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Ask HN: Anyone making a living building desktop applications?

• Osiris 5y ago
  I have a side-project (https://batterybarpro.com https://batterybarpro.com) that's a native Windows application. It brings in $400-1000 a month.
  • jventura 5y ago
    This kind of small tools is what I've been thinking of doing lately. It should not consume much of your time after you deploy it and there's not need to have a server and dealing with people's data.. Small question: how do your users find your product?
    • Osiris 5y ago
      When I first started, I was posting about it in various laptop forums and running Google Ads. Having a free version was extremely helpful (there are hundreds of thousands of free users). It spread via word of mouth pretty quickly. After a while, I just stopped all marketing efforts and now it's all just word of mouth/google search.
      • Melatonic 5y ago
        Have never heard about this but this looks awesome - Gonna throw this on my old ass thinkpad tonight!
  • DougN7 5y ago
    IMHO you could very easily raise the price to $15 and probably not lose any sales. Having a low price still has to overcome the concern of trusting your credit card to some website. Once someone has overcome that hurdle, 8 vs 15 is a tiny difference. I had software I sold at $25 originally and eventually had it at $99. Also, price signals quality.
  • pc86 5y ago
    This looks really cool, and I'm particularly impressed that it's a one-time purchase for lifetime access and you're still able to make this much off of it (and at a very reasonable price point). Congrats all around.
  • anotheryou 5y ago
    happy customer here :) Best part: it also shows battery health really well with discharge charts and can track multiple batteries (if you still have a laptop with which you can swap...).
  • ncpa-cpl 5y ago
    Hi :) I've been a long time user of Battery Bar Pro. Thank you! Its one of the first apps that I install on my new computers. What would be the best way to do a feature request/bug report?
    • Osiris 5y ago
      You can use the Support Forum link on the homepage or on the purchase page there is a reference to my email address (in the bulk purchase section).
  • jorams 5y ago
    There's a small error in the Windows 11 warning at the top of the page: > removed the feature the allowed for toolbars Should be that, I presume.
    • Osiris 5y ago
      Fixed
• WalterGR 5y ago
  There’s also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23211851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23211851 - “Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?” - which I coincidentally came across today in an old tab. It has a healthy amount of discussion.
• yashg 5y ago
  Yes. I have a suit of watermarking apps under the uMark name. Although I also have a full time job, I make as much money from uMark as I make from my job. I can easily live on any one of the incomes. The app is developed in .Net way back in 2006 and I keep updating it periodically.
• rurban 5y ago
  Unfortunately yes, currently. I left the sad state of native desktop apps 15 years ago, but we are now contracting for a medical app, windows of course. But, the new thing: also Linux!! armv7 firmware running the very same code as on windows. But only temporary. All the other contracting jobs and internal projects are Linux or baremetal firmware only.
• lovefeature 5y ago
  I made some windows apps for designer: https://beforedo.com/beforedo https://beforedo.com/beforedo and i also made some web apps: https://www.alovez.com/bing https://www.alovez.com/bing https://www.alovez.com/snapfeel https://www.alovez.com/snapfeel
• lovefeature 5y ago
  I made some windows apps for designer https://www.beforedo.com/beforedo https://www.beforedo.com/beforedo
• indigobyte 5y ago
  We've been developing desktop software for Windows for more than 15 years. Our flagship product is a documentation writing tool, Dr.Explain: https://www.drexplain.com https://www.drexplain.com Although today there are many online tools for help documentation writing, many users still prefer desktop software due to various reasons: from security and reliability, to better performance and better UX. In the past, we offered only perpetual license with free upgrades within a major version (e.g. 5.1, 5.2, ... etc) Since July 2021, we offer 1-year subscription licenses. So, about a half of year is still required to see how the new licensing model works. The profit is enough to support a small and agile team though our niche got a bloody ocean and we have to run faster and faster only to stay in the same place. From my experience, desktop software still works well in vertical and professional niches. In B2C or mass market, mobile and web tread on.
• high_byte 5y ago
  desktop does not imply "not SaaS". I'll add that today most desktop apps are headless Chrome. that being said, I actually do web, but were I to go desktop I would look for a niche that can't be done in browser, even though today you already got access to most APIs & hardware...
  • jventura 5y ago
    > I would look for a niche that can't be done in browser What kind of niches would that be, beside audio/video and other cpu intensive things?
    • pavlov 5y ago
      Anything that touches a lot of files?
      • jventura 5y ago
        Ok, but what kind of business niche would that be? You can also touch a lot of files on a webserver, although it would be a pain to upload them.
        • fsloth 5y ago
          For example file management. "Directory opus" is a windows desktop 'better explorer' in this category (I have bought a license myself, it's pretty darn good).
        • pavlov 5y ago
          Sure, a lot of people keep their stuff on somebody else's servers — a.k.a. the cloud — but there are still users who have plenty of local files: music, photos, code... That's a wide range of users, so I don't have a specific product idea, but seems like some kind of opportunity may exist in this niche. (If I had a product idea, I'd probably try making it myself — native desktop apps are much more fun to make than web.)
• eatonphil 5y ago
  I'm building a desktop-first (SaaS-eventual) data IDE for developers [0]. Making a living? Not yet. It being desktop-first makes it as easy to try out in a corporate environment as Sublime. The data never leaves your machine. Desktop-first is a big deal in devtools for this reason. [0] https://github.com/multiprocessio/datastation https://github.com/multiprocessio/datastation
  • webmaven 5y ago
    This reminds me of OpenRefine: https://openrefine.org/ https://openrefine.org/
    • eatonphil 5y ago
      Neat project and wow acquired by Google! Good for them.
  • hermitcrab 5y ago
    On the other hand, downloading software to your desktop is a risk (cf the Solar Winds supply chain attack). I recently got asked to fill in 30 question risk assessment questionaire before someone could upgrade to the latest version of my software (I declined).
    • andris9 5y ago
      In these cases you could also ask for a 50x price as the “enterprise option”. Filling a compliance form is not just a nuisance, you could take in some liability, so decline it or make sure it’s compensated accordingly.
      • hermitcrab 5y ago
        I declined.
      • newaccount74 5y ago
        I've tried that. Introduced an "enterprise license" that costs a lot more and told people they needed to get the enterprise license if they want me to fill their stupid questionaire. Not a single company took me up on my offer. After hearing I would charge extra for the questionaire, they always just bought the standard license and filling the questionaire suddenly wasn't required any more.
• QuiiBz 5y ago
  The guy from Inkdrop [0] makes a living with his note-taking app. He also has a YouTube channel [1] which I found very relaxing. [0] https://www.inkdrop.app https://www.inkdrop.app [1] https://www.youtube.com/c/devaslife https://www.youtube.com/c/devaslife
  • ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
    Ok I can't thank you enough for exposing me to this channel. The aesthetics and vim and the complete coding is so relaxing. Do you have any other channel recommendations like this?
  • jarl-ragnar 5y ago
    Uses a subscription pricing model though. I wonder why he choose that model. Personally I love the Sublime model, buy a license, use it anywhere.
    • jventura 5y ago
      I think it syncs the data between instances of the app (on the cloud - 10GB or something like that..).
