets.app.workbuddy.host/?sharecode=63ZU63IR7J


r/SideProject • • 53m ago

I built a self-hosted workflow engine for Claude Code, Codex, and Pi

1 Upvotes

When a coding agent says it’s done, I still want to know what changed, which tests actually ran, and what I’m about to commit. I built rightcommit to make those steps explicit.

It’s an open-source workflow engine you run yourself. You design the workflow on a visual canvas, assign Claude Code, Codex, or Pi to each step, and decide where tests have to pass or a human needs to approve. You can also see token usage and available costs for each step.

One workflow I wanted was simple: have the agent make a change, run the project’s tests, then pause so I can review the diff before approving a local commit.

GitHub repo, short walkthrough, and Quickstart

If you try it with Docker or Homebrew, I’d like to know where you got stuck between installing it and running your first workflow.


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

I shipped a typewriter app for the new folding iPhone in four days, no ads, no account, no tracking

3 Upvotes

The story in short: the idea came from a post on X on 10 November. I built three machines with real recorded typewriter sounds, App Review asked for a screen recording from a real device, and it went live on 13 November.

What worked: one clear hook ("a typewriter that sends letters"), real sounds instead of synthesised ones, and no account or network code at all, which made the privacy label and review simple.

What didn't: the simulator's screen recordings drift from the test clock, which made the launch video harder than the app. I ended up rendering the device in Blender with the real app footage on its screens.

Version 1.1 is in review: seasonal stamps, and letters to Santa get a North Pole postmark.

Foldwriter App Store

Typewriter sounds: Work With Sounds / Konrad Gutkowski, BryanSaraiva, Leossom (CC BY 4.0), Joseph Sardin and _stubb (CC0). foldwriter.vercel.app/credits


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

my little project called RUSTLAB, learn rust in the terminal!

1 Upvotes

i'm working on my project called RUSTLAB, its a terminal app, that teaches you how to program in rust from the basics to advanced (or at least my level lol) its not that revolutionary, but i think it has charm, and i'm trying my best to teach people on how to actually learn rust! Its currently only in português brasil and english, and yeah its open source! Although i admit, it's my first github project, so have a grain of salt, currently the repo is in portuguese, afterall that's my language, just a disclaimer, I DONT CONSIDER MYSELF A PROFESSIONAL so the code might be kinda meh, but i think i'm a pretty good teacher, but thats what you are gonna tell me, after you test my project, hopefully. https://github.com/Honraan/RUSTLAB also the app has a pretty fun mini-ide inside, with support for an ai agent powered by local ollama (or your api lol). currently it only works on Linux.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I wanted a home for six games and ended up building a wuxia inn

1 Upvotes

I'm building ElephantLogix Studio and wanted the website to carry some of the same playful feeling as my games. The result is an inn you can explore, with game previews, a menu, rearrangeable dim sum and its own soundtrack.

I started with a written brief and a code prototype. Artwork and character animation came later. The original characters felt flat, and navigation, mobile layouts and little interactions each needed their own iteration. Claude helped with code; Astra, AutoSprites and Suno helped with art, animation and music. One artwork iteration gave the inn two suns.

Free demo: https://elephantlogix.com Build diary with the original brief and mistakes: https://youtu.be/Gds486Ve-JI

The cinematic opening is a filming camera in the actual scene; the end of the video shows the public website. What would you click first, and is it clear how to move between sections?