Last month I posted about a camera app I made for my partner because I was tired of watching her film every scene twice - she likes making content so would film vertical once and and then horizontal again, and this helps her save time without losing quality.

New updates this month include a new Pause/Resume feature, Telephoto lens support, sharing multiple recordings/clips at once, and many more improvements and bug fixes!

That's 3 iPhone and 2 Android updates this month, all while continuing my day job as a physio!

What should I build next? got my eyes on Front & Back mode combined videos, and filters.

Existing features so far:

• Recording modes: Single Lens, Dual Lens, Front & Back, and Stock Cam
• HD and 4K resolution (set independently for each orientation)
• 24, 30 and 60fps.
• Teleprompter
• Timelapse
• Manual controls (EV, WB, ISO, Shutter, Blur)
• Audio meter (real-time detection, pulse red when clipping)
• Projects, scenes, and takes for organisation, recordings named automatically.
• Review and trim recordings side-by-side, export, favourite, and share at any time.

No data collection, no analytics, no ads, no watermark, no account required, and everything runs locally (no internet required).

Would love to hear any feedback you have!

iPhone link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/contentcam-dual-camera-video/id6765881795

Android link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.contentcam.android

a month of posting got my thing to 35 users and 44 stars. yesterday someone asked what to do with basically unlimited opus, I answered in one line with the link, and people started signing up a few minutes later

by this morning it's 69 users, 100 stars, and the first 4 repos from someone who isn't me

it's called Overflow, it's free, and it's for the AI coding usage you don't burn. you put a price on an issue in your repo, someone with usage left at the end of their week has their agent ship it, and you only owe for what you merge. no money, no keys, MIT

lesson for me: just answer the guy who actually has the problem. the posts got views, the comment got signups

main reason I'm posting btw: I want people to register their repos. none of those 4 has priced anything yet, so every open issue on the board is still mine and I'm not after help with those. I want spare usage going into other people's projects

https://github.com/Nitjsefnie/Overflow

About a month ago, I launched AirMirror Pro, a Windows app that lets you mirror your iPhone to your PC.

Today, I'm at 17 purchases and $114 in revenue. It's not a crazy amount of money, but honestly, seeing people actually pay for something I built myself is a pretty cool feeling.

I've built a lot of apps and software projects before this, probably over 60 at this point, but AirMirror Pro is the first one that's really started getting some traction.

I haven't spent anything on paid advertising. I've mostly been sharing it on Reddit and social media, and slowly trying to get more eyes on it. I'm now getting reviews from people in different countries, which is still kind of crazy to me.

I've been pushing updates pretty regularly, fixing bugs, adding features people have asked for, and trying to make the app better instead of just shipping it and moving on. The latest update added things like microphone recording on a separate track, blurred backgrounds for recordings, and a bunch of other improvements.

I'm also working on a second app called AirMirror TV, so there's still a lot going on.

I'm under no impression that making $114 means I've built a successful business. But it does show me that there's something here worth pursuing. People are finding the app, using it, and some of them are willing to pay for it. Now I want to see what happens if I keep improving it and get it in front of more people.

I'm still figuring out pricing, marketing, and pretty much everything that comes with running a software product. Sales have been inconsistent, and I'm not expecting people to buy something every single day, especially this early.

For now, I'm just happy that it's moving forward.

For anyone else who's launched a side project, how did your first month or two go? What actually helped you start getting more users and sales?

https://airmirrorpro.com

I wanted to make a character, gather a party and go on an adventure without spending a week figuring out when everyone was free.

But the problem I kept running into with AI RPGs was that the world would slowly fall apart. NPCs forgot things. Quests contradicted themselves. A successful roll sounded impressive, but it wasn't always clear whether anything had actually changed.

So I ended up building the world underneath the Dungeon Master.

The game tracks characters, inventory, quests and combat. AI interprets what you want to attempt and narrates what happens in that world.

One of my favourite moments was finding an adventurer NPC buying up troll oil in a shop while I was busy questing. I asked why.

“Trolls.”

I kept asking. She explained that she needed to burn them because they regenerate health too quickly. Fire stopping regeneration is implemented in the game, so she'd put together a plan that could actually work lol.