      • QuiiBz 5y ago
        By default, it's synced on Inkdrop's servers, but you can self-host your own DB if you want. It's well described in the docs: https://docs.inkdrop.app/manual/synchronizing-in-the-cloud https://docs.inkdrop.app/manual/synchronizing-in-the-cloud
        • eps 5y ago
          ... in which case paying per month makes no sense.
    • jmcgough 5y ago
      Because a subscription pricing model brings in more money and a more predictable revenue stream. Most people selling apps on a pay-once basis can't afford to support it and develop new features indefinitely, so they move on to the next project and it goes into maintenance mode, only getting updates when a new OS update breaks it. Also needs to pay for the cloud servers running it lol.
• nso95 5y ago
  Mobile?
• eps 5y ago
  Plenty of people do this. Go onto any software listing site (eg. Softpedia or AlternativeTo), pick a not-a-brandname commercial product and chances are that it will be a single-person project. From things that are really well-polished and look like a team effort to pimped-up crappy weekend projects. Lots and lots are made and run by a single individual. Whether they sell well is an altogether different question, but it's generally not hard to make several $k per month off a decently useful consumer desktop software. All depends on the size of the niche, the fit (read, specialization) of the product, its quality and the amount of marketing effort. This business model is still often referred to as "shareware", so if you want to find communities of people that are involved in it, that'd be the keyword to search for.
  • mapmap 5y ago
    What is the state of the art in shareware for drop in payment / piracy protection?
    • giantrobot 5y ago
      Why bother with piracy "protection"? You're not going to keep ahead of dedicated pirates. Focus on features and bug fixes rather than going after non-customers. Every iota of effort spent going after pirates is effort not going into servicing existing customers or getting new ones.
      • eps 5y ago
        99.9% of pirates can only nop ifs. The remaining percentage are the pros that either work on paid basis or go after high-profile apps that give them visibility and status. A mildly well-protected battery indicator will remain intact for a very long time, simply because people who'd want to crack it, can't, and people who can crack it, won't. PS. Having cracked versions floating around affects SEO ranking of the master website, it affects sales and overall perrception of the product and, as importantly, it also hits support with a lot of bogus bullshit from people that aren't even customers. So for every iota one may "save" by not adding protection, they would spend multiple iotas dealing with the consequences.
• fsloth 5y ago
  A large fraction of computer games are mostly still "desktop apps". Lots of single person indie success stories there, such as "Papers please" or "Stardew valley". Seminal example in this genre is probably Minecraft (which of course expanded to a team before acquisition).
  • boppo1 5y ago
    I don't know how much longer this will last given stadia and xcloud. I've been playing on them and if they improve over 5 years' time, I could really see them becoming the standard.
    • mattl 5y ago
      Stadia won't be around in 5 years, it's a Google product.
      • boppo1 5y ago
        I've read that they're white labeling the tech. So it won't be "Stadia" but it will probably still be around.
• everly 5y ago
  Webgility is an example of a SaaS company that offers a desktop or cloud-based version of their product. Quickbooks for that matter as well.
• iffycan 5y ago
  I work on a desktop budgeting application. I love that it's desktop-only (and so do the users)! It doesn't earn a living (yet), but it makes more than enough to cover expenses. [0] https://www.budgetwithbuckets.com https://www.budgetwithbuckets.com
  • RandomRandy 5y ago
    Your application looks really nice. What framework are you using for the UI?
    • iffycan 5y ago
      It's Electron (for now)
  • bener 5y ago
    I'm downloading now, this looks really nice.
  • grumpwagon 5y ago
    I just tried this out this week! It isn't going to work for my needs (I like having payee names to track past expenses), but it looks like great software, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to people.
  • jwineinger 5y ago
    > Buckets includes some terrific extras such as really fast Amazon why-do-they-split-every-purchase-into-a-hundred-transactions reconciliation. magnificent! I hate reconciling my amazon -- and recently walmart grocery pickup -- purchases for this reason.
  • scarface74 5y ago
    Why would I want to sit at my computer to manage my budget instead of being able to access it anywhere? I always have a “computer in my pocket”.
    • cinntaile 5y ago
• frakt0x90 5y ago
  Not a self-venture but my old team built desktop applications for the pricing department at a very large airline. They did everything from recommending price changes to loading ad hoc adjustments and keeping track of pricing strategies. All in JavaFX. That team split and is making most of them web-based now but the desktop apps still thrive in the meantime.
• FpUser 5y ago
  I/my company have active Windows desktop application as a product with about 50,000 clients. Not making me rich but in combination with the products I develop for clients I am doing ok.
• alibarber 5y ago
  I have worked professionally for a company that made desktop apps for film production (VFX), and also internally for studios in their R&D departments and those were also almost entirely desktop based. Outside of professional work, I’ve jumped right back in to Ham radio over the Corona times, there are lots of desktop applications in use there (DSP mainly) but usability and support for hardware (both devices, and platforms) is hit and miss and I have a few ideas for making my own versions as side projects. Several of these are paid - so do you have any hobbies or niche domains you’re knowledgeable about that you could explore?
  • jimnotgym 5y ago
    It is interesting that there are many ham apps that are single person developed and closed source, but free to download. It's weird how open source is not ubiquitous in that hobby. This leaves lots off ageing, quirky software out there.
    • jeffreyrogers 5y ago
      I'm not sure how related it is, but the average age of people involved in ham is pretty old. I went to a few meetups near me and the average person there was at least 60 years old. So it might be that these apps are made by an older generation with different norms around open source. Could just be an EE vs CS thing too, since open source is less common the EE world.
  • Melatonic 5y ago
    Kinda have to be desktop based if your working with VFX levels of change the data - the storage solutions those types of places need to invest in are insane!
• SuboptimalEng 5y ago
  Atomic Edits[0] is a desktop app that helps YouTubers (like me) automatically remove silence in videos. It went viral on Reddit[1] but I realized later that building a video editing app with Electron (and not C++) was a bad choice. Library support video/audio editing was lacking. Recut[2] is an app that basically does what Atomic Edits aimed to do, but actually succeeded. I think it's because it was a native Mac app which meant it had access to better libraries for editing videos. (That or I gave up too early on Atomic Edits.) Orbital[3] is desktop app that allows you to search, filter, preview video files on your computer like YouTube. I posted on some subreddits and it had potential but I realized it wouldn't be enough to sustain me. It could've worked as a side-project (if I was working as a SWE) but being as my main source of income was from YouTube ad-revenue, it wasn't worth it. VideoHubApp[4] is a desktop app that does what Orbital aimed to do and actually earned a couple thousand dollars. It was started a few years earlier and was built with a similar tech stack. All that is to say, I made desktop apps that had potential, but didn't have the funds to see them to completion. Of course you could say it would be different if I had a SWE job + funds, but then I may not have had the time to learn React + Tailwind + Electron and complete these apps. [0] https://github.com/SuboptimalEng/atomic-edits https://github.com/SuboptimalEng/atomic-edits [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/ohbl6i/i_made_a_desktop_app_that_automatically_detects/ https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/ohbl6i/i_made_a_des... [2] https://getrecut.com/ https://getrecut.com/ [3] https://github.com/SuboptimalEng/orbital https://github.com/SuboptimalEng/orbital [4] https://videohubapp.com/en/ https://videohubapp.com/en/
• makz 5y ago
  Related question. How to start to develop desktop applications? In contrast to web applications there are not many resources out there and most seem outdated.
