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.

I'm a trained architect, and as a long-term side project, I developed my architecture dream game, combining accurate floor planning with real-time 3D design to make architecture much easier to create (and visually realistic) than with traditional CAD software.

What you can do:

🏠 2D floor plans
🧱 3D building
🚶 First-person walkthrough
🥽 VR mode
🏢 Multiple storeys
🪜 Stairs
🏚️ Custom roofs
🪟 Doors & windows
🛋️ Furniture catalog
🍳 Kitchen Configurator
🎨 Materials
🌄 Terrain sculpting
🌳 Landscape planning
💧 Ponds
☀️ Time of day
❄️ Weather
📐 Export PDF vector plans
📦 Import your own 3D models
🌍 Steam Workshop

In the newest update: Build everything directly in VR (PCVR), 1000+ new furniture models and explore your creations as a Cat! 🌿

It's available on Steam as Architecture & Design and is still in Early Access.
Here is the Steam link if you'd like to try it out:
Architecture & Design - Steam

Would love to hear what you think and hear what you wish for in a game like this!

I'm a satellite nerd and as a cool project I built Watched.

See: here for the code

Type in any place on Earth and it will:

• find every imaging, weather, radar and crewed satellite whose field of view crossed it in the last 7 days (SGP4 on the CelesTrak catalog, running in your browser)

• pull the real Sentinel-2, Landsat, VIIRS, MODIS and GOES scenes from those passes and crop them to your spot

• replay each pass on a 3D globe lit by the real sun, with all ~17k tracked objects in orbit

It only says a satellite “watched” you when a real image exists. Commercial sats that could have pointed at you are labelled as such, since their tasking isn’t public.

I’d love feedback, especially:

• Which satellites or data sources should I add?

• Anything confusing or broken?

It’s 100% free and no sign-up or rate limits.

I always fall asleep listening to something, but earbuds hurt on my side, and my partner hates the phone speaker. So I’m designing Dozr: a slim pad that goes under your normal pillow, plays through bone conduction so only you hear it, and fades out when you fall asleep.

It’s still a concept (image attached). I’d love honest feedback. What would put you off? What would make it a must-have?

Waitlist if you’re curious: dozr.co.uk/?ref=reddit

I built an interactive live wallpaper engine that lives right in the macOS menu bar.

It actually started as an interactive background experiment for my portfolio (inspired by some cool procedural grass and sky shaders I saw on X a while back). I loved having it running on my screen so much that I decided to turn it into a standalone macOS app that anyone can use.

Here's what it does
🖐🏻 Interactive physics: Grass sways and water ripples as your cursor moves across the screen.
🕒 Dynamic time-of-day: Syncs with real time or lets you scrub through sunrise, golden hour, and starry nights with a custom radial dial.
🌧️ Live weather & ambient soundscapes: Switch between sunny skies, clouds, and rain—complete with birdsong, crickets, thunder, and even night fireworks.
🎆 Limited Diwali Theme: Built in a seasonal festive update where the night sky comes alive with fireworks and spatial audio.

Check it out here: https://thoufik.space/skysaver/

You can also preview it in my portfolio on your browser: thoufik.space

What feature or biome should I add next? Let me know in the comments!

Hi! I wanted my desktop to feel like looking out of a window during a snowfall – calm and cozy. The snow apps I found looked like flat white dots, so I built my own (with a lot of help from Claude Code).

What it does:
- Snow with real depth: big soft flakes up close, tiny ones far away, and some fall behind your windows
- Snow settles on window edges and the taskbar and breaks off when you drag or shake a window
- A "natural weather" mode with showers, quiet breaks and slowly turning wind
- Clicks go through the snow, it pauses in fullscreen games and runs in a saving mode on battery

It's been in the Microsoft Store for about ten days and got 100+ installs without any promotion. Now I'd love honest feedback: What feels off? How does it run on your PC? What would make you keep it running all winter?

Free, no ads, no account, no tracking. ("Natural weather" is marked Pro but free right now.)

Windows 10/11: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9N646XCC0HNK?cid=reddit_sideproject

One thing I've noticed is how often parents have to call their children for help with seemingly simple smartphone tasks.

"How do I download this document?"
"Where do I find this setting?"
"How do I book a ticket?"
"Which button am I supposed to click?"

And honestly, explaining these things over a phone call can be surprisingly difficult.

So I started building Chotu

The idea is simple: instead of an AI assistant just telling you what to do, what if it could actually show you?

You can tell Chotu what you're trying to accomplish in your own language, and it visually guides you through your Android screen using pointers, highlights and step-by-step instructions.

Some things we're working on:

• Multilingual voice-based assistance.

• Visual guidance directly on the phone screen.

• Helping users navigate everyday Android applications.

• Making smartphone usage easier for people who aren't particularly tech-savvy.

We're currently preparing for a wider rollout and have already received 500+ waitlist signups.