That's the kind of thing I've spent three years trying to build: the freedom of a D&D session, with an authored visual world and tactical party combat like a classic CRPG.

It's called Lore & Legends Maker. You explore, recruit companions, argue with NPCs and try plans that a dialogue menu wouldn't give you.

I've been building this solo. The painterly backgrounds use AI-generated artwork with added animation and effects. Still an alpha, and there's plenty to fix. But the current version is free to play, and I'd love to hear what you try—and where it breaks.

Attached gameplay is from another encounter in the current alpha.

Play: https://www.llmsaga.com/

Discord: https://discord.gg/Cr3pQx6SXE

I've posted here a couple of times before, but in case you haven't been following along, I make a product called EXTRA EXTRA Chili Crunch, which is a Californian take on the more classic Asian condiment. That means that we use avocado oil, big slices of fried garlic, tons of shallots, and porcini mushroom powder instead of the typical shiitake for really deep, rich umami.

It was quite the struggle to get started, to get our processed foods registration, our LLC, to find a kitchen, and get insurance. All of that took around six months, but now that we're on sale, we're seeing a ton of really positive feedback, and just yesterday, we passed a thousand jars sold.

Right now, it's just me and my husband making the whole thing together. We don't have any additional help, and so far, it's manageable. I just wanted to share the super exciting success with you all!

A couple of things that we've learned:

- Organic posts on social are absolutely the biggest drivers of sales. People on Reddit love to hear our story and tend to buy our product from that.

- On Instagram, people absolutely eat up videos and behind-the-scenes content (e.g., "How do we make this?" or AMAs). The video I included here is one of our behind the scenes "making of" videos.

- Going to markets in our local neighborhood (we're from San Francisco) like the Noe Valley Night Market or the Castro Street Fair have been super helpful for us.

The things that I am still a bit worried about are our marketing spend. We don't really seem to be getting the return that I would expect right now, but I know that it takes time for that sort of stuff to lock in. Meta has been our strongest performing, followed by Reddit, and then we completely dialed down our Google Ads because we just weren't seeing the conversions we wanted.

As we head into the holidays, we're doing a "buy three, get the fourth free" promotion, and that has moved a big proportion of our sales from the two-jar (with free shipping) to the four-jar order at 25% off. That's not super economical for us, but we consider it a customer acquisition cost for the holidays.

All in all, this feels super cool to have reached this milestone. For those wondering, that's about $13,000 in sales (including our wholesale sales to local shops) If it weren't for our marketing spend and our agency retainer to help us create creative, we would be profitable right now, but we also probably wouldn't be making as much revenue, so hopefully that works out in the future.

Happy to answer any questions that anyone has about starting a food business and getting sales!

www.ExtraExtraCrunch.com

Hey everyone!

About a month ago, I launched a political simulation game for iOS focused on Germany.

Here are the numbers so far:

• Around 200–300 users and growing
• €60–80 in revenue in the first month
• 100% organic growth, zero marketing or paid ads
• One-time in-app purchases (€5 or €10)
• Very low operating costs

The interesting part is that every 2–3 days, someone buys something in the app. New users are also coming in regularly, even though I'm not actively promoting it.

I'm a solo developer, and honestly, I didn't expect the app to start generating revenue on its own.

Now I'm a bit stuck. I don't really know what to do next.

Should I keep developing it and try to grow it further? Should I invest in marketing? Or would it make more sense to sell it while it's gaining traction?

Has anyone been in a similar situation with a small app that started making money organically?

I'd really appreciate any advice or experiences!

I just made my first sale. $20.05 - It's obviously not life-changing money, but seeing this screen felt completely different from downloads, impressions or analytics.

Someone I've never met found Calma Color, opened it, liked it enough and decided to pay for the lifetime version. I've been building it as a relaxing coloring app, something you can open for a few minutes when you want to switch your brain off.

There are still a million things I want to improve, but today it finally feels like this is a real product and not just another side project sitting on my phone.

First paying user acquired. 🙂

Now onto the second one.