  • exdsq 5y ago
    I've not worked on a desktop app in a while but when I did, maybe 4 years ago, I found a lot of resources googling "MVVM C#" and following tutorials there. Microsoft tends to have a lot of decent tutorials on WPF Gui development. More recently I've been playing with C++ and Qt which has decent documentation too, but to me is far more complicated than Visual Studio and WPF. Most C# textbooks tend to have sections on GUI development too.
  • HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
    Download Visual Studio Community Edition and go to New Project -> WPF project and start learning C#. That's probably the path forward with the best chance of overall success.
    • ramoz 5y ago
      This as opposed to cross-platform? Any general use case or for a targets Windows user base?
      • fsloth 5y ago
        Afaik .net is cross-platform nowadays - Windows dev tools are likely to be most approachable though.
      • HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
        I'm answering in terms of what I know best. I, personally, don't see the point of supporting non-Windows desktops. User base isn't large enough for me to bother.
        • PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
• jimmyvalmer 5y ago
  • bener 5y ago
    Does it make you feel better to make others feel worse?
  • Splendor 5y ago
    What an incredibly rude thing to say to another person.
    • jimmyvalmer 5y ago
      Wait... we're not all bots?
  • jventura 5y ago
    Yeah, could not sell a single copy of the software I was doing back then.. I’m still trying to come up with something. Tried web apps but hadn’t much success there as well.
• ramoz 5y ago
  Also interested in folks doing this for their enterprise market and any available analysis on how to approach that market. My perspective is Enterprise is hard to hit with SaaS. It's also hard to build an integrated (AD/Network/Data/Files) desktop solution. It still seems more viable to start with a standalone, offline, Desktop solution that individual enterprise employees might consider trying / e.g. something like an app that replaces excel with better efficiencies. Maybe while building some SaaS-like component (advanced processing in cloud, API integrations, etc) that still opens the door for non-enterprise users. Ultimately while building a portable/cots cloud based solution. Further letting you evaluate ways to pivot in either SaaS or COTs in the future. Im still not confident that an MVP approach shouldn't just always accommodate seemless accessibility (SaaS) for a larger general market, and that I shouldn't discount enterprise requirements for non-corporate LAN user bases.
  • ramoz 5y ago
    For reference I'm taking my shot with https://github.com/wailsapp/wails https://github.com/wailsapp/wails (webview2 supported on Windows) and https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js for a PDF processing related use case. Wails because I imagine extensive Golang based services (preference/experience) in any cloud env. .NET would be my other approach for O365 based integrations. Rust has something similar to wails, https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri . Then there all the traditional native vs cross-platform methods. No approach, or cross platform framework, really seem quite right. But I figure time and money would be the important factors in any serious avenue I want to take things.
    • anonymouse008 5y ago
      ha, I'm doing the same on Mac! Reach out, maybe my (hopefully portable) backend/pdf module could help!
      • ramoz 5y ago
        Ha, cool, thanks for the insight. I'm am curios about potential collaborations so ill reach out soon
• sitzkrieg 5y ago
  I used to until recently. A LOT of active trading software is still traditional desktop applications for various reason and a decent niche. heavy simulation software is another
  • pvarangot 5y ago
    I'll add music making software. I don't make it but it's been my only hobby since the pandemic started and I shelled some money on desktop apps that can easily be coded and maintained by a single dev, like librarian software for hardware synths and some VSTs to use in Ableton.
• throw8932894 5y ago
  I do. Data management and visualisation for local data store. This stuff is private and can not really go into cloud. Was using Java Swing until very recently. Switched to Kotlin JS in browser, not sure it can count as desktop anymore.
  • 727564797069706 5y ago
    How have your experiences with Kotlin JS been? I've been considering it for similar type of desktop app development, but haven't dug deeper yet. Mainly because I already have some experience with Rust and have been considering options in this space before venturing elsewhere.
    • throw8932894 5y ago
      It is good if you want to avoid javascript, it is programming on web, but with solid Java tooling. My main point is to have the same language on front and backend.
• outcoldman 5y ago
  Have 4 macos apps that I have built about an year ago. Getting 600-1500 a month. https://loshadki.app/ https://loshadki.app/
  • loxias 5y ago
    Curious to know how you approached advertising/marketing. How did people find your apps? How much effort and money was spent on finding customers?
• fifticon 5y ago
  I know I was just misunderstanding, but for 60 seconds I was skimming through the comments trying to grasp the gist of what software for 'living buildings' was all about, I thought it was some ecological concept. Anyway, I earned a living making desktop software until 2016; since 2016 I make Revit desktop plugins.
• sterlinm 5y ago
  Bill Gates did alright :P
• mrleinad 5y ago
  I work for a company that sells a niche desktop app for mining companies, called Aegis.[1] Even if the company is planning to implement something web related in the near future, the business is on the desktop and there are no plans on taking it entirely to the web anytime soon. Mining companies prefer it that way, as internet connectivity is not something you can reliably find on site. [1] https://iring.ca https://iring.ca
  • ak39 5y ago
    Delphi?
    • mrleinad 5y ago
      Winforms
    • lsferreira42 5y ago
      It looks and feels delphi
      • mrleinad 5y ago
        Winforms
• fxtentacle 5y ago
  Yes and no. I'm an employee so it doesn't really matter, but my side-project desktop apps pay well enough that I could live off them if I go for a student lifestyle (no pricey events, no restaurants, cooking yourself, cleaning yourself). It was a long way. I started in the Pro Audio niche and initially supported Windows, Linux, Mac. Over time, I learned the hard way that supporting Apple's constantly changing OS is very expensive, plus Mac users tend to act the most entitled when stuff doesn't look or feel like their native OS. And Linux just never sold a license, instead I got lots of Open Source bitching. So eventually, I dropped Linux and Mac support, doubled down on the new Windows APIs and then things got nicely profitable. Price is one-off $299 for the regular app kit with perpetual updates (so far). People use the apps for making movie sound effects.
  • hermitcrab 5y ago
    Apple like to nuke their developer ecosystem from orbit on a regular basis. It is quite tiresome. Qt protects me from it to some extent, but cross platform frameworks have their own issues.
  • bmj 5y ago
    cleaning yourself I did not realize this was a mark of the student life. Who knew I was still a student at age 49?
    • seb1204 5y ago
      Had to smile
    • cookie_monsta 5y ago
      I, too, am a couple of pay raises away from paying someone else to clean me
      • tatami 5y ago
        TBH this is not a pay issue, no matter whether I can afford it. I would hate that a stranger enters my house to clean, and I would hate it even more when I was not at home.
• zwieback 5y ago
  Inside R&D organizations there are plenty of groups building desktop apps for internal use. We have a ton of Forms, WPF and some Qt apps we use for R&D and manufacturing purposes. Also lots of services and other non-GUI stuff. For side-business it'll be a lot tougher than it was when I started 30 years ago.
  • YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
    Same for us in VFX mostly python though.
• jpeter 5y ago
  I make Erp software with WPF. Yes you can still earn money doing that.