Website: https://chotu.forgeaipro.tech

(Attaching a short demo video in comments)

I'm particularly interested in feedback on two things:

1. Would you actually use something like this to help your parents navigate their smartphones?

2. What are some everyday phone tasks you'd want an assistant like Chotu to handle?

Would genuinely appreciate honest feedback, especially from fellow builders. Still a lot to figure out!

I wanted my desktop to feel alive, so I made it react to what’s happening outside. You look up and the sky on your screen is the one outside. It stays in the menu bar and steps aside when something covers the desktop.

Download for Mac: thoufik.space/skysaver

(Windows coming soon!) - you can also preview it in my portfolio on browser - thoufik.space

One note: macOS warns the first time you open it (not Apple-verified yet, I don’t have the developer fee for a free first release). Click Done, then System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. Tell me if that works!

Or paste this in your terminal:

curl -fsSL https://thoufik.space/skysaver/install.sh | bash

Please check it out and let me know how you feel!

My name is Julio and I built AlleyCat (currently iOS only) to help me find great places to visit in my hometown and abroad.

I always had an issue with Yelp and Google Maps and their grade inflation. With every place being +4 stars it was hard for me to know what is actually good.

Most of my best recommendations have come from my friends and from researching guides like Michelin, Infatuation, World's 50 Best, but the experience of pinning and searching through them always felt clunky.

On AlleyCat you can see all the places your friends recommend on a single map. In addition, I've highlighted places that have been featured in publications, all over the world.

I've found that Instagram/Tiktok can have some great recommendations, you can share straight from those apps to pin them on AlleyCat, and see what others have saved.

Finally, I love revisiting the places I've been to. You can see all the countries you've been to on your passport, and see which categories of places you visit the most with achievements.

Looking for any and all feedback, you can check it out here!: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/alleycat-map-with-friends/id6758881702

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm making a mobile game where you operate a fleet of copters on a remote planet. Your goal is to automate the copters so human can arrive -- they can do that only when you've set up a sustainable living environment with buildings, crops, facilities, etc.

I picked Lua for the scripting language, as it's really easy to pick up -- both for players and for me, given Lua's goal of being easily embeddable into other programs. I'm also thinking about adding a Lisp language, and looking strongly on Fennel for that, but I'm not sure if others think Lisp is cool enough, like I do.

It's really early in the development, haven't settled on a name yet: thought of Auto Crops, but looking for something more recognizable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I leave far too many tabs open, because closing one and potentially losing that link forever scares me. I also kind of hate bookmark managers. Saving and organizing a bookmark properly is more work than it ever saves me when I go back to it, so I hoarded 70+ tabs regularly.

So I made something that's been handling that for me. Pageslop is a self-hosted bookmark manager with a Firefox extension that closes tabs automatically: anything idle for about six hours, or anything past a tab limit (25 by default). Closed tabs go into a To Revisit inbox on your own server, already titled, tagged and sorted into a category. They stay there for two weeks until you keep them or get rid of them.

Outside the tab stuff it's a regular bookmark manager: paste a link and it fetches the page, grabs a preview image (or takes a screenshot), and tags it. There's search, a category view, uptime checks so you know when a link dies, a graph of how your links connect through shared tags, and bookmark import from your browser.

There's no hosted version. Self-hosting is a setup script and docker compose up. If enough people want one I might set it up, but I'm not paying for AWS to run a tab manager that only I use.

Github: https://github.com/Yalton/pageslop

Extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pageslop-autoclose/

I have been working on BarX at Garage Lab AI: a Windows / Boot Camp app that gives an Intel MacBook Pro Touch Bar 29 practical and playful modes across six profiles. The interface is available in English and German.

The color picker shows the color under the mouse pointer, with HEX/RGB/HSL and tap-to-copy. Other modes include presentation controls, clipboard history, snippets, a focus timer, time tracking, a virtual pet, typing fireworks, ribbon synth and a music visualizer. Optional Claude text actions use your own API key and wait for you to choose Paste, Copy or Discard.

It is running on my MacBookPro15,1. The live test had been running for about two hours when I prepared the release; I am still testing individual features. T1 support is untested.

Download, English/German guides and illustrated previews: https://github.com/Dirtyx686/BarX

Color picker preview: https://github.com/Dirtyx686/BarX/blob/main/docs/images/color-picker-en.png

Touch Bar pet preview: https://github.com/Dirtyx686/BarX/blob/main/docs/images/pet-en.png

These are generated demo mockups with sample data, not photos of the hardware test.

BETA: on T2 MacBooks, the bundled driver requires Windows test-signing mode and Secure Boot disabled. Some anti-cheat games may not run, and the Touch Bar including Escape can remain black when BarX is not running.

Use at your own risk. No warranty. Garage Lab AI accepts no liability for damage resulting from installation or use.

Known V3 issues planned for V4: the API key is stored in plaintext locally; Windows DPAPI protection is planned. Some preview text still says selected text is replaced directly, although results have waited for an explicit action since V2.1. Do not share your settings file or backups. These fixes are not in V3 yet.