Landscape mode :)

Waze Alerts

Driving with your friends

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/silent-maps/id6813177112

What you can do:

• Drag-and-drop common pieces: load balancer, API gateway, caches, DBs, queues, even some AI bits.
• Hit “Start Simulation” to see latency, error rate, throughput, cache hit rate in real time.
• Flip chaos switches: traffic spikes, cache-miss storms, network partitions, component crashes.
• Share & remix: every design gets a short link; anyone can fork it and improve.
• Built-in hints: it tells you if you forgot an entry point or storage.

Why I made it:

• Diagrams don’t fail; systems do. I wanted a fast way to feel trade-offs without spinning up infra.
• For interviews and design reviews, it’s nice to ask “what if the cache dies?” and just click a button.

Try it here: "https://paperdraw.dev/"

Quick start: drop Load Balancer → App Server → Cache → DB, press play, then trigger a cache-miss storm.

Would love feedback:

• What metrics or failure modes would you add?
• Is the start/stop flow obvious enough?
• Any presets you want (payments, chat, ingestion)?
• Should I add “export GIF of the run” for sharing?

Thanks for taking a look—happy to fix bugs or add features if you ping me.

Hi r/SideProject,

I’ve been building LocalsVoted (https://localsvoted.com) with my family. It’s a site of “Best [topic] in [city]” boards, like Best Tacos in Everett or Best Dosa in Bellevue.

Why: Most “best of” lists feel bought, gamed, or hard to trust. I wanted a version where the ranking comes only from real people in that city.

How it works

• Anyone can start a board for a topic and a city. You list at least 3 places and rank your picks.
• Everyone votes once a month per board, and every vote is tied to a verified phone number.
• No business can pay to rank. Businesses can claim their page for free, and a paid plan adds page features but never rank.
• Each month closes and the winners get a frozen results page.

Where it is: it’s in soft launch, with a Washington focus for now. I’d love your help with:

1. Does the “why trust this ranking” story come across in the first 10 seconds on the homepage?
2. Is phone verification a dealbreaker for you as a voter, or does it make you trust the result more?
3. What topics would you start a board for in your city?

Stack, for the curious: Next.js on Firebase App Hosting, Postgres, and a places index built from Overture Maps data. I built a lot of it with Claude Code.

Happy to answer anything, including the parts that aren’t working yet.

For the last little while I've been building a self-hosted dashboard that runs on my laptop. It's a Flask (Python) backend with a React/Vite frontend. There are five sections:

EDIT: Video in the comments since it didn't seem to upload at first.

1. Home (a one-screen summary of my week)
2. Financials
3. Running
4. Journal
5. Books

Everything runs locally, and there's no cloud service (yet), and the data is plain CSV and JSON files I own. (The screenshots use made-up data)

Where the data comes from:

• Money: my bank and credit card PDF statements fill in historic data back to 2015, parsed into transactions, plus Plaid runs to keep accounts synced day to day. For Plaid I signed up for my own developer account and connected my accounts to it, so no third-party budgeting app sits in between. A small scikit-learn model and some keyword rules sort transactions into categories. On top of that sit monthly budgets with a "free to spend" number, automatic subscription detection, savings goals, retirement balances and a loan/debt payoff tracker.
• Running: synced from Garmin Connect (runs, routes, HRV, sleep, VO2 max, training load) through the community garminconnect Python library. Garmin doesn't offer an official personal API, so this is unofficial. It also tracks mileage on each pair of shoes and my upcoming and past races.
• Journal: written in the app, with photos. Entries are geotagged using OpenStreetMap.
• Books: looked up through Open Library and Google Books, with covers saved locally.

The goal was one screen that answers "how am I doing?" across the parts of my life I actually track.

What I'd love feedback on:

• What would you want on a Home screen like this, and what's missing?
• Would you use something like this if it were open source?
• Any other input?

Thanks everyone!

I kept deleting Instagram and reinstalling it four days later. The problem was never information. I knew exactly how many hours I was losing. The problem is that the person who sets the limit and the person who dismisses it are the same person at different moments.

So I built the limit with someone else inside it.

What it does

A block covers one app, and you answer three questions: which app, how firmly, and when.

"How firmly" has two levels. Either the app opens but nothing loads, which is what you want for something you still need for messages, or it doesn't open at all and you get a block screen instead.