• semireg 5y ago
  This is my 3rd (or is it 4th?) year of developing and selling Label LIVE, an electron app for designing and printing labels. Originally it only worked with USB thermal printers, but over the last few years it's grown into a multi-function image-rendering pipeline that integrates data import (via spreadsheet, CSV or API) with barcodes, text, image output. My app revenue eclipsed my iOS/NodeJS consulting in 2021 and I hope to double revenue in 2022. Read more at https://label.live/features https://label.live/features. The tech stack for this app is really interesting (to me at least, natch). Lots of native node modules that need finesse on both macOS and Windows. I don't yet support Linux because out of thousands of users, only 2 people have emailed about Linux support (probably both from HN!). I really love building Electron apps. It's a total joy bringing something (albeit "inefficiently" wrt memory and "native" qualities) like this to market for a niche that's otherwise a dumpster fire of old and clunky 1980s-era Windows-only software. As for licensing, Label LIVE is licensed per computer. I wrote a custom license implementation leveraging JWT. The JWT is signed by my license server and the app verifies the signature and that the contents match the "fingerprint" of the computer being licensed, expiration, etc.
  • chrisandchris 5y ago
    Looks quite cool. Sadly no Linux support, but I get why (got to build a printing library for Brother p-touch once). However, I was about 5 minutes on your site and could not find a list of compatible printers. Where did you hide it :) ?
    • semireg 5y ago
      Sorry, it's right here: https://label.live/printers https://label.live/printers
      • kingcharles 5y ago
        It's really hard to find on an otherwise lovely site. I had the same issue as the poster above you. Maybe you could have a list of recommended printers too? Looks like a great app though - I have a forthcoming need to print a lot of inventory labels and I think your app would be great for that.
• throwaway204401 5y ago
  We sell a desktop app with an involvement in dev and support of about 0.25-0.50 FTE, with revenues in the range of $50K/month although it was launched 9 years ago and the first year was only about $2K/month. The server side is just one Windows 4GB server for user signups, billing and license validation. One good thing of desktop apps is that the server side is so cheap, you are basically selling IP. It has this features: * B2B in a niche market (TAM < 100K-200K users) * Some viral component so you do not have to spend money on ads for growth. * Sold as a subscription and only as a subscription. Don't innovate with licensing focus on product, this is important. When users have fewer buying options, they decide faster. That's why Steve Jobs reduced 50 Mac models to just 3. * When the subscription ends, the application must stop working. This is also very important. You want your entire user base to be able to install the last version. You do not want to support older versions, you only want to support one. * Has to have a very generous trial so that users have time to find use cases with your product. Better a trial based in actual usage instead of exploding trial base in calendar days. You want your users to actually use your product and depend on it.
  • drchiu 5y ago
    This sounds very interesting. Not to give away your company’s magic sauce of course, but if you were starting today, what niche would you target based on what you know?
    • throwaway204401 5y ago
      In one in which you can truly empathise with your users, preferably something yourself have experienced as very inefficient and unnecessarily painful and complicated in your professional life. It can be a relatively small gap in theory covered by several larger tools but only superficially covered either because they do not truly understand the pain point of that gap or because they simply want to limit complexity of their base product and their surface of support. So then you focus on developing that feature to perfection with a strong focus on integrating with each of those larger tools, whenever possible without any collaboration of those larger tools (that will come anyways later if you get the traction). The larger tools will never compete with you directly because if they created a tool doing the same thing you do, they would have to integrate with their direct competitors, which is a bad scenario for them as either they get expressly blocked by the other tool developer if seen as a threat or because by having such tool they would be ultimately improving their direct competitors tools. Our current position is that if a customer of us decides it's time to change the larger tool, one of the factors of the decision is how well the new larger tool integrates with our tool.
• mrkentutbabi 5y ago
  Desktop apps could be be doomed in walled garden.
  • mikewarot 5y ago
    Desktop programs don't require permission from an app store, so there's no wall.
    • maxshm 5y ago
      That is correct. Only you need a code signing certificate (EV is even better). And renew them every third year.
• hermitcrab 5y ago
  I been making a full-time living since 2005 selling software written in C++/Qt for Window and Mac. My latest product is a drag and drop tool for data transformation (merge, split, clean, dedupe etc): https://www.easydatatransform.com https://www.easydatatransform.com Things have mostly moved to web, but desktop apps still have major advantages in some areas: -less latency -data kept locally -better development tools
  • cosmodisk 5y ago
    This looks great! I think you've got one more customer. What did you use to build it?
    • hermitcrab 5y ago
      Thanks. Qt and C++. The Excel I/O uses the LibXL library.
• Shadonototra 5y ago
  i did for a while selling utilities for MMORPGs it was making some decent amount, i was a student at that time, so it was very satisfying experience; better than working for macdonald ;)
• terhechte 5y ago
  I've worked for the past ~2 years (in my spare time) on a macOS / iPadOS presentation app: https://hyperdeck.io https://hyperdeck.io It isn't released yet, but I do have some loyal beta users, so I'm hopeful that some of them will buy the app once the last couple of issues are fixed.
• DizzyDoo 5y ago
  I make video games like this one [0] or this one [1]. It's pretty simple, you can buy the game and then download and play it. Are games 'desktop apps'? It's not the language I would normally use but I think it applies. Having been out of the web app development bubble for about seven years now, there's whole industries that work entirely in the pay-for-it-and-then-download model, and while games-as-a-service is more popular now than ever before there's still plenty of the old-school way of doing things going on. I really like the simplicity. You can buy the thing, maybe from Steam or maybe from a DRM-free store like Humble, download it, play it. You can get a refund if you don't like it, or buy another copy and gift it to a friend if you do. [0] - https://store.steampowered.com/app/386900/The_Cat_Machine/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/386900/The_Cat_Machine/ [1] - https://store.steampowered.com/app/654960/The_Eldritch_Zookeeper/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/654960/The_Eldritch_Zooke...
  • fvavsc 5y ago
    This is so amazing. This post and all the thread in it is very inspiring and a proof that one can make living from pretty much any type of development. I am a web developer and always assumed that you need SaaS or mobile app to make money from programming. But I hate to be responsible for customer data or troubleshoot servers at night. I might have to look into desktop development and even game development as that was the reason I studied computer science.
  • colbyhub 5y ago
    I've been wanting to enter the game space for some time now. Is this what you do full-time? If so, how did you transition from web dev to game dev?
    • DizzyDoo 5y ago
      I got up early every day and got in an hour or two before my proper full-time backend Python programming job begun. That and working on The Cat Machine on Saturdays got it finished within a year, and then after it came out I could go full-time. It's hard to just make the switch from 'real' (normal?) job to small business game programming without already having a game that's done okay released, so that's what worked for me.
• zupo 5y ago
  After 15 years of SaaS-ing, myself and two collegues, everyone part-time, are trying to see if we can make a profitable macOS app: https://paretosecurity.com/ https://paretosecurity.com/. Revenue in last 30 days is $3000+, we started working on it back in July. So, it's something? That said, long-term, we expect to earn more from subscriptions for businesses, than we do from single-user lifetime licenses. But again, ATM, it's the single user licenses that sell well.
  • muttled 5y ago
    How are you marketing this if I might ask?
  • jb1991 5y ago
    That looks like a rather useful app.
