Every time I start a tutorial, I find myself wondering which app I should build. Another to-do app? Not again! If you’re reading this post, you’re probably looking for an idea for a simple app that you can use in your tutorial or example project to test a new framework or API. But it can be challenging to find something that really resonates with you.

In this post, I’ve compiled a list of app ideas that are simple enough to build, yet complex enough to be worth doing. These ideas are perfect for tutorials or experimenting with web technologies. I have also ensured that they are easy to explain, build, and extend with new features.

So, without further ado, here’s the list:

Simple Apps

A Weight Tracker App

  • Allows users to enter weight measurements taken at different dates
  • Displays weight data in a graph
  • Can track multiple entities, such as the weight of more than one person
  • Provides data storage capability

A Calculator App

  • A standard calculator with basic arithmetic operations
  • Supports numbers, +, -, *, /, and displays the result

A Book Database

  • Allows users to enter the books they own and the ones they want to buy
  • Stores book information, including images

A Recipes App

  • Users can enter recipe details, such as name, description, steps, and images
  • Provides options to rank recipes based on difficulty and quality
  • Stores recipe information in a database

A Bill Tracker

  • Allows users to log bills, including the amount and date
  • Displays a list of bills
  • Provides graphs to visualize bill data for different periods (e.g., this year, last year)
  • Stores bill information in a database

An Expenses Tracker

  • Allows users to log expenses and categorize them
  • Displays a list of expenses
  • Provides graphs to visualize expense data for different periods (e.g., last month, last year)
  • Stores expense information in a database

A Chat Application

  • Similar to a stripped-down version of Slack
  • Allows people to enter the chat without authentication and assigns them a temporary name
  • Stores chat history
  • Supports notifications

A Notes App

  • Allows users to add new notes
  • Lists all notes in a sidebar
  • Stores notes in a database

A Personal Diary App

  • Allows users to add entries with a date and text
  • Displays entries in reverse chronological order
  • Supports adding pictures to entries
  • Stores diary entries in a database

A Pomodoro App

  • Allows users to set a timer for a certain amount of time
  • Alerts users when the timer is up

A Meme Generator

  • Provides a selection of popular meme images
  • Allows users to add text to the memes
  • Stores meme history in a database

Tic-Tac-Toe Game

  • A classic tic-tac-toe game

The Game of Life

  • A project involving math and graphics

A Blog Engine

  • Allows users to login and add blog posts
  • Visitors can add comments to blog posts
  • Stores blog data in a database

A QA Engine

  • Allows users to login and ask questions
  • Allows users to answer questions
  • Allows the original user to choose the best answer to a question
  • Stores QA data in a database

A Forum Engine

  • Allows users to login and add posts to a forum
  • Allows users to comment on posts
  • Stores forum data in a database

An Embeddable Live Chat

  • Similar to Intercom or Olark
  • Includes a backend for responding to chat messages
  • Can be easily embedded on a web page
  • Supports private messaging

API-Powered Apps

A Hacker News Client

  • Lists popular posts from Hacker News
  • Displays comments for each post
  • Shows user profiles
  • Supports searching for posts on Hacker News

A Reddit Client

  • Lists popular posts from Reddit
  • Shows comments for each post
  • Displays user profiles

An Instagram Client

  • Allows users to search for the latest posts by hashtag or username
  • Stores multiple hashtags/usernames for quick access to their latest posts

A GitHub API Client

  • Lists popular repositories based on different time periods
  • Displays the latest commits for a repository
  • Ranks public repositories for a person or organization based on stars

An Unsplash API Client

  • Allows users to search for images by topic
  • Displays relevant images based on user-entered terms

Data for Your Sample Apps

Sometimes it can be challenging to find suitable data for your sample apps. So, I’ve compiled a list of resources that provide public APIs and generators for various types of data:

Public APIs for Example Projects

Image Placeholders for Your Sample Projects

Image Generators

Sample Text Generators for Your Sample Projects

Other Fake Data Generators

I hope this list is comprehensive enough to suit your needs. Have fun building your apps!