Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

1

40 Hadiths

The one that the most other people found useful: Remote Control Collection. It's an app that allows you to control your PC or Mac from your Android or iOS smartphone while connected to the same network. It also was available for Windows Phone and BB10 back in the days. I've built it about 10 years ago for myself because I was too lazy to get up from the couch to control my media PC and the existing apps were all terrible to use. Turns out many people found good use for it, over 10 million across platforms by now. <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.steppschuh.remotecontrolcollection">https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.steppschuh...</a>.

#Mobile Apps #Religion #Web Search 1162 social mentions

I mostly code my own games with a target group of 1, my favourites are http://lalo.li/lsd/ https://updownredgreenetc.franzai.com/ https://spinner.franzai.com/ https://dance.franzai.com/ (basically a lava lamp you can interact with) from the app side I like https://qrpwd.franzai.com/ coded to save my 2 factor backup codes encoded in my photo stream and <a href="https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/thisismy">https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/thisismy</a> a command line trim&copy&paste tool for files and webpages.

#Games #Online Games #MMO 5 social mentions

3

OnlineOrNot

#Uptime Monitoring #Website Monitoring #Monitoring Tools 55 social mentions

4

Decoder

Https://james.darpinian.com/decoder/ as a more convenient way to look up OpenGL and Win32 enums and error codes.

#QR Code #QR Code Generator #Automated Testing 2 social mentions

5

Claquette

Swift library to read and modify ZIP archives: https://peakstep.com/claquette/.

#Screen Recording #Screenshot Annotation #Video Maker 1 social mentions

6

Fort Firewall

1. <a href="https://github.com/tnodir/fort">https://github.com/tnodir/fort</a> - Fort Firewall for Windows 7+. I needed: - app groups to easily enable/disable group of programs.

#Monitoring Tools #Exception Monitoring #Log Management 1 social mentions

7

Cone

I've built a few apps which started out as tools for my own use and later polished + released for public. - Cone: This started out as a small tool to help me identify the name of the colors of objects around me (i am a red-green colorblind). Now it's a full fledged color picker app with a Pantone license - https://cone.app - CBVision: This is another small tool for colorblind people which shifts the problematic colors to a visible hue for easy differentiation - https://cbvisionapp.com/ - Unwind: I made this to help me with box-breathing - https://unwind.to - LookAway: This is the latest app that I've created to help me with digital eye strain. - https://lookaway.app.

#Design Tools #Color Tools #Developer Tools 2 social mentions

8

Bugdet Zen

So many interesting things here! I've created quite a few things, but the ones I still use at least every week (some every day) are: - Budget Zen: https://budgetzen.net - Simple and end-to-end encrypted budget & expense management. (OSS and self-hostable, web + PWA).

#Personal Finance #Accounting #Budgeting 2 social mentions

9

Apollo Writes

- Apollo: https://apollowrites.com - An affordable brand copywriter for blog posts and articles. (web app).

#Content Creation #AI Writing #AI Copywriting 1 social mentions

10

Ukelele

I also use a QWERTY keyboard and I use a custom keyboard layout that maps alt-a to ä, alt-u to ü, alt-o to ö, alt-s to ß (plus the same for uppercase for the first 3). That works well for me without the need to post-process. On macOS it's relatively easy to create using a tool called Ukulele (https://software.sil.org/ukelele/). You can also download my layout here: https://alex.kirk.at/USUmlaut.keylayout.

#Automation #Windows Tools #Scripts 4 social mentions

11

Telik

<a href="https://github.com/agentcooper/telik">https://github.com/agentcooper/telik</a> I was tired of YouTube website UI, so I created a simple macOS app to track YouTube channels and playlists. It is called Telik and available as open source and for a small fee in Mac App Store.

#Video #Video Platform #Video Downloader 2 social mentions

12

Docmati.com

I did several small projects for me and my family: - https://consumebefore.jose.gr/ to keep track of when the food expires once opened - https://markdowntable.jose.gr/ generates markdown tables with a link to edit the table - https://mazes.jose.gr is a simple maze generator. It never got traction inside my family, so I didn't invest much time in adding features. - https://bookmarklet.jose.gr/ a bookmarklet generator - https://docmati.com/ I did this for a friend and tried to productize it without much success - https://keepthis.site/ is just for me but open to everyone. It would be cool if it gets some traction, but I know there are several alternatives, and it lacks some basic features.