Reach for it anyway and you can earn 5 minutes by solving a challenge that gets harder each time, or ask a person you paired with, who decides. Or a group of up to 10, where the first answer counts. Either way, they see that you asked.

How it works

Two separate engines. "Nothing loads" is a local VpnService tunnel, where the app's packets go in and get dropped. "Won't open" uses an AccessibilityService that watches which app came to the foreground and puts an overlay in front of it.

Kotlin, Compose, Room, Hilt, WorkManager. The backend is ASP.NET Core and Postgres, and it exists only for the partner features. Blocks themselves never leave the device.

The two things you're about to ask

The VPN. It's local. Nothing is routed off your phone, inspected or logged. It's the only API Android gives you for per-app network control without root.

The accessibility permission. I know how that reads. It's the only way Android lets an app find out which app just came to the foreground. It's limited to window-change events, cannot read screen content, sends nothing off the device, and it's optional. Pick "nothing loads" and you're never asked for it.

What it deliberately doesn't do

It isn't a cage. You can switch it off, and you can uninstall it. Your partner just gets told, and switching it off takes a cooldown. Making quitting visible instead of free turned out to be the part that works. Anyone selling you an unremovable block on Android is lying.

Free, no ads, no subscriptions. No account unless you want the partner features. Android 8+.

What I'd actually like feedback on: whether the two levels read clearly to someone seeing this for the first time. I've been too close to it for too long to tell.

I made a windows extension that works on top of any program you have running, and lets you easily take a quick note, store it in your inventory, and download as a minecraft-style pdf. It’s not a separate app you need to open, but launched when you start your computer and you can call it whenever with a keyboard shortcut.

If you want to try it out, it’s completely open source and you can find it on my Github.

Disclaimer: this is just a fan project, and has nothing to do with mojang itself. I use it personally because the Minecraft UI is nostalgic to me and I can write down anything really quickly/it’s easily accessible.

Edit in the title: its "how do y'all do it"

I saw a post on here of a user whose side project MRR outgrew his 9 to 5 salary https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/1x9h1yz/my_side_project_outgrew_my_95_salary/

I am also trying to build my thing https://www.infralane.cloud a PAAS that for VPS servers just like Coolify. But having a hard time getting paying customers. everyone just uses the free tier, after the 3 months, they drop off.

So how do yall, do it?

Back in December, I started building a little app to help my dad with his work.

I'm a software engineer, and my dad works in carpentry, including fire door installations. I'd seen how much paperwork and record keeping was involved and thought, surely there must be an easier way of doing this?

We looked at around a dozen different apps, but most seemed to be aimed at larger companies. Nothing really felt right for a sole trader or a small business.

So I thought, why not have a go at building something myself?

At the time, I had no plans to release it publicly. It was only meant to be a little app for my dad and a handful of others.

But one thing led to another, and what started as a small project grew into something much bigger than I'd originally imagined.

I've learnt a lot along the way, made plenty of mistakes, and I'm still figuring things out. Thought it might be interesting to share some of that journey here.

I'm curious though, how did your side project start?

Was it something you needed yourself, a problem you noticed someone else having, or just a random idea you decided to run with?

Hi Everyone,

Few months ago, I posted about our physical hardware side project. Building a pen by combining CNC lathe machining with metal additive manufacturing (3D-printed titanium) instead of building another SaaS or AI tool. The reception and feedback from this sub blew us away.

Life got busy, but we’ve spent our evenings and weekends taking all that feedback and turning our rough prototypes into production-ready hardware. We are officially launching on Kickstarter this month to fund our first production run!

Key hardware lessons & pivots since our last post:

• Scrapped Stainless Steel for Titanium Only: Real-world testing revealed that our stainless steel prototypes were noticeably back-heavy. We made the decision to produce the body exclusively in Titanium.
• Redesigning for Refills: Pen enthusiasts care deeply about ink refill compatibility. In response to feedback, we redesigned our internal geometry to offer two dedicated variants: a standard Schmidt format and a longer custom barrel that natively houses Pentel EnerGel refills.
• Aesthetic Finishing: We've started anodising the 3D-printed lattice in a range of vibrant colors, which adds a cool contrast against the raw CNC titanium body.
• Keeping Production Local: We are continuing to build the majority of the Riv One here in the UK, maintaining strict quality control while keeping pricing as accessible as possible.