    • zupo 5y ago
      Thanks! And it's open source: https://github.com/paretoSecurity/pareto-mac/ https://github.com/paretoSecurity/pareto-mac/
      • phkahler 5y ago
        Interesting that you're selling a GPL licensed app. I think that's actually quite viable in many cases. I'd rather pay a low price and get something in the app store than have to build it myself.
        • hollerith 5y ago
          What if a competitor uses the GPLed code to sell essentially the same app for less?
          • zupo 5y ago
            As much as I hate to say it as a developer: code is trivial. Finding users is the hard part. Additionally, our long-term vision is to make the bulk of revenue from Teams subscriptions, where most value comes from a web-based dashboard (https://paretosecurity.com/teams https://paretosecurity.com/teams), which is closed sourced.
• splittingTimes 5y ago
  Our company sells HW and SW for the dental sector. We have a desktop app that processes DICOM data to do implant treatment planning (where to place an implant in the patient jaw). Output is a STL file to print a drill guide for the oral surgeon to perform a guided surgery. Our desktop scanners for dental labs and our intra-oral scanners for dentists generate 3D meshes of the patients oral situation. Those meshes are the input data for the CAD/CAM Software my team builds. It is a desktop app for the digital design of dental restorations. The GUI is in javaFX and 3D visualization is done with OpenGL 4.5. Once the restorative Design is done, that app can generate many different output formats. Labs will feed the design files their local milling machine or 3D printer. Dentists can send it to centralized milling facilities of their choice to produce the crown or bridge or what have you. Some impressions can be seen here: https://youtu.be/5THQMr5SAH0 https://youtu.be/5THQMr5SAH0
  • franga2000 5y ago
    Not sure if it was your specific software, but I recently filmed a promo for a local dentist who was demonstrating this exact tech and I was blown away by how quick and accurate those scanner sticks are and how well the software stitched it in real time. How the hell can you scan something as small, wet and soft as the inside of a person's mouth and stitch it all perfectly? Seems like the absolute worst environment for scanning
    • splittingTimes 5y ago
      It's great to hear that this little piece of technology inspired amazement. It is quite something. Your observations is spot on: Indeed, the environment is far from ideal. 2-3 years ago dentists had to apply a powder onto the patients teeth to make just the scan of the teeth work. Now the software has matured to work powderless. The scan has to work for a wide variety of surfaces and vis-a-vis refractive indices like teeth, metal implants, ceramic or gold inlays, gingiva, orthodontic engagers. The very high end models even detect tooth decay / caries. The stitching is another challenge. Again, in the past the scanner would loose his reference on the mouth and it was fiddly to get it back to continue from the last scanned part. The team working on this was brilliant to overcome this problem and now it is a smooth experience Finally, accuracy is something all devices on the market having a hard time with. They are operating on the limit of what is possible. Small partial scans are no problem. But when you scan a full arch, you must ensure the deviation does not exceed 30-50 microns over that full arch. Otherwise, if the dentist plans to do a big bridge that spans several teeth a lower accuracy will lead to miniscule deviations and twists in the designed and later produced bridge, that the patient will recognize it and feels that it "just does not fit right". Our mouth is super sensitive in this regard because of the high number of nerves/sensors. Our tongue operates like a magnifying glass. When you have a small hair in your mouth or between your teeth you will feel that right away.
• yboris 5y ago
  My Video Hub App is generating about $500 / month. It's a perpetual license for $5 per copy. I am planning to create another app that might generate a similar income stream. I've done 0 paid advertising - only some posts here-and-there; I would probably have more sales if I knew how to market my app better. https://videohubapp.com/en/ https://videohubapp.com/en/ - MIT open source: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App
  • cvhashim 5y ago
    Dumb question but why don't you get some help with sales and marketing. Even some affiliate marketing to increase usage.
    • yboris 5y ago
      Unsure where to ask. Worried about high costs. Suggestions welcome :)
      • Melatonic 5y ago
        Setup a Google Adwords account - once you get the basics its super easy. Very cheap to start out and they used to have a special where you got some free adword money to play with on starting a new account. Generally I would say try to minimize the amount your spending per keyword - broader search terms or the broader options on those search terms always cost more. Might help a ton if you renamed your software to something that is more searchable (or just add some kind of name on the end or start)
        • hermitcrab 5y ago
          On a product that costs $5? Forget it. No-way you will get a return. (Background: making a living selling software online for 16 years, advertised continuously on Adwords for nearly all of that).
          • Melatonic 5y ago
• newaccount74 5y ago
  I make a Mac app targeted at developers and sell around 150k euro worth of licenses a year. It's been my only income for the last ten years or so. In my case a web app just wouldn't work very well (it's hard to connect a web app to things behind a firewall) I'm also a firm believer in pay-once software, you still get recurring revenue unless you saturate the market, which a small company won't do anyway.
  • finiteseries 5y ago
    Sharing it here wouldn’t even qualify as an advertisement mate, feel free to throw that link in there and maybe scoop up a few more users for your troubles.
  • dgellow 5y ago
    Would you mind sharing more details regarding your application?
    • newaccount74 5y ago
      Sorry, I'm trying to stay anonymous on HN.
  • loxias 5y ago
    I'm curious to know more, as both a potential competitor and customer :) What's the name of your app, I'd like to give it a spin.
• kaetemi 5y ago
  Yes. Tools for developers and artists. It's a healthy market if you can provide value.
• grujicd 5y ago
  I'm making Windows/.Net based app for managing queues - QueueExplorer. Started with MSMQ support back in 2005, now it supports Azure Service Bus, RabbitMQ and ActiveMQ. It's old fashioned perpetual licensing, so revenue is a rollercoaster. Because of that, it's emotional rollercoaster as well. Good thing is you get paid for full license at the time of purchase instead of collecting it in 10-20 months. Bad thing is every month starts at zero. Although .Net went multiplatform years ago, my app relies on WinForms a lot so it's Win only, except through Wine. I would love to support Mac as well but the only realistic option looks to be Electron based, and it would be a significant step back for my Windows users. Maintaining two different GUIs looks like a problem for micro company. The best thing about desktop software is it can't break for all the users at once like server-based app can. That gives some piece of mind when you're micropreneur. Sure, there are bugs, but they affect only users who downloaded buggy version. You can't crash all installed instances just like that. The worst thing is, it's hard to ask for a subscription. Yes, I hate it as a user, but would love it as a business owner :) https://www.cogin.com https://www.cogin.com
  • thom 5y ago
    Any plans for Kafka support? I was frankly a bit shocked when Conduktor raised investment: https://venturebeat.com/2021/11/22/conduktor-which-brings-a-user-friendly-gui-to-apache-kafka-nabs-20m/ https://venturebeat.com/2021/11/22/conduktor-which-brings-a-... If anything, it's a testament to what an absolute pain it is to develop on existing message queue/event streaming platforms, so it's clearly a valid niche.
    • grujicd 5y ago
      I would love to support Kafka, and even made a simple prototype. However, hit a brickwall when discovered that .Net client (by Confluent, other clients seem to be deprecated) does not have all the features the Java one has. For instance there's no way to get current consumer offsets and I think's something that should be available in a management app.
