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Waqar Ahmed
Waqar Ahmed

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I Built 40+ Free Browser Tools as a Solo Dev from Pakistan — Here's What I Learned

Hey DEV community! 👋

I'm Waqar, a solo developer from Pakistan. Over the past few months, I built UniRecorder — a collection of 40+ free browser-based tools.

Today I want to share the journey, the tech stack, and what I learned building this much solo.

What is UniRecorder?

UniRecorder is a free toolkit with 40+ browser-based tools:

  • 🎥 4K Screen Recorder with webcam overlay (using MediaRecorder API)
  • 📄 PDF Tools — Image to PDF, PDF Merger
  • 🖼️ Image Tools — Compressor, Resizer
  • 🔢 Text Tools — Word Counter, Case Converter, Text Reverser
  • 🧮 20+ Calculators — Age, BMI, GPA, Loan, Percentage
  • 🔄 Unit Converters — Currency, Length, Weight, Temperature
  • 🔐 Utility Tools — Password Generator, Base64 Encoder

Try it: unirecorder.online

Everything runs 100% client-side — no signup, no watermark, no uploads.

Why I Built This

I was tired of tools that:

  • Add watermarks to your recordings
  • Limit you to 5 minutes
  • Charge $50+/year for basic features
  • Upload your files to unknown servers

So I built my own. Then I kept building.

Tech Stack

Simple and effective:

  • HTML5, CSS3, Vanilla JavaScript — no frameworks
  • MediaRecorder API — for screen recording
  • Canvas API — for image processing
  • jsPDF + pdf-lib — for PDF generation/merging
  • LocalStorage — for cookie consent
  • GitHub Pages — for hosting

No React, no Vue, no build tools. Just clean, fast, vanilla JS.

Why vanilla? Because 40+ tools don't need a framework. Simple HTML+CSS+JS loads faster and works everywhere.

The Screen Recorder (Hardest Part)

The 4K screen recorder was the most challenging piece. Key challenges:

1. MediaRecorder API quirks
Different browsers handle mimeType differently:


javascript
const mimeType = 'video/webm;codecs=vp9,opus';
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Top comments (1)

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Waqar Ahmed

Thanks for reading! 🙏

If you want to try the tools, everything is here: unirecorder.online

Would love to hear feedback — especially from other solo devs. What's the biggest challenge you've faced building in public?