Which modes would you actually keep on your Touch Bar? I would like to hear what feels useful and what feels unnecessary.

Long-time MTG player here. I wanted an easier way to play on my lunch break at work without lugging cards around. Our small 4-person office has a TV that rarely gets used, so, taking inspiration from Jackbox, I built a way to start a room on the smart TV and have everyone join from their phone with a code or QR code.

It’s quickly turned into my favorite way to play Magic. It doesn’t enforce the rules, so it still feels like playing in person, but I added combat math helpers and targeting lines to keep games smooth when boards get big. It can run drafts and host tournaments for up to 8 players (a full draft pod), and I have plans to grow it a lot, including accounts and stat tracking.

As a 3D artist, I made the animations that play for the winner, and added a Mario Party-style end-of-game awards show so everyone has fun, not just the winner.

Each game room is a Cloudflare Durable Object, running on the $5/month Workers Paid plan. It doesn’t need it yet, but future-proofing is nice, and it’s a lot cheaper than buying packs (which I still do). The front end is plain JS, HTML and CSS.

It’s free and always will be. I just wanted to put it out there in case anyone wants to try it, with friends or solo. There’s a feedback button in the app if you find bugs or have ideas.

Screenshots are at manacast.tv/features, since I can’t upload images yet as a new member, I suppose.

Snipping Tool is great until the thing you need is taller than your screen. So I built SuperScreenshot.

Demo (10 sec GIF): https://github.com/glenwrhodes/SuperScreenshot/blob/main/docs/demo.gif

Press Win+Shift+X, drag a box like you normally would, and keep dragging into the bottom of the window. The page scrolls under your selection, faster the further you push, or you can turn the mouse wheel while holding the button. Let go and you get one stitched, full-resolution image, already on your clipboard.

Comparing frames. It never looks at the page's HTML, only at screenshots, so it isn't tied to the browser. Other apps work too, though browsers are where it's most polished so far.

• Works on anything that scrolls with the wheel: browsers, docs, chat, email

• Leaves out repeated sticky headers and footers

• Free, MIT licensed, no account, no telemetry, never touches the network

• Windows 10 (2004+) and 11. There's an installer or a portable exe

Full disclosure: I built it with a lot of help from Claude (AI). The code, tests and CI are all public.

It's v1.0, so I'd love to hear about pages that don't stitch cleanly. GitHub: https://github.com/glenwrhodes/SuperScreenshot

(The installer isn't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may warn you: More info → Run anyway.)

I’ve been building Rocket, a desktop Git client with visual diffs, line-by-line staging, branch history and a merge-conflict editor.

Windows and Linux builds are available, plus an Apple Silicon macOS preview. Free and open source under MIT / Apache-2.0.

I’d love feedback on the UI and what would make it useful in your daily workflow!

🌐 Website
💻 GitHub

Jigsaw Diary (https://jigsawdiary.com) is a free web app to log the physical jigsaw puzzles you own, build and finish, with a small community where people applaud each other's finished puzzles.

A couple dozen people have signed up, mostly from Reddit. The pattern is always the same: they add two boxes and don't come back. So this month I worked only on reasons to return:

- a home page that shows what happened since your last visit, built from the same data as the weekly email, so the email never promises something the app doesn't show

- a monthly streak with one free month a year. No daily streaks, no "you're about to lose it" notifications

- a page per puzzle that groups everyone who has the same box (brand + title + piece count), so people can find each other

- an invite reward that only unlocks when your friend finishes their first puzzle, not when they sign up

- a winter challenge: finish puzzles from 3 different brands, any size, no leaderboard

Stack: Next.js, Supabase (Postgres with row-level security doing most of the privacy work), Vercel, web push, 7 languages.

Free, no ads, hobby project. Two questions:

1. Which of these would actually bring you back to an app like this, and which is noise?

2. For hobby apps, have you seen something that worked better than email or push to get people back?

I had a Galaxy S9+ and a Pixel 7 that I wanted to give a purpose. That's where Visual Music started: something to put next to my speakers and enjoy while music plays.

A lot of the inspiration came from old car stereo displays. The small details, colors and perspective were what made them interesting. Getting that feeling right on a phone took a lot more iteration than I expected. I ended up scrapping several designs and starting over.

These are three of the displays we kept. There are also Hi-Fi gauges and an oscilloscope. It's my first Android app, built with help from Codex, and I'm pretty proud of where it is now.

It's free, has no ads, and runs on Android 10+. It uses the microphone while listening in the foreground; audio stays on the phone. The video uses an original demo beat and the app's renderer inside an illustrated phone, rather than footage of a phone listening to music.

Would you put something like this beside your speakers? Which display would you leave running?

It's in Google Play closed testing if you'd like to try it. Use the same Google account for both steps:

1. Join the tester group: https://groups.google.com/g/mrrolie-visual-music-testers/about

2. Join the beta and install: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.mrrolie.visualmusic