#Task Management #Design Tools #Productivity 2 social mentions

13

Scraping Fish

I've created a mobile proxy pool for a personal project of web scraping real estate data: https://scrapingfish.com/blog/byo-mobile-proxy-for-web-scraping Then, I expanded the infrastructure and built a web scraping API on top of it: https://scrapingfish.com.

#Data Extraction #Web Scraping #Web Scraping API 29 social mentions

14

Persumi

I built https://persumi.com to uplift my own blogs, and to turn text into audio (you can subscribe in your podcast app). Then, once I realised there's no good tools to promote it, I built https://rizz.farm so I can promote Persumi.

#CMS #Copywriting #Blogging 9 social mentions

15

patcher.xyz

I've built a tool for musicians using modular gear. This is a tool for people using eurorack gear. For synth people. What is cool about my tool is that I show the signal flow with a graph. Drag and drop planner. https://patcher.xyz/.

#Design Tools #Music #DJing 1 social mentions

16

Plain Org

- https://xenodium.com/an-ios-journaling-app-powered-by-org-plain-text - Lately, I'm having a go at building a privacy-focused plain-text-based iOS journaling app. I starte building it for someone important in my life but now using it myself. - https://flathabits.com - After reading Atomic Habits, I wanted a habit tracker but most had more friction than I wanted, required accounts, had distractions, lock-in etc. So I built a privacy-focused app, with little friction and no-lockin (saves to plain text). - https://plainorg.com - There are a gazillion markdown apps on the App Store, but hardly any supporting org markup, so I built one. - https://xenodium.com/scratch-a-minimal-scratch-area - I wanted a surface where I could just dump text with as few taps as possible. - https://github.com/xenodium/macosrec - I'm far down the Emacs rabbit hole, so I prefer Emacs-integrated tools. Built a ChatGPT Emacs shell to see what the hype was all about ;) tl;dr it really does help. - https://github.com/xenodium/dwim-shell-command - https://github.com/xenodium/ob-swiftui - Org block completion. - https://xenodium.com - I tend to scratch own itches and post my solutions here.

#Task Management #Note Taking #Project Management 37 social mentions

17

Flat Habits

- https://xenodium.com/an-ios-journaling-app-powered-by-org-plain-text - Lately, I'm having a go at building a privacy-focused plain-text-based iOS journaling app. I starte building it for someone important in my life but now using it myself. - https://flathabits.com - After reading Atomic Habits, I wanted a habit tracker but most had more friction than I wanted, required accounts, had distractions, lock-in etc. So I built a privacy-focused app, with little friction and no-lockin (saves to plain text). - https://plainorg.com - There are a gazillion markdown apps on the App Store, but hardly any supporting org markup, so I built one. - https://xenodium.com/scratch-a-minimal-scratch-area - I wanted a surface where I could just dump text with as few taps as possible. - https://github.com/xenodium/macosrec - I'm far down the Emacs rabbit hole, so I prefer Emacs-integrated tools. Built a ChatGPT Emacs shell to see what the hype was all about ;) tl;dr it really does help. - https://github.com/xenodium/dwim-shell-command - https://github.com/xenodium/ob-swiftui - Org block completion. - https://xenodium.com - I tend to scratch own itches and post my solutions here.

#Habit Tracker #Mobile #Privacy 40 social mentions

18

Wavebox

Being a co-founder, I often have to wear lots of different hats and needed a way to better manage multiple identities in my browser. I tried Chrome profiles and Firefox containers, but both felt messy. Instead, I wrote my own browser called Wavebox. It started as an Electron app but after quickly finding all the limitations, dropped Electron and built directly on top of Chromium. We're now approaching Wavebox's 7th birthday and going from strength to strength! https://wavebox.io.

#Messaging #Enterprise Communication #Productivity 16 social mentions

19

Vokabeln.io

I've built https://vokabeln.io to memorize German vocabulary from YouTube videos and websites. Currently at 16000 swipes.