      • coder543 5y ago
• czeh 5y ago
  I spent a few years on a side project for a 'better' screenshot tool: https://www.bettersnipper.com/ https://www.bettersnipper.com/ Tried to sell it for $5 home / $14 office, but only got a handful of purchases. I still personally use it every day and have probably collect 10k+ Snips across all my computers. I converted the entire program from VB.NET -> C#.NET over a year which burned me out and I've kind of just let it wither due to lack of interest. I aimed for the "10x better" than free tools, but most people are fine with the Windows Snipping Tool. :shrug:, on to the next project. I recently added an achievement system and a screen Gif capture feature, but haven't found the energy to polish+deploy those.
  • sockpuppet69 5y ago
  • hermitcrab 5y ago
    I find it hard to take seriously software that is $5. Google 'price as signal'. Also you are up against some very established and polished competitors, such as SnagIT.
    • ZeroClickOk 5y ago
      ...or Sharex, that is pratically a swiss army knife
      • czeh 5y ago
        All good points. I found Sharex to be overkill. I just wanted a tool that lets you take screenshots and edit and share them quickly for a cheap price.
    • czeh 5y ago
      Thanks for the tip. It’s interesting that iPhone apps can survive at $2.99 price points but not desktop software. No app ecosystem to blame? (Does anyone actually use the Windows Store?)
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• omarhaneef 5y ago
  Pay close attention to how you charge. I hate giving my credit card information to another company, so I end up using Amazon a lot just to have it in one place. Similarly, with software, I am more likely to purchase desktop software from the MacOS app store. I feel exposed giving my information to a company I may not have heard of before. I do buy a lot of useful looking desktop software on the Mac OS app store. It must be tough converting enough customers though and pricing is not easy.
  • MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
• richharms 5y ago
  6+ years on a team of approx. 5 (BA, UX, software engineers) developing a Windows/WPF application to configure equipment for industrial process control. When I left the company just under a year ago additional work was being planned. It may be a specialized area, but desktop apps are definitely being built in this space - had an awful lot of fun building the app as well.
• jcelerier 5y ago
  I'm developing https://ossia.io https://ossia.io ; a free software for artistic creation (live shows, interactive installations, VJ, etc.). Between public & private grants and the occasional consulting gig to add a feature or support contract, I can live :) Tech stack is C++17/20 & Qt, I target Win / Mac / Linux (and mostly develop on Linux).
• pjmlp 5y ago
  Yes, consulting for enterprises doing desktop stuff for laboratory and factory automation is still a thing, specially in air gaped environments. Stuff like this, https://www.biotek.com/ https://www.biotek.com/ I have done WPF and Windows Forms for companies using such kind of hardware. Qt is the major alternative for these customers. Also note that iPads and Android tablets with plugged monitors are a kind of desktops.
  • oneplane 5y ago
    We're doing air gapped development (and even single-machine deployments) with web tech by just also including a server component with the client or on the air gapped network. There is one instance where we still use machine control / HMI non-web, and that's when there is no TCP/IP stack available. Doesn't happen that often anymore.
    • pjmlp 5y ago
      Sure, Electron is also a thing, and even I was on a project where we made use of Web widgets in 2000. It seldom comes up though.
      • oneplane 5y ago
        I'm not talking about faking a web app, just use a normal webbrowser and point it to the internal server. It's what we do in industrial automation as well (of course with watchdogs so it doesn't end up displaying a dead page if windows is used and the HTTP channel shits itself). We did this with meta-refresh and progressive loading (https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-lost-art-of-progressive-html-rendering/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-lost-art-of-progressive-ht...) earlier on as well. Benefit is that you get that client-server model without having to do all that much special for the client side, works on any client that has a working browser (even ancient IE5/Netscape4 rendering engines), even embedded systems and weird stuff like NetFront and Opera Mini Java (which runs nearly everywhere). A lot of actions are essentially reading for status and anomalies, and every now and when adjust or control things (not real-time actuator control like a robotic arm or something like that, that requires hard realtime loops for us), anything bigger than that you'd do on a full desktop style system anyway and you can just use a modern web app in the browser for that. Those then also work on tablets (wallmounts! yay!), PDAs (well mobile phones without modems today) and other devices.
• fuy 5y ago
  I work at Veeam, our main product (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veeam_Backup_%26_Replication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veeam_Backup_%26_Replication) is a WPF desktop app. Some of the newer/smaller ones are web(react) based. UI is of course just a small part of all the stuff that goes in a large B2B/Enterprise app, but technically it's a desktop app. Also, FWIW, we do subscription licensing, so I don't think it's a real dichotomy.
• LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  Yes, but the desktop computer is typically attached to a $250k piece of custom industrial automation, the fact that there's 200 hours of C# programming for the HMI/ERP client/label printer/data logger is irrelevant to the customer, it's just a line item next to the PLC/robot programming, raw materials, welding, fabrication, wiring etc. Add some Beckhoff, Siemens or (yuck) Rockwell capacity to your stack - buy a used EK1100 and some IO cards off eBay, download TwinCat 3, and add that to your resume and you'll be able to build B2B products for a lot of places. There are a surprising number of "controls engineering only" shops, it's not clear to me how that kind of business works out logistically when so much of the software requires certain kinds performance from the hardware and vice versa.
  • HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
    Thanks for posting this. I have a background in embedded and a couple years ago I built a custom Windows GUI for an Advanced Motion Controls based motion system as a freelance project. Until your post, I totally forgot that I have a Kollmorgen AKD control with a servomotor in my basement. A customer had sent it to me so I could test some custom hardware I designed for them and I always wanted to see if I could integrate it into my GUI project, but got so busy I completely forgot it was there. Time to dust off the hardware...
• oleksii88 5y ago
  Working on https://folge.me https://folge.me app for creating documentation and step by step guides ( basically an advanced screenshot tool with editor and many export options). One-time license, and no recurring charges, app brings in around 400-500 EUR (500-600 USD) per month.
• smaddox 5y ago
  There's plenty of people making a living off of single player video games.
• Melatonic 5y ago
  I hope people are still building desktop apps because as much as I hate that literally EVERYTHING is being made into an app on mobile (mainly just so they can then push notifications) there are a lot of things that really just run better as a desktop application. Do browser based video editors for example exist? Yes they do and I am sure they have their uses. But if I need to ingest a few hundred gigs of footage and cut that down to a reasonable length there is no way I trust Google Chrome's memory management to do that in any reasonable fashion. I think what I miss the most are the really lightweight desktop applications that use very little resources but still help accomplish very large things. People love to rag on Windows for the fact that it maintains backwards compatibility but that has also allowed some fairly old but amazingly efficient applications to still be useful today. My personal favourite example of this is a one man shop developer from Japan who makes some insanely reliable and useful tools on Windows: FastCopy: https://fastcopy.jp/ https://fastcopy.jp/ This tool has been around since 2004 and the original developer is STILL regularly updating and improving it. It blows away every other file copy tool on Windows out there (even the fanciest paid solutions) and the interface is dead simple and easy to use while still offering lots of advanced features. Many years ago I had to regularly move terabytes and terabytes of data to external drives that were then driven between VFX houses in Los Angeles. A lot of these outfits were basically smaller startups so often we would have multiple drives connected over USB to a single workstation with a 10gig link back to the storage server. I did extensive testing comparing every tool out there and not only was this thing a little faster than even the best CLI tools it also destroyed the others in terms of reliably transferring data over connections that were not always reliable. If the USB interface dropped for a second a lot of the other tools would fail or start doing a diff compare from scratch while this thing just happily chugged along. And once I had set it up and enabled the right click menu integration it was easy to train someone who was not very technical to use it. It even beat every Linux based solution I tried in reliability. IP Messenger: https://ipmsg.org/ https://ipmsg.org/ Same guy also makes IP Messenger which is a ridiculously light text chatting tool. It only works over LAN (hence the name) but requires NO central server, has tons of customization options (and can also be locked down in a business environment) and is pretty feature rich. It is also regularly updated and is end to end encrypted and will run on the slowest of the slow machines. And it has been around since 1996! Both of these are free but I would honestly pay pretty good money for them if I was running my own business.
