melvinzammit
Show HN: A macOS App to shrink files natively
I am a developer. I have been building stuff for the last 13 years. One common challenge in all my projects is compressing assets to make them as small as possible. I used to end up using online compressors, but this has a lot of privacy concerns.So, I finally set down for couple of weeks and built this simple app. I can just drag and drop assets in it and it shrinks them. It currently supports...
Show HN: A calorie explorer for 5,796 foods (1–900 kcal)
https://mealjar.app/nutritional-facts
I built this free searchable/sortable normalised nutritional facts database. I made it for the users of my App to quickly find how many calories ingredients have for their meal plan. It's very interesting to see the range of calories across 5796 foods.If you want to replicate it, the data is obtained from the USDA FoodData Central.
Show HN: I Hacked My Family's Meal Planning with an App
Me and my wife have been meal planning for the last 5 years. We used google keep. It was working for us, but during the years we needed to streamline the process. We tried other methods but nothing worked, so I spent the last 1 month hacking together this custom app. It includes all we needed to make our meal planning at least 5x more efficient. That is: syncing, one tap import of recipes,...
Show HN: 1 SEC to reduce file size of PNGs, jpg, pdfs, mp4, mov, GIF
I got tired of uploading sensitive assets to random websites just to make them smaller. Especially when those files end up in apps used by millions of people. I wanted a faster, safer way to optimize images and videos without ever leaving my device.So I built a MacOS app to quickly do this natively on my mac. I built a lot on iOS Apps but this is the first time I’m building a MacOs App.I would...
Show HN: My app for stopping BAD habits
I built an iOS app called HabitCrush to help me (and hopefully others) quit bad habits (like procrastination, porn, junk food, or over-eating..)It is like an inverse habit tracker. The idea is simple: name the bad habit, and every day you say no to the bad habit you get the satisfaction of “crushing” it in app. As a Bonus, each day you succeed, you get a unique gemstone as a small symbol of...
Re:Show HN: 12 Years Building an Interval Timer App
on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @05:42AM (#44874259)
thanks :)
Show HN: 12 Years Building an Interval Timer App
In 2013, I couldn’t find a decent interval timer for my workouts on the Android Market (Google Play wasn’t even called Google Play yet!). Could you believe that? Typing 'interval timer' returned nothing! So I decided to build a simple App while in college.Fast forward 12 years, that simple timer has grown into an ecosystem: Android, iOS, Wear OS, Apple Watch, and a coaching platform. All built...
I'm doing a 30 Days App Marketing Challenge [video]
Re:I'm doing a 30 Days App Marketing Challenge [video]
on Friday August 08, 2025 @06:28AM (#44835413)
If you have been developing apps in the last 2 years you know how hard it got to get app app noticed. The App Stores are piling up with vibe coded apps and it is getting harder to get an app noticed by relying just on ASO.
This year I challenged myself to build 12 Apps in 12 Months. I noticed that it doesn't matter what I build if no one gets to see it. So I encourage any indie devs out there to join me on this challenge!
One Rule: 1 Marketing Action a day for 30 days.
Revealing the metrics of all my 8 startups [video]
Re:Revealing the metrics of all my 8 startups [video]
on Wednesday August 06, 2025 @09:27AM (#44811710)
I come from a background of spending years on a project and perfecting it before releasing it to the world. I cannot say how many times I fell for the same mistake of spending months on a project and then zero minutes on marketing.
This year I wanted to change things so I challenged myself to build 12 startups in 12 months. Currently I'm in month 8. This was an amazing experience! It took me back to when I started developing Apps 12 years ago where I code something for fun and because it is useful not because I need to earn money.
I still need to work a lot on my marketing and distribution. Any ideas are welcome!
Show HN: I built a tool to make screenshots 10x better
In the last few months I was trying to up my presence on x (twitter), mostly by sharing my app dev experiences. I quickly noticed that just about everyone shares screenshots framed with a gradient background as if they were shot on a mac.Initially I started creating my versions with Adobe XD (I know its deprecated and all, but I love it), but this was a bottleneck. So yesterday, I decided to...