#Studying #Diagrams #Language Learning 11 social mentions

20

OkJob.io

#Hiring And Recruitment #Job Search #Job Boards

21

React Guitar

These are the things I've created, some mostly for my own use, and others just for fun: 1. https://gptgames.io - A gaming platform using OpenAI. It came from a silly idea for another project I have, and I ended up putting it together in 1 month. 2. https://creepyface.io - I wanted to animate my face on my resume, and I decided to allow everyone else to do the same. 3. https://react-guitar.com - I wanted to learn guitar theory and tell me a better way to do it than coding a react component :D 4. https://github.com/4lejandrito/fetchbook - Since I started using Plausible analytics on all my sites, I found the need of reusing some code. I hope you find any of these interesting!

#Music #Mac #Secure File Sharing 8 social mentions

22

Shortcut Keeper

I built Shortcut Keeper (https://shortcutkeeper.com), a desktop app that lets you save keyboard shortcuts. It was mainly born out of my need to re-learn a lot of hotkeys when switching from using Windows to macOS. I wanted an easy way to record and keep all the new shortcuts I learned every day in one place.

#Mac #Productivity #App Launcher 2 social mentions

23

Caloree - Diet & Food Diary

I've built Caloree an iOS/Mac app that allows you to track your daily calorie intake, go on a calorie deficit diet and track your weight which has worked wonders for me. It's freemium, but most features are available for free. It can be found at https://caloree.app.

#Health And Fitness #iPhone #Android 1 social mentions

A Kanban board - https://nullboard.io/preview A GIF screen recorder - https://iobureau.com/ugiffer A calorie/food tracker - https://i.imgur.com/bSFBFcE.png Because all existing options were either over-engineered, had clunky UI, required an online account or a combination of thereof.

#Productivity #Apps #Project Management 5 social mentions

25

WireHub

I made wirehub.org[1] because I needed a way to setup a WireGuard VPN without giving out my private keys to anyone. Yeah I could self host an open source solution, but where's the fun in that? :p [1] https://wirehub.org.

#Security & Privacy #Cyber Security #VPN 2 social mentions

26

WakaQ

Does a library count? I wrote a background task queue in Python and TypeScript for my own use: https://github.com/wakatime/wakaq.

#Application And Data #Data Stores #Message Queue 2 social mentions

I made a guitar tuner iOS app! I didn't particularly like existing options and it was a fun way to learn some Swift/SwiftUI/AudioKit, all of which are outside the typical programming I do for work (Julia). It was also a great experience to "launch" a product. I sell a few units per month so it also nets me a hilariously small passive income. https://oneclicktuner.com.

#Online Payments #Music #Payment Platform 1 social mentions

28

Tatask

Like every programmer before me, I created a to-do list app of course! However, as a programmer, I prefer trees to lists so I made a to-do tree app. I have been using it religiously every day since to manage all aspects of my life in a way that I couldn't previously with tools like Wunderlist (RIP) or didn't have the time to make work in this way like Notion. Shockingly there aren't many other options out there for tree-based to-dos so when I posted it to my personal Twitter some people really liked it and started paying for it which turned my weekend project into more of a full-time side project. As of today, I've been working on it for almost a year on and off and in fact yesterday I submitted my first iOS app to the app store for approval (a quick rejection but easily solvable!). I think everyone should build their own to-do list app not least because it encourages you to actually use a to-do list app but also because I've learned so many interesting lessons from it along the way. Through this project, I've learned Svelte, iOS development with SwiftUI, lots of things about PWAs, and much more that is not easy to convey about engineering solutions. You can find it at https://tatask.com if you're interested.

#Productivity #Task Management #Web App 13 social mentions

29

Toybox for Laravel

- I made my own budgeting tool that mapped to my own personal ideas, using my bank's API[0]. - Also made a PHP sdk for said API [1]. - Made a small server tool that tracked South Africa's loadshedding schedules and would issue Minecraft rcon commands to save the world, warn players, and safely shut down the machine prior to the scheduled power cut. - Rolled my own Ansible setup for Nextcloud and a handful of other services (these days I'd rather use yunohost/sandstorm/umbrel/etc). - Currently working on my minimalistic (or rather, alternative) Laravel stack as a SaaS starter kit, called Toybox [2]. Currently waiting on FrankenPHP's Octane support to go live and then will transition to using that as the Toybox server. Right now it's in a bit of a WIP state. My intent is to use this as my own springboard for indie hacker type projects. - Made a Carrd site for my Airbnb side hustle [3] - currently busy trying to sell the property again so the Airbnb side of it is shut down. [0] https://github.com/nikspyratos/mneme-kai-nous [2] https://github.com/nikspyratos/toybox.

