I’m a college student and I’ve been building Mac apps on the side for the past year. No team, no funding, just me, Xcode, and a lot of late nights.

Every app came from something that genuinely annoyed me. I couldn’t find a good solution so I just built one.

Here’s what I made:

Sound Warden — Every time I joined a call my audio output would switch and I’d spend the first few minutes fixing it in front of everyone. Sound Warden locks your default audio device so nothing can change it without you.

Clean Quit — I never properly quit apps on my Mac. Ever. My machine was always slow because of it. Clean Quit lets you close everything running in one click with a whitelist for apps you want to keep open.

Glowix — My display kept sleeping while I was reading long docs or following tutorials. Glowix is a simple menu bar toggle that keeps your screen awake as long as you need it.

OwnMind — This one took the longest. I kept losing things I’d copied, articles I’d read, files I’d opened. OwnMind quietly captures everything you do on your Mac, makes it all searchable, fully on device, encrypted locally, nothing ever goes to a server.

Honest feedback and App Store reviews mean everything when you’re building alone.

I made 4 Mac apps solo while balancing college — here’s what I shipped