• omnibrain 5y ago
  We develop alarm management software for alarm receiving centers. (mainly in germany) A typical installation is in the 5 digit region but for sustainable income we offer (and live from) update subscriptions and 24/7 emergency support. Cost for both is a monthly fraction of the license sum. What sets us apart from other software in the market ist our internal "workflow" engine with a graphical (flow chart like) editor. (somewhat similar to Node-RED) Our customers can use it to program the reactions to the alarms (calls, mails, SMS, comparisons with states, user entry, reporting, etc.) individually to their (or their customers) demands. But some of them go further and use it to implement all processes of their company. We also offer consulting, customizing and individual development for our software.
• dgudkov 5y ago
  I started a company that built, I believe, the most advanced no-code data automation desktop application (https://easymorph.com https://easymorph.com). It's entirely bootstrapped, profitable and pays salaries to 10+ people (and we keep hiring). Many our customers specifically looked for an on-prem solution as they don't want to deal with SaaS and its privacy issues and use-based pricing. With an on-prem tool like ours they get unlimited runs, unlimited data volumes, unlimited use for a reasonable fixed price. I believe SaaS is overhyped and in a few years the trend will change toward on-prem SaaS-like apps and platforms.
  • wnolens 5y ago
    > It's entirely bootstrapped, profitable and pays salaries to 10+ people (and we keep hiring). Congrats. That's the dream (to me). Bootstrap and create a handful of jobs.
  • WheelsAtLarge 5y ago
    I just wanted to give you some kudos for the "see it in action section" in your site. The idea of showing your potential customers how your product works is such a simple idea that will help sell the product. Yet, few small companies take the time to do it. Good for you for doing it.
• postgrescompare 5y ago
  I have a cross platform desktop app built using Electron and .net core. It finds the schema or data differences between Postgres environments. Currently working on a MySQL version along the same lines. https://www.postgrescompare.com https://www.postgrescompare.com
  • eps 5y ago
    This looks like a very niche tool with one-off usage pattern. Seeing it being sold as a subscription makes very little sense, at least on the surface.
• Meph504 5y ago
  I have for a number of years, its mainly very specific products though, people seem to not realize that there are still lots of places that do not allow cloud connectivity or dependencies. A lot of applications in the legal realm are like this, I was shocked to find out how many Judges won't allow the usage of wifi in their courtrooms, and that you can be hit with contempt for using the internet during a trial. That and building applications that are specific to hardware devices, such as fingerprint scanners, and thermal imagining, it could be done via a service and a web front end, but at that point you are doing more work, for no real benefit.
• wilbertliu 5y ago
  Yes. I’m building https://getmumu.com https://getmumu.com and the revenue is still growing strong over time. And it’s been fun to make something that earns money yet people love the product.
  • ronyfadel 5y ago
    35$ for 1 license? Sheesh, maybe I should raise my prices!
    • DougN7 5y ago
      Raising prices, especially for B2B, is almost always the right thing to do. People used to chuckle at my pricing, which made them think I wasn’t serious. Until people start complaining about the price, it needs to go higher. You are probably providing much more value to people than you realize.
      • ronyfadel 5y ago
        Will do!
• alottabit 5y ago
  My company [0] makes a CAD-like destkop product for architects & real estate developers. It's sold on a subscription, but the product is a native application (runs on C/SDL/OpenGL). Nothing inherently prevents you from mixing that business model and delivery mechanism. Many of our customers (especially architects) are used to installing & running desktop software. Pros: - You give customers the magical feeling when the app reacts instantly because the front-end doesn't have to wait on a round-trip to the server to execute complex business logic. It actually blows customers' minds to realize how powerful their computers are when you use the hardware well and don't have to wait on the network. - You have a very low infrastructure bill. - The platforms/frameworks/libraries are pretty stable compared to the webdev world. You do less migration work and get to become an expert in something that will be around for a longer time. - It's easy to develop and test locally in a 'production-like' setting. I make sure my hardware reflects my customers' hardware. - You can trace every line of code after main(). It eliminates a lot of complexity and a whole category of service communication bugs (and introduces other categories of bugs :)). - Developers are usually more predisposed to thinking about performance (in my experience). Cons: - You have to buy & renew code signing certificates, which is a hassle when you're independent or a small company. - You have to build/buy/maintain some form of installation/update system and be prepared to deal with users who refuse to update. - You have to deal with corporate IT departments & their security requirements (we're B2C). - You typically want to customize at least some parts of the UI/UX for Mac/Linux/Windows. - You run into bugs from clients that are hard to debug because "it works on my machine", and you don't have access to theirs. It's definitely a trade-off. I can understand why most devs/companies don't choose to be on the desktop. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhCm5sh9mr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhCm5sh9mr8
• allanrbo 5y ago
  Desktop app dev feels like a dying art, unfortunately. I see many comments mention Qt, but just wanted to give a shout-out to wxWidgets too. I chose it on a recent project over Qt for resulting in a more lean statically linkable self contained binary, and it also seemed easier to get a native look for all platforms I was targeting.
• ronyfadel 5y ago
  I'm currently making between $3k and $4k per month making little utilities for the Mac, e.g.: - Mission Control Plus to enhance macOS' Mission Control: https://fadel.io/missioncontrolplus https://fadel.io/missioncontrolplus - Batteries to see your devices' batteries from your Mac: https://fadel.io/batteries https://fadel.io/batteries
  • ayewo 5y ago
    Your Batteries app looks really cool. It’s one of those apps you didn’t know you need until it is shown to you.
    • ronyfadel 5y ago
      Thank you! It’s really one of those things macOS should’ve shipped with.
• cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  Most audio software for musicians are desktop apps or plugins. And people do make money selling virtual instruments and effects and so on that way. I don't know how much, but it's a market that exists.
• ThinkBeat 5y ago
  I do not develop myself but there are a lot of people who do. In Photography there are a lot of desktop apps that are custom. More now than in a long time thanks to Adobe going subscription based. At least for the time being, in my opinion, a web-based photo DAW, editor is not practical. I might be wrong on that already, But enough photographers feel that way for now that there is money to be made. The App store has some great independent desktop applications.
• PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Mentioned it many times here of course, but I'm busy working on the Ardour DAW. It generates in excess of $200k/year, despite being 100% GPL'ed and freely available on most/all Linux distros. Somewhere on the planet, someone starts a version they got from us roughly every 2.5 minutes.
