DEV Community: Nitesh

How I built a 30MB offline scanner app to stop paying $30/year (and you can use it for free)

Nitesh — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 09:00:36 +0000

As developers, we absolutely hate paying for simple utility tools. I got completely tired of famous scanning apps holding my PDFs hostage behind paywalls and watermarks. So I built Scan Master—a 100% offline, privacy-first document scanner. You can grab it right now from the Google Play Store or see the features here, but I want to talk about why building offline-first apps is so important right now.

Table of Contents
Why cloud-first utility apps are a privacy nightmare
The real challenge: Keeping edge detection 100% offline
Quick Data Table & Pros/Cons
My biggest takeaway as an indie developer
Frequently Asked Questions
Why cloud-first utility apps are a privacy nightmare
Most popular scanner apps on the market force unnecessary API calls just to crop an image. They upload your tax forms and ID cards to random third-party servers. And honestly, that is just unacceptable.

They force you into crazy $30/year subscriptions.
They bloat your phone with 150MB of tracker SDKs.
They treat your private data as a product.
Think about it. Why does a camera app need internet access just to convert a JPG to a PDF? Do you really want a random cloud server holding your private financial information? Of course not.

The real challenge: Keeping edge detection 100% offline
So I decided to look for a real solution. Moving heavy image processing directly to the local device is definitely harder. But it is entirely worth it.

Zero Latency: You do not have to wait for slow server responses.
Absolute Privacy: Your files physically never leave your local storage.
Tiny Footprint: By removing cloud SDKs, the app shrank down to just 30MB.
Scan Master cleans up dark shadows and finds paper edges perfectly using only the processor on your phone. It just works.

Quick Data Table & Pros/Cons
The best part? Building it locally means you don't sacrifice any pro features.

Feature Scan Master (Local) Legacy Competitors (Cloud)
Data Processing Local Device Only Cloud Uploads
Watermark None (Free) Forced Logo (Paid Removal)
Binary Size Super tiny (30MB) Huge (150MB+)
Pros:

Lightning-fast offline rendering.
Complete data sovereignty for the user.
No sneaky subscriptions to maintain servers.
Cons:

No automatic cloud sync (intentional by design).
Available only on Android right now.
My biggest takeaway as an indie developer
I originally built Scan Master because I refused to pay monthly fees just to scan a piece of paper. For the latest update, I stripped out every single heavy background library I could find.

But I didn't stop there. I personally fixed a frustrating PDF cropping bug that was breaking on older Android APIs. It runs flawlessly now. I made this tool for myself to solve a personal headache. But seeing thousands of people use it to protect their privacy actually matters more than anything.

Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Do I need an internet connection to use the PDF converter? A: No. Scan Master works completely offline to keep your files secure.

Q: Are there any hidden paywalls for high-res exports? A: Never. You can export unlimited clean, watermark-free PDFs.

Q: Where can I test this app out? A: You can download it directly from the Google Play Store. Let me know your feedback in the comments!

I got tired of $30/mo paywalls, so I built a 100% free digital asset vault using Next.js

Nitesh — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 08:03:51 +0000

Hey DEV community!

As a developer and creator, I’ve always found it frustrating how heavily gated the internet has become. Need a solid Shopify theme for a client? Pay $300. Need good PSD mockups or Canva planners for your side hustle? Pay a $15/month subscription.

It felt like the internet was punishing beginners for just trying to build things. So, I decided to fix it by building my own platform.

Today, I’m launching DownloadKart—a 100% free, frictionless digital mega-vault.

The Tech Stack

I wanted the site to be blazing fast and scalable, so I went with my favorite modern stack:

Framework: Next.js (App Router)
Styling: Tailwind CSS
Database: MongoDB
Hosting: Vercel

We recently optimized the entire application, shifting heavy client-side rendering to Server-Side Rendering (SSR) to hit a perfect 99/100 on Google PageSpeed Insights.

What's in the Vault?

I’ve managed to compile and host over 50,000+ digital assets. To avoid server bandwidth costs from destroying my wallet, I hosted all the actual heavy files on Google Drive and linked them directly.

Currently, the platform offers:

Premium Shopify Themes
55K+ Canva Templates & Planners
Faceless Viral Reels for social media
PSD Mockups and Fonts

No Paywalls, No Signups

The biggest rule I made for this project: Zero Friction.
There are no forced email signups, no credit card forms, and no annoying ad-link shorteners with 30-second countdowns. You just click and download.

Yes, there are some standard display ads on the site to help me keep the servers running, but the downloads are entirely free and always will be.

