At Christmas time I like to build a side project that helps me to learn something new and push me to do something out of my comfort zone. A few years ago I built an iOS game and released it on the app store. This year I decided I wanted to build some kind of desktop app for the Mac using Electron.
I love beautiful desktop wallpapers. I have a bit of a thing for them. So I decided to build an app using the Unsplash API to fetch stunning, royalty free photos and use them as desktop wallpapers. As it was a side project I wanted to build something relatively simple but still useful so this idea seemed to make sense. After a few weeks of evening and weekends Splashify 1.0.0 was released. Here is a short video demo of the app in action:
Built With
Here are some libraries and packages I used to build Splashify:
Electron — For creating cross platform desktop apps using web technologies
Vue.js — For the app components and front-end
Masonry — For laying out images
unsplash-js — For interacting with the Unsplash API
wallpaper — For setting the desktop wallpaper
jimp — For image processing
I’d just like the thank the authors and contributors of these open source libraries for making all of this possible at no cost. You all do amazing work.
Launch Stats
Here are some of the stats from “launch day” on Product Hunt:
Votes on PH: 272
Visits to splashify.net: 3,653
Downloads: 798 (Mac), 32 (Win)
Stars on GitHub: 25
Overall I’m quite impressed with the response. It finished in 5th place for the day on Product Hunt and was in the top 4 for most of the day.
If you haven’t yet tried Splashify you should go ahead and download it now!