#Task Management #Design Tools #Productivity 1 social mentions

30

Panels - Comic Reader

#PDF Tools #PDF Readers And Editors #eBook Reader 3 social mentions

31

cc.dev

Over Covid, I got really into solving the Rubik’s cube. I couldn’t find any minimalistic apps to help me time myself and learn algorithms. So, I ended up writing an app for myself, which I later showed off on Reddit. People really seemed to like the design, so I cleaned it up a bit and made it available to everyone. The site (https://cubedesk.io) has been free to use for 3 years and has 50k users. Most recently, I've been working on an email marketing platform to help me email those 50k users. I noticed that emailing all those people was expensive and tedious, so created and launched https://cc.dev.

#Design Tools #Web App #Productivity 1 social mentions

32

pgweb

Built Pgweb (Postgres GUI) some time ago since I could not find a good minimalistic database explorer. <a href="https://github.com/sosedoff/pgweb">https://github.com/sosedoff/pgweb</a> The app is super simple, made with Go + jQuery and I still use it almost every day, and has brought it to every single company I've been with.

#Databases #Database Management #MySQL Tools 2 social mentions

33

BraiMax Chess

I created an app to improve faster at chess using puzzles and spaced repetitions. About a year ago I converted it into a public web app: https://chess.braimax.com/ Right now I'm in a hiatus in development (as I had to find a new job) but I'm planning to go back to it in some time. Tactically I achieved a substantial improvement using it.

#Android #iPhone #Marketing Platform 11 social mentions

34

oorja

I built a sort of meta webapp for online collaboration. Began as a side project to mess around with WebRTC and browser apis. Now, I’ve got something like Zoom but with tools like terminal sharing, a whiteboard, and even GPT inside (everything e2ee). Now it's my playground for new technologies and ideas. https://oorja.io.

#Collaborative Workspaces #Online Meetings #Meeting Tools 2 social mentions

35

CSS Selectors/Combinators Classifier

I created https://boxshadows.xyz as an interactive tool to simplify the use of CSS box shadows. Similarly, I developed https://selectors.info as a learning tool to classify selectors and combinators by type. We also made/use https://alwane.io to reorder color lists by palette, and it assists me in extracting colors from websites to study their color implementation. Additionally, we developed http://divize.io as a platform to practice HTML/CSS through a series of challenges. Lastly, http://front.tips is a directory I maintain for organizing interresting frontend-related tips I've discovered.

#Productivity #Collaborative Workspaces #Apps 1 social mentions

36

Divize

I created https://boxshadows.xyz as an interactive tool to simplify the use of CSS box shadows. Similarly, I developed https://selectors.info as a learning tool to classify selectors and combinators by type. We also made/use https://alwane.io to reorder color lists by palette, and it assists me in extracting colors from websites to study their color implementation. Additionally, we developed http://divize.io as a platform to practice HTML/CSS through a series of challenges. Lastly, http://front.tips is a directory I maintain for organizing interresting frontend-related tips I've discovered.

#Design Tools #User Experience #Tech 3 social mentions

37

CSS Box Shadows Generator

I created https://boxshadows.xyz as an interactive tool to simplify the use of CSS box shadows. Similarly, I developed https://selectors.info as a learning tool to classify selectors and combinators by type. We also made/use https://alwane.io to reorder color lists by palette, and it assists me in extracting colors from websites to study their color implementation. Additionally, we developed http://divize.io as a platform to practice HTML/CSS through a series of challenges. Lastly, http://front.tips is a directory I maintain for organizing interresting frontend-related tips I've discovered.

#Developer Tools #Design Tools #Web App 1 social mentions

38

Alwane

I created https://boxshadows.xyz as an interactive tool to simplify the use of CSS box shadows. Similarly, I developed https://selectors.info as a learning tool to classify selectors and combinators by type. We also made/use https://alwane.io to reorder color lists by palette, and it assists me in extracting colors from websites to study their color implementation. Additionally, we developed http://divize.io as a platform to practice HTML/CSS through a series of challenges. Lastly, http://front.tips is a directory I maintain for organizing interresting frontend-related tips I've discovered.

#Design Tools #Color Tools #Web App 1 social mentions

39

WordHoot!

