Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall theme

  • Thread is a long showcase of “home‑cooked” software: tools, scripts, and full apps built primarily for the author’s own use, often with zero or tiny user bases.
  • Many are technically public (on GitHub, app stores, etc.) but functionally personal because they’re niche, undocumented, or not promoted.

Common types of personal‑only software

  • Productivity & knowledge tools

    • Custom task managers, GTD apps, note‑taking systems, daily journals, personal wikis, static site generators, invoice and budgeting tools, calendar helpers, meeting/ticket templates, gradebooks, bike mileage and trip loggers.
    • Text‑file and CLI–based systems for todos, goals, archives, and search; often heavily tailored and hard‑coded to one person’s workflow.

  • Media, content & entertainment

    • Personal music/video players, podcast/RSS readers, YouTube→podcast transformers, IPTV and streaming frontends, video scrapers/downloaders, home media libraries, video QA tools, bots for games, word‑game solvers, MTG and Dwarf Fortress utilities.

  • Automation, scraping & monitoring

    • Web scrapers for apartments, prices, events, reCommerce gear, job posts; bots to watch cinema listings, servers, sports odds, grading rules, or bike‑share data.
    • Financial and document processors (PDF→CSV/Beancount, tax and statement analyzers, expense extractors, invoice pipelines).

  • Home, hardware & “real‑world” projects

    • Home automation platforms, irrigation and hydroponic controllers, desk and gate controllers, RGB/brightness tools, garden and bonsai watering, projector remotes, office seat maps, sensor dashboards.

  • Dev tools & infrastructure

    • Custom shells, build tools, code generators, test harnesses, object‑file delinkers, OAuth proxies, CLI JSON processors, deployment frameworks, editing and browser userscripts.

Motivations for building

  • Existing tools are:
    • Too complex, too simple, hostile UX, missing key features, wrong platform, or privacy‑unfriendly.
  • Desire to:
    • Automate boring/repetitive work; centralize data; explore new tech; learn languages, frameworks, or hardware; or just have fun.
  • Several use projects to stay motivated on larger goals (e.g., game engines, long‑term sites, research pipelines).

Why many projects stay private

  • Maintenance and support burden.
  • Fear of code quality judgment or security issues.
  • Legal/TOS concerns (scrapers, IPTV, DRM bypass, betting, reverse engineering).
  • Extremely narrow or personal fit; hard‑coded assumptions.
  • Some explicitly enjoy the freedom of writing only for themselves.

Reflections

  • Many find writing tools for oneself deeply satisfying and skill‑building.
  • Others note they largely stopped hobby coding once programming became their job.
  • A recurring idea: personal software can be powerful precisely because it ignores generality and focuses only on one user’s needs.