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Show HN: Art Diario – Curated art on your desktop every day
Hey HN!
I made a little app that changes your desktop background to a new piece of curated art every day. Everyone sees the same art so you can talk to your friends about it!
I learned to code a couple years ago from a bootcamp to fulfill a lifelong desire to be able to create end-to-end applications. I've been a designer, I've been a PM, but I really wanted to be able to build the things in my head. This is my first attempt to build something entirely from scratch!
This seemed so simple at first. All it does is change your background! But I wanted a fancy little admin panel that allowed me and my wife to upload new art. I wanted to be able to make the crop that ends up on your desktop really straightforward. I wanted it to be cheap to host, so hella caching. Also, omg, timezones! Marketing images and websites!
There were so many pieces to this, it is honestly astonishing how much work indie makers put into their solopreneur apps. All mine does is change your background. The people who produce more complicated stuff are really impressive.
I'm excited and nervous to share this with you all! Thank you for taking a look!
- hisnameisjimmy 4y agoI detail the journey to building this a bit more here if you're interested: https://www.jimmyhooker.com/blog/art-diario-the-most-complicated-thing-ive-built/ https://www.jimmyhooker.com/blog/art-diario-the-most-complic...
- yodon 4y agoFor those who run Windows, I realize bing is a joke to most HN readers, but the desktop backgrounds they serve up are actually pretty great[0]. It's the only reason I keep the bing app installed on my machine. [0]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/bing-wallpaper https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/bing-wallpaper
- hisnameisjimmy 4y agoI’m currently going through the process of getting a code signing certificate for windows, I’ll let you know when I have a working build.
- hisnameisjimmy 4y agoI've got a build working on Windows, would love to have you give it a try. Hit me up at jimmy@artdiario.com
- speps 4y agoI've been using https://www.artpip.com/ https://www.artpip.com/ for years and was annoyed when they added paid features but I'd love something different. Are you planning a Windows version at all?
- hisnameisjimmy 4y agoI loved Artpip too, and this was directly inspired by it. This is an Electron app, so in theory it should be relatively straight forward. I have to figure out signing and doing some testing, but that shouldn't be too bad. Biggest issue is that I don't have a Windows machine!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hisnameisjimmy 4y agoI've got a build working on Windows, would love to have you give it a try. Hit me up at jimmy@artdiario.com
- sleepyfran 4y agoThis looks really nice, reminds me of Muzei[1] on Android which also allowed to add effects on the image that was being displayed. Definitely keeping ArtDiario running! Just a little thing: consider making the icon for the menu bar smaller, it's way to big compared to the usual size of the icons on macOS and it makes it look off [2]. [1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.nurik.roman.muzei&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.nurik.roma... [2]: https://ibb.co/3YjkNqh https://ibb.co/3YjkNqh
- hisnameisjimmy 4y agoMuzei looks nice! Icon is a bit larger, was trying to get a good balance considering the letters are different sizes, but may adjust! Thanks for the feedback and for downloading!
- MattTepp 4y agoLove it, only I would really like to see an option to hide the "Art" icon in the top bar, mine is already pretty cluttered as is.
- hisnameisjimmy 4y agoHmm, how would you see detail on the art of the day?
- MattTepp 4y agoMaybe by opening the app itself, a window would show up with the detail? But I understand that would be quite a lot of rewriting.