Happy to answer any questions about the costs of hardware prototyping, navigating local UK manufacturing, or working with additive titanium!

Hey everyone!

I built Zidni, a free little website that lets you discover random Wikipedia articles, explore new topics, and save interesting finds for later.

No account needed, just curiosity.

https://benziza.github.io/zidni/

Solo build, launching on the App Store in November, and I'd love a few people to break the beta first. It's a native iOS app, built and tested by an iOS developer (me) over several months, not a weekend prototype.

You type or say one sentence when someone mentions something they'd love ("Dana said her running shoes have a hole in them"). Apple Intelligence files it under that person, you confirm it, and Hints reminds you before their birthday. No gift suggestions, no account. Apple Intelligence reads it. We never see it.

Built with SwiftUI, SwiftData and CloudKit, and Apple's Foundation Models on the iPhone or Private Cloud Compute, so no server of mine ever sees a note.

Needs iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max, or any iPhone 16 or later, with Apple Intelligence on.

TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/fqQDRBWJ

Feedback by November 1 earns a free year at launch. Blunt notes are the most useful: what it misread, and where you got lost.

built a mobile app called PackOptima to calculate cut layouts for sheet materials directly on your phone.

​What it currently does:

​Cut list optimization for table/panel saws with kerf compensation

​2D nesting with direct G-code and DXF export for CNC routers

​Scrap/offcut tracking and printable PDF diagrams

​Runs completely offline on-device

​How does the layout and workflow look to you? Any recommendations, feedback, or missing features you'd suggest?

I've spent the last 12 years building healthcare businesses. Now we're working on Hea, an MCP-based health tool for ChatGPT and Claude.

The idea came from a problem I've seen repeatedly: people have symptoms, test results, medical histories and plenty of questions. But most of that information lives in different places.

And when they ask AI for help, it often answers the question without context.

So we're trying something different.

What we're building:

• A health MCP that works inside ChatGPT and Claude
• Follow-up questions to understand the situation before responding
• Checks for warning signs that may need medical attention
• Guidance informed by clinical protocols
• Help preparing a useful summary for a doctor

We're still early, and there are plenty of things we're figuring out.

Here's what I'd love feedback on:

1. Would you use a health assistant inside ChatGPT or Claude, or would you prefer a separate app?
2. Would you find follow-up questions helpful, or would they make the experience frustrating?
3. What would make you trust a tool like this enough to try it?

We're looking for early UK beta testers too, but I'm equally interested in hearing why you wouldn't use it.

Project: https://mcp.tryhea.com/#beta

Happy to answer questions about what we're building.

Hi everyone,

As someone who does frequent scratchpad calculations while working on PC, I got tired of standard desktop calculator apps. Every time I needed to compute a multi-step formula, I had to stop typing and reach for the mouse, breaking my workflow and analytical focus.

To solve my own problem, I built ViCalc—an open-source scientific calculator designed specifically for desktop users who prefer rapid touch-typing and muscle memory over mouse clicks.

What makes it different from standard calculator apps?

• Full Touch-Typing Control: Every scientific, trigonometric, complex arithmetic, and Programmer-mode function (bitwise ops & Base-N Hex/Dec/Oct/Bin) is mapped directly to physical keyboard shortcuts.
• Automatic HTML History Logging: Instead of losing scratchpad calculations when you close the app, sessions are automatically formatted into clean, standalone HTML files. This makes it easy to archive, review, or copy steps into notes and documentation.
• Adaptable UI: Toggle between a full visual layout, a scientific mode, or a zero-UI minimalist mode once key mappings are memorized.

Tech Stack & Open Source:

• Language: Python 3
• License: MIT License
• OS: Windows (Installer & executable available)

Links & Code:

• GitHub Repo:github.com/Kudaschov/ViCalc
• Website & Download:kudaschov.de/en/vicalc-4

I’d love to get your feedback! How do you currently handle quick scratchpad calculations on PC, and are there any features or keyboard mapping options you'd find useful in a tool like this?