  • a-dub 5y ago
    thank you for JACK, by far my favorite choice for audio plumbing on linux.
• dvydra2 5y ago
  We are building and hiring at https://www.timebyping.com/ https://www.timebyping.com/
• swiper_lux 5y ago
  I am in the process of doing so. I am using both Dolphin Smalltalk and Free Pascal/Lazarus. Both produce very good looking forms in Windows at least, which is my target platform. Both are easy and quick to develop in, particularly Dolphin. Both have powerful events systems, sane object systems, both very amenable to MVC. Both backed backed by SQLite3. Selling point for users is that user data is retained locally and not sent to a remote server, execution speed, and familiar workflows.
• mbrodersen 5y ago
  I am (among other things) maintaining a desktop application written in Java used by business rules experts to define complicated airline business rules.
• reassembled 5y ago
  My friend is working on a (currently) Windows-only desktop app called PixelCNC, which converts 2D images to 3D meshes and the associated g-code for machining. He’s been doing alright with it from my understanding.
• mbrodersen 5y ago
  PC, mobile phone, and console games are all desktop applications (when defining desktop applications as non-http applications).
• andrew_ 5y ago
  Thanks for posting the question. Great responses. Slightly more encouraged to resurrect an old .NET app for windows and Mac. Motivation is still fleeting.
• solideights 5y ago
  I make a partial living with cross-platform, native desktop software (C++) ( e.g., https://www.phototangler.com https://www.phototangler.com ). That one is sold primarily to individuals, sales vary greatly month to month, and in general seems to slow down a bit each year. Beyond my own web site, I've managed to get that one on Steam and the Microsoft store, but neither of those move too many units. My personal experience with selling other desktop apps over the years (many of which are now discontinued) has been that either people would pay for it (at all) or they wouldn't, after which it's mostly a matter of marketing to get more eyes on it. That is, I've had several other apps that didn't sell a single copy no matter how much traffic they received. And for the ones that do sell, doing targeted ad campaigns can definitely drive sales up, but in turn can be pretty expensive.
• cc101 5y ago
  I'm glad someone is making money. I'm not. I spent 5 years writing a unified workflow for folks writing a research paper/thesis/dissertation (Epiphany Workflow, Apple's App Store). It begins with collecting ideas from websites and files, moves the ideas into an outliner, then supports organizing relevant ideas according to a report outline, and finally, supports reviewing relevant ideas while the user writes each section of the report. I gave away 850 free copies that were good for a year and sold a couple dozen copies. I'm trying Reddit ads now. Zero success. It's daunting. I'm struggling and depressed. It's a damn good application, but I can't find a way to reach my audience.
  • COGlory 5y ago
    This looks really cool. I'm not the target audience (no mac) but definitely don't give up yet.
    • tonyedgecombe 5y ago
      >definitely don't give up yet. After five years with no sales?
  • jspann 5y ago
    First off, congrats on getting your idea out into a tangible product. Many people come up with ideas, even fewer take time, or have the skills, to try to actually build them, but you put in time and effort that made it to the end goal of putting it on the App Store. Not everyone makes it that far so congratulations on doing so. I took a look because, as a current student, I often have to write research papers and tag ideas from multiple websites and sources. I think the cost is a little steep for Mac apps in general, let alone anything a student might want to trial. The question students are asking is "How much can I spend to improve my research paper skills?" $40 is comparable to a night out with friends or several meals and might turn off any potential customers. Looking at the promotional screenshots for the application, I don't get a gist for what the application is or does. The actual images of the application are smaller than the text describing what is in the application. It's also not clear from those descriptions what the benefits of the application are. I'm not sure what a "structured workflow" is but maybe giving a juxtaposition between the traditional way a student might try to organize a paper and Epiphany's way might help students visualize how they could use the application themselves. Lastly, the website[1] needs more examples and demonstrations of the application in action. I still can't tell what I would gain from spending $40 on a Mac app. To use an example, none of my friends are willing to buy the Things app[2] at $9 on iOS or $49 because they can get other apps that do the same thing for free. It's a price comparison game and there needs to be more discussion around what can be gained with this app over a competitor. I hope this helps and I wish you well with your application. [1]: https://epiphanyworkflow.work https://epiphanyworkflow.work [2]: https://culturedcode.com/things/ https://culturedcode.com/things/
• nocommandline 5y ago
  https://nocommandline.com https://nocommandline.com is a GUI for Google App Engine. It’s an electron App and is currently only available for Mac and Windows. I later added a GUI for Datastore Emulator to the App and am slowly adding other features and fixing bugs. I’m not making enough to quit my 9-5 job but I didn’t build the App with that in mind. Built it because I needed to scratch my own itch and figured others might find it useful too.
• pyuser583 5y ago
  lol … it’s funny this is even a question. But this is the world we live in.
• Fizzadar 5y ago
  I’m building a desktop email client [0] that has $45 lifetime licenses. Made to scratch my own itch I’ve been using it as my only client for 4 years now, barely makes any money though! [0] https://kanmail.io https://kanmail.io
• cydmax 5y ago
  Our Company used Cordova to develop mobile apps for field technicians. And now we use almost the same code base to deploy it to the Desktop with Electron. The experience with Electron is very decent so far! The docs for Electron Builder could be a bit better though!
• c_ma_gee 5y ago
  We (an elementary teacher and a computer scientist) are helping migrant children without any knowledge of the german language to learn it easily and give elementary teachers much more time and improve the quality of their lessons dramaticaly with a desktop application for learning the german language and various perfect fitting supplementary materials. Often, german elementary teachers are facing the following situation: Consider a typical class of children with only a half of them capable to understand german. The teacher then constantly switches between those two groups trying to help each child as good as he/she can. That can be very frustrating because the teacher simply does not have the time to help each child as it needs (because the non-german speaking children often really need a 1:1 care to learn efficient). The other half, the german-speaking children, will quickly come short as well. So we developed a learning software which is so simple that every child can start learning with it instantly. The problem we are solving with it: The non-german children are now able to learn for themselfs without the need to ask the teacher while having great fun and much better progress than before! Once they are at a level where they unterstand the basic german words, they can follow the lessons much better which results in much higher quality of the lessons for them and beeing able to learn even quicker each time. As our small two person team consists of a elementary teacher who is working every day with those children (and is therefore constantly improving our products as she's using it in her own class) we know exactly what those teachers want for their children and what is giving the best results and motivation for them to learn german! It is a great joy to help all those children - it does not make big numbers in terms of revenue but it will enough for a living shortly. That's more we ever dreamed of as we started nearly six years ago :-) https://www.ma-lernsoftware.de https://www.ma-lernsoftware.de
  • hogrider 5y ago
    Pardon my ignorance but isn't it a huge mistake to place non german speaking children in these classes? They just hope they'll pick it up along the way? Isn't it throwing them to the wolves?
    • em-bee 5y ago
      there aren't really many other options. having separate schools for migrants would make it difficult for the children to integrate into the local society, but integration is seen as critical for everyone to get along. immersion into the target language environment is also the most effective way for kids to learn a new language. they will make friends with native speakers, and that will only help their language learning. in elementary school there is also less focus on academic performance