Show HN: If you smoke, this app helps you quit (no shame)
I have never smoked myself, but I know a lot of people that smoke and want to stop. This is for them. While researching the topic on various peer reviewed papers I was impressed how many parts of the body heal when a person quits smoking. It’s impressive that the body starts healing in the first 20minutes! This is why the app features a ‘heart avatar’ that heals with time reflecting the...
Re:Show HN: 1 min workouts for people who sit all day
on Monday May 26, 2025 @02:10PM (#44099994)
I fixed this in the next update coming tomorrow. I changed the reps to seconds for these timed exercises. Thanks for the notice!
Re:Show HN: 1 min workouts for people who sit all day
on Sunday May 25, 2025 @07:42AM (#44087136)
This is something i wanted with the app. In fact it works well with no internet. The exercise videos not so much because i could not figure out how to store high quality videos in app
Re:Show HN: 1 min workouts for people who sit all day
on Sunday May 25, 2025 @07:40AM (#44087124)
Thanks for the thought provoking comment! Yes I totally agree. I need to fix the marketing a bit to highlight what the app is good at and not exaggerate what it can do. In reality one cannot compare a proper workout with this. Its for different people and different aims. My aim is just to get people moving and let them see the benefits of exercise. Anyway, thanks I will update.
Re:Show HN: 1 min workouts for people who sit all day
on Sunday May 25, 2025 @07:33AM (#44087102)
Maybe I could do a mini webapp version on the landing page for people that don't want to get the app. Maybe after iron out the ios app issues i can do it. The exercises are hardcoded in the app itself atm
Re:Show HN: 1 min workouts for people who sit all day
on Sunday May 25, 2025 @06:51AM (#44086927)
Oh no! I'll fix it soon
Re:Show HN: 1 min workouts for people who sit all day
on Sunday May 25, 2025 @06:50AM (#44086924)
Thanks!
Re:Show HN: 1 min workouts for people who sit all day
on Sunday May 25, 2025 @06:50AM (#44086919)
It's technically not 1minute workout a day like the 7 min workout concept. It's 5x 1min workouts during the day. You get your blood flowing for a minute every now and then during the day. I read some interesting new studies recently about this idea
Re:Show HN: 1 min workouts for people who sit all day
on Sunday May 25, 2025 @06:44AM (#44086903)
An Android version is on my mind. I will code it native if people like the iOS version.
Re:Show HN: 1 min workouts for people who sit all day
on Sunday May 25, 2025 @02:42AM (#44086043)
My idea was to do as much seconds as there are reps to keep it simple. I understand that this is not well explained and can be explained better. Thanks!
Re:Show HN: 1 min workouts for people who sit all day
on Sunday May 25, 2025 @02:40AM (#44086041)
You are speaking about the animation or the video? I will take another look.
Re:Show HN: 1 min workouts for people who sit all day
on Sunday May 25, 2025 @02:40AM (#44086038)
Thanks!
Re:Show HN: 1 min workouts for people who sit all day
on Sunday May 25, 2025 @02:39AM (#44086037)
Thanks for the notice! I will fix
Re:Show HN: 1 min workouts for people who sit all day
on Sunday May 25, 2025 @02:38AM (#44086034)
I think the reminders might be better off in an app, but everything else should work. What I love about apps is that apart from them being more handy and quicker to open, I don't load my server much. Especially since it's free.
Re:Show HN: 1 min workouts for people who sit all day
on Sunday May 25, 2025 @02:34AM (#44086018)
It is a deterministic algorithm that works based on muscles used in the exercise and aiming to work all main muscle groups. I wrote the keyword AI in some places so that the average person would understand it. I might remove it.
Re:Show HN: 1 min workouts for people who sit all day
on Sunday May 25, 2025 @02:28AM (#44085997)
Thanks! Would love your feedback, if you do.
Re:Show HN: 1 min workouts for people who sit all day
on Sunday May 25, 2025 @02:27AM (#44085991)
Yes I agree, that's the ideal. However when I'm stuck working on my desk all day sometimes I find it hard to put on an exercise mindset until I build a habit of doing something for a few days. Hopefully this will help me shift back into that. Sometimes I wish I can build a mini gym behind my desk maybe that will motivate me.