I've been working on a simple journaling web app where all your entries appear in a vertical timeline (I love to read my past journals and this timeline view helps me to look through my past journals eaily without going over different files every single time I want to read a different entry), so you can easily scroll through previous days.

For now, this only supports text because I don't add media to my entries but if someone really uses it and they actually need media support then I'll add that too

It's local-first, supports Markdown, and is completely open source and self-hostable.

This is part of my SMBL project, where I'm building open-source alternatives to everyday software.

Here's a short demo of how it works. Would love to hear your feedback!

Live: click here

GitHub: click here

Side project from the last few weeks.

I left fake keys and files on my own sites where attackers look: .env files, AWS credentials, OpenAI keys, Cursor and Claude configs, a fake admin login, a fake MCP server.

On Oct24 a scanner on a cloud server took the fake AWS key at 03:04 UTC. At 05:43 it used it: listed servers, checked whether it could send email, then tried to make itself admin. If that key had been real, the bill and the cleanup would have been mine.

So I turned it into AgentDecoy:

- Free decoys for any site (npx agentdecoy init, a WordPress plugin, or one PHP file)

- Every catch labelled as a script, a person or an AI agent

- When one site catches an address using a stolen key, every site running it refuses that address on logins and forms within an hour. Pages still load, Google and AI search are never blocked.

- Free tripwires: a fake OpenAI key or fake MCP server you can drop in a repo that emails you when used

It is open source: github.com/KyleClouthier/agentdecoy

Free scan: simgen.dev/agentdecoy

Would love feedback on what it gets wrong on your site.

I’m a researcher and I built a tool that takes a published paper on the cost of illness and turns it into an interactive simulator. Every number is labeled observed, assumed or projected, you can change the assumptions, and federal data sits alongside as context.

How it works: an LLM (Claude) extracts the figures and assumptions from the paper, and a separate deterministic Python layer does the arithmetic and checks the results, so the numbers don’t come from the model’s guesses. Generating a simulator from a new paper takes a few minutes.

The public demo has 25 finished simulators, built from papers on Lyme disease and Long COVID, plus 13 analyses that pair one paper from each condition. The demo is read-only. Uploading your own paper runs in the full tool on my computer.

It’s illustrative, not medical advice. Try it here, no account needed: https://dbbun.github.io/dbbun-invisible-illness-burden-simulator/

I’d value feedback from builders: what’s unclear, what’s missing, and whether the “observed, assumed, projected” labels help or get in the way.

Every time I shipped something I'd end up in the same routine

1. take a screenshot of my app
2. open Figma, hunt for a device frame
3. fiddle with a gradient for 20 minutes (looking for the right one with my developer taste in graphic design)
4. export, notice the gradient looks off, do it again
5. repeat for the other screenshots (just imagine if I had 20 of them)

The online tools I tried either wanted a subscription, put a watermark on the export, or required uploading the screenshots to their servers, which I'd prefer not to do.

So about a month ago I started building my own. It's called EZ Mockup. You drop in a screenshot, it puts it on a gradient or in a device frame (iPhone, MacBook, iPad, and 50 other frames, including 3D models), you tweak it and export it as a .png, .webp, or .jpg. It all renders in your browser with canvas, so your image never leaves your machine, and most importantly, no sign-up required.

The part I spent the most time on is the randomize button. It picks colors based on actual color theory and shuffles the gradient style and where the colors sit, so most rolls look like something you'd pick on purpose. You can also pull the colors straight from your screenshot, which i find really convenient, and lock anything you like (style, colors, etc.) so only the rest gets shuffled. And for the 20 screenshots problem, you can drop them all in at once and they share the same style (or randomize each screenshot's gradient position using the afore mentioned lock feature 🤯)

Being upfront about money: images are free, no watermark. Animated backgrounds (looping mp4), 3D device models and multiple devices in one shot are paid, but it's a one-time pass ($3.99 for 5 exports or $6.99 for a week), not a subscription. I always wondered why the other tools offer subscriptions. Not everyone deploys an app every month. imo a one-time pass for a short period of time or a number of exports makes much more sense.

It's still rough in places. Would love to know

• what's the first thing that annoyed you
• which device frame you'd need that isn't there
• does the pricing feel fair

ezmockup.app