Https://littlerbooks.com is where I summarize popular nonfiction books into bullet points so I can remember what I learned better. https://rate.house is a user generated media database. It's like IMDb but also has music, literature, video games, and podcasts. https://newsasfacts.com provides the most important news around the world concisely. https://wordhoot.com is a word guessing game inspired by Wordle featuring multiplayer, unlimited plays, and detailed playing history/stats.

#Free Games #Word Games #Games 6 social mentions

40

ratehouse

Https://littlerbooks.com is where I summarize popular nonfiction books into bullet points so I can remember what I learned better. https://rate.house is a user generated media database. It's like IMDb but also has music, literature, video games, and podcasts. https://newsasfacts.com provides the most important news around the world concisely. https://wordhoot.com is a word guessing game inspired by Wordle featuring multiplayer, unlimited plays, and detailed playing history/stats.

#Movie Reviews #Movie Ratings #Movies 11 social mentions

41

Littler Books

Https://littlerbooks.com is where I summarize popular nonfiction books into bullet points so I can remember what I learned better. https://rate.house is a user generated media database. It's like IMDb but also has music, literature, video games, and podcasts. https://newsasfacts.com provides the most important news around the world concisely. https://wordhoot.com is a word guessing game inspired by Wordle featuring multiplayer, unlimited plays, and detailed playing history/stats.

#Education #LMS #Reading 14 social mentions

I created https://inthenexthouriwill.vercel.app/ to keep myself accountable on school assignments!

#Project Management #Task Management #Todos 1 social mentions

43

FeedMail

Tool for easily transferring files between my devices. https://filepush.kevincox.ca/. Blog post about the implementation: https://kevincox.ca/2022/11/02/decentralized-via-webpush/ RSS-to-Email service https://feedmail.org/ Tool for identifying grids in D&D map images https://gridfinder.kevincox.ca/ A solver for the Ricochet Robots board game https://ricochetrobots.kevincox.ca/ A tool for quickly picking a first player when playing board games: https://playerone.kevincox.ca/.

#RSS #Email #SaaS 24 social mentions

I built a Chess app called SpicyChess(https://spicychess.com) that has a training component which leverages spaced repetition and strict time constraint to increase your pattern recognition ability for tactical motifs. SpicyChess also allows you to "bookmark" a puzzle for review later on. The philosophy behind the training regiment is inspired by the following two books which have been very helpful in improving my game: reading Rapid Chess Improvement, The Woodpecker Method.

#Design Tools #Android #Games 2 social mentions

45

Ntfy

Kind of similar, in the early days of COVID, I accidentally discovered that my state's website would have test results available several hours before they sent out the "view your results" email. So I made a script that would check the site every five or ten minutes and then ping me as soon as the result changed to something besides PENDING. In the course of that I stumbled on https://ntfy.sh/ which solved the notification problem without needing Twitter, and I've used it since then to let me know when long-running scripts complete.

#Cron Monitoring #Cron #Website Monitoring 61 social mentions

46

Rectangles

I built a website to visualize a day as 144 rectangles, where each rectangle represents 10 minutes: https://rectangles.app.

#Time Tracking #Side Project #Data Visualization 3 social mentions

47

TogetherLetters

My co-founder and I launched https://togetherletters.com a few years ago because we never felt like we saw updates from friends on social media. We now use TogetherLetters for our own groups and see updates from them, knowing the updates will never be on the web. In the last few months (with no marketing from us), usage has taken off. We're starting to spend more time on improving it and figuring out what all these new users want/need.

#Email #SaaS #Social 1 social mentions

48

Godspeed

I created Godspeed for myself, which is a fast, 100% keyboard driven todo app. I'm pretty serious about keeping my hands on my keyboard, and I wanted an app that wouldn't let me down by leaving out a hotkey for some tiny thing or another. It's also got the best date picker I've ever used, which has become my favorite feature. https://godspeedapp.com/.

#Monitoring Tools #Task Management #Design Tools 3 social mentions

49

Tournacat

A lot! I've just written everything down here: (https://jerrynsh.com/a-look-back-on-7-years-of-automating-stuff/); it was alot of fun and a good reminder of why I started programming the one that meant the most for me was earlier this year, I made an add-on for me and my friends that automatically syncs esports matches (e.g. Valorant, CS, LoL etc.) to Google Calendar . Things took some turns 10 months later I now have 100+ users (https://tournacat.com/).

#Entertainment #Sports #Design Tools 4 social mentions