from Hacker News

Ask HN: What's your Mac OS App side project?

by laksmanv on 10/17/24, 2:33 AM with 15 comments

I'm curious if any HN'ers here have any fun mac os projects they've built or even have an income from? I feel like we hear a lot about saas and iphone apps, but not mac os apps as much. I have a mac os app idea, and I'm also wondering if anyone knows of a good book on building a mac os app business? Or perhaps a book on building an iphone app company would be sufficient and applicable to mac os?

  • by appsDev on 10/17/24, 3:12 PM

    I made a paid MacOS app called RestEyes. It helps users follow the 20-20-20 rule to help reduce eye strain when working on a screen for long hours, and provides a gentle reminder to look away instead of blocking the whole screen.

    I have reached the top 10 in paid health and fitness apps a couple times. Revenue is probably in the low hundreds of dollars for lifetime, and the first year it was out it made very little. Second year it started getting some traction. (apple also takes 100 bucks a year to post an app, so first year basically lost money)

    It's hard since I don't really use paid advertising. I made it in SwiftUI and used a channel called SwiftfulThinking to learn how to code it, besides that just other yt tutorials as needed :)

    Link to SwiftfulThinking channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/swiftfulthinking Link to app for reference: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/20-20-20-rule-resteyes/id64493...

    I think it is possible for sure to build a business around a MacOS app. It just has to be unique enough for people to want to pay for it, and you have to know how to get it out there (marketing). Kinda like the iOS marketplace, just smaller, but thats not really an issue if you're solving a relevant problem for Mac users. Lmk if u have other questions!

  • by themapper on 10/21/24, 8:44 AM

    I've built https://uptimelog.app as a small side project to scratch my own itch. It's free for now, so I don't have much feedback on how to build a business around it yet. However, I do think MacOS development is definitely a niche in itself, which can be a good thing because you have a user base that needs software for a specific platform.

    I initially used Go for the backend and web as the frontend, so it essentially works as a local web server serving a web page in the browser. However, I'm now rewriting it in Qt (C++) to make it easier to maintain and to make it into a native application instead of a local web app.

  • by jviotti on 10/18/24, 6:59 PM

    Not building an app myself right now, but I worked a lot on the desktop app space, leading development at various companies and been thinking of writing a book on the topic (I'm an O'Reilly author in another space). I tend to blog on macOS stuff every now and then, like https://www.jviotti.com/2022/02/21/emitting-signposts-to-ins....

    Quick questions for everybody here:

    - How do you develop your apps right now, mainly cross-platform ones? QT? Would you enjoy a C++ cross-platform framework that binds directly (and well) to Cocoa?

    - Are you using Electron? If so, would you appreciate premium modules for Electron that bring a lot more "native" Cocoa functionality instead of reinventing the wheel in JavaScript?

    What would you wish a book on modern desktop app development would cover?

  • by fandorin on 10/17/24, 5:45 PM

    Almost exactly 1 year ago, I built a simple macOS app to run randomized photo slideshows (turns out - it's not an easy thing to do on macOS!). I got some nice initial traction (no paid ads), received user feedback, added more features, did a few releases, and after 6 months introduced a one-time fee (needed only if you want to run a slideshow with more than 150 photos; otherwise the app is free to use). And it turned out - people find it valuable and buy the license :)

    I have not published it via the App Store though. It's a direct distribution (via .dmg, but it's checked & notarized by Apple so I needed to pay $99/year fee to be able to do that). I'm using Sparkle to handle the updates.

  • by joenot443 on 10/17/24, 3:47 PM

    I’m the sole developer behind Nottawa, a free open-source live audioreactive visuals app for VJs and creatives. My vision is a simpler version of TouchDesigner or Resolume which can be picked up by non-technical folks who just want some cool, groovy displays at their next live event.

    Still lots of work to be done, but we’re getting there. In the middle of a full redesign for the landing page and the app itself, so don’t mind the mess :)

    https://nottawa.app

  • by petabyt on 10/19/24, 12:42 AM

    I made this a while ago: https://github.com/petabyt/mlinstall It runs on Windows/Linux/Mac.

  • by codingclaws on 10/17/24, 3:13 PM

    Looked into building an FTP GUI for MacOS, but I found that there aren't any easy options for programmatically doing SFTP in Swift. Best option looks like it's SwiftNIO which is fairly low level.

  • by zerr on 10/17/24, 9:09 PM

    Why does it have to be macOS but not a Windows app?