If you are an indie hacker, a freelancer, or just building a side project and need some premium assets without burning your wallet, come check it out:

Visit: www.downloadkart.com

I’d love to hear your feedback on the UI/UX and the performance! Let me know if you want me to add any specific developer/design resources to the vault. Cheers!

Need feedback on my first audio app: A virtual Pakhawaj for classical music practice

Nitesh — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 11:36:46 +0000

Hey everyone,

I've been working on a personal side project and I just pushed it live on the Play Store. I practice Indian classical music (specifically Dhrupad), and I always struggled to find a good Pakhawaj accompaniment app for my daily riyaz (practice).

Most apps out there just use generic MIDI drum sounds which feel very robotic. So, I decided to build my own app using real studio-recorded acoustic samples instead.

Here is the Play Store link:

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, but I'm looking for some genuine feedback from experienced mobile developers. Handling audio on Android without any latency or stuttering when changing the BPM (tempo) was a bit tricky.

If anyone has a few minutes, could you download it and let me know how the audio loops feel? Does the UI feel too cluttered?

Any advice on optimizing audio playback engines or general UI feedback would be super helpful. Thanks in advance!

Why I built an ad-free Android video player to replace bloated alternatives

Nitesh — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 11:19:07 +0000

Over the past few years, an annoying trend has taken over the Android ecosystem. Remember when media player apps were just lightweight tools you opened to watch a downloaded movie or an anime episode offline? Fast forward to today, and almost every popular player on the Google Play Store feels like an entire streaming platform in disguise.

Take apps like MX Player as the prime example. What started out as a fast, beloved offline player is now packed with full-screen banner ads, unsolicited push notifications, online web series, and gaming tabs. When you just want to open a folder and watch a video, having to dodge popups and wait for an ad to finish playing is exhausting.

As an Android developer who watches lots of foreign films, tutorials, and local videos on the go, I got fed up with the bloat. I didn't want streaming feeds. I didn't want popups. I just wanted a fast, beautiful, and distraction-free media player. So I decided to build one myself: Olo Player.

The Frustrations That Shaped Olo Player

When I started drafting the architecture for Olo Player, I made a list of the exact pain points I faced with existing players, and committed to fixing them from day one:

1. Pure Offline Playback With Zero Aggressive Ads
When you open Olo Player, you see your local video folders immediately. No streaming feeds, no online recommendations, and no annoying video ads interrupting your experience. It does one job and does it exceptionally well.

2. The Dual Subtitles Problem
If you watch anime, foreign cinema, or educational videos in another language, you often want two subtitle tracks on screen simultaneously — for example, your native language on top and English at the bottom. Most Android players only allow selecting a single track. In Olo Player, I built native dual-subtitle support so you can load and display two subtitle tracks at once.

3. Out-of-Sync Subtitles Fixed in Real Time
We have all downloaded subtitles that were ahead or behind by 300ms to 1 second. Instead of editing files on a computer, Olo Player includes an instant subtitle sync adjustment slider right inside the playback menu so you can calibrate the timing on the fly.

4. Natural, Responsive Gesture Controls
Navigating menus to change brightness or volume ruins the immersion. Olo Player lets you swipe vertically on the left side of the screen for screen brightness, swipe vertically on the right side for volume, and swipe horizontally to seek smoothly through the timeline.

5. Background Audio and Picture-in-Picture
Whether you are listening to a podcast or an educational lecture while commuting, you should not need to keep your phone screen burning battery in your pocket. Olo Player lets you continue listening with your screen completely locked, or multitask with a smooth Picture-in-Picture window.

Under the Hood: Engineering Challenges

Building a high-performance video player in Flutter was a fantastic learning experience:

Smooth 4K Hardware Acceleration: Ensuring stutter-free 60fps decoding for heavy 4K MKV, MP4, and TS containers required optimizing hardware codec pipelines so that low-end and mid-range devices wouldn't overheat or drop frames.

Gesture Collision: Tuning gesture detectors so a slight diagonal swipe does not accidentally trigger both volume adjustment and video seeking simultaneously took dozens of iterations of velocity threshold calibrations.

Try Olo Player & Share Your Feedback

Olo Player is completely free with no hidden paywalls. You can install it directly from Google Play:

👉 Download Olo Player on Google Play Store

For a detailed feature breakdown and release updates, you can also check out our official overview on our website: DownloadKart Olo Player Official Guide.

Since I am actively developing upcoming updates, I would love to hear from fellow builders and media enthusiasts in the comments: What is the one feature you have always wanted in a mobile video player? Feedback and bug reports are warmly welcome!