What app/program do you wish existed and what does it do that you've not found elsewhere?

Media server software that lets me program my own television station.

5:00 PM - Play the next file from folder X.
6:00 PM - Play the next file from folder Y.
7:00 PM - Play the next file from folder Z.
8:00 PM - Play random movie.

That is like a 10 line bash script? Well maybe a little more but not much. Start here: https://linux.die.net/man/1/at
- Setting up something like a cron job is trivial, getting it to stream files from a particular folder, on a channel I can access on demand, is the trick.
  Ideally I want to be able to change the input on my television, any time I want, to my personal streaming channel which is constantly running the schedule I've defined.
Ersatz is this brilliant self hosted IPTV server that can do this. Any client (even a browser or your smart tv) can run it. Setting up the channels are a bit clunky but it’s well documented
https://ersatztv.org/ Your Personal IPTV Server | ErsatzTV
There's tons of these? I've been using DizqueTV for like five years without issue.
- Not linking to reddit, but this DisqueTV?
VLC (Video LAN Client) probably has a plugin for this. It was designed to stream video across networks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7m7OW2xrJE
This guy actually rolled his own internal home cableTV broadcast, which does exactly what you're asking.
- Composite video and mono audio... Ew. LOL.
Have you tried ErsatzTV? It's selfhostable, pretty extensible, can be integrated into on-demand solutions like Jellyfin...
- I look at different solutions from time to time, but it's been a while, I'll check that out!

An app for Android (Google TV) that lets you change the volume on a per-application basis. Like a mixer. I want to be able to set Disney+ to 200%, Netflix to 130% and Youtube to 80%.

If you're using Samsung, check out Soundassistant from Goodlock.
- No Samsung. I want this for my Google Streamer.

I have long wanted a weather forecast along route in navigation apps for long trips. Ideally you could add in stops and estimate how long you would need to wait for storms to pass over.

Just coming back from a trip and adding to this, I wish Organic Maps / CoMaps had a function to automatically add rest stops and fuel stops.
For example, for a 7 hour road trip it would prompt:
Frequency of rest stops: 120 minutes
Time spent at rest stop: 20 minutes
Approx remaining range: 150km
Approx car range overall: 500km
Obviously I've just been pulling into service stations and rest stops on my own accord, but I like having small goals and not having the navigation lose it's shit at me because I decided to pull into a small town halfway through. Would just make planning a day of driving much easier.
- This would be great
That exists. Weather on the way.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/weather-on-the-way/id1471394318
- iOS only.
  For the rest of us, best you can do with them is pick your interstate: https://weatherontheway.app/us-interstate-weather/
- I did search for "weather on the way" in google play store. While they don't have an android app, I found two similar apps that do a lot of what I wanted: "drive weather" and "highway weather." Thank you for the search term that yielded results. I like that the"highway weather" app allows adding in rest stops and propagates the change into the forecast.
  I will note that neither of these options seem to offer turn by turn navigation. So there is still room for some of the navigation apps to integrate this functionality.

Music software that shuffles entire albums and plays them end to end before switching to another random album.

Quodlibet has a Random Album Playback plugin
Winamp used to do this.
- WACUP should too then:
  https://getwacup.com/
  Modern winamp fork of sorts.
That is like a 10 5 line bash script? Well a little more but not much.
- Ok 6 lines (untested):
  
  while true; do album=$(ls albums | shuf -n 1) for song in $(ls albums/$album/*.mp3 | shuf); do mplayer $song done done

A program that allows me to search through a large drive and see if there are any duplicates of congruent files on them, even if those files have different names but are otherwise identical, i.e. copies elsewhere on the drive.

If you search for "find duplicate files
<your OS>
" there seem to be some options...
There are lots of these? And if it's images, you could use Immich and it will find similar pictures that aren't exact, too.
https://czkawka.com/

A weather widget on Android that shows all of current temp, high/low for the day, and high/low remaining for the day.
I don't think this needs to be a whole app, or just a feature within a camera app, but I want the ability to underlay an existing image at say 10% transparency on screen while taking a photo. It doesn't get saved, I just want to be able to use it as a guide for framing things, like documenting changes on sites or recreating old photos for fun.
I want to be able to open a line of communication to another driver nearby. Maybe a range of 100ft. I don't know if it's Bluetooth or what. "Hey your taillight is out" "hey coming up in your blindspot" "hey, please can I merge I'm not trying to be a dick" "hey is this the exit for Wawa?"

The amount of road rage induced shit talking that would be done via car-to-car communication would outweigh every benefit it could provide.
- Yeah, I won't deny the potential for abuse. On the other hand, I think a lot of road rage comes from the disinhibiting effect of being alone in your car. I'd love to see a study to see if road rage can be reduced by letting people communicate.
Open camera has that. Settings > Camera preview... > Ghost image
- Yo. Yooooo! Thank you!
I want to be able to open a line of communication to another driver nearby. Maybe a range of 100ft. I don’t know if it’s Bluetooth or what. “Hey your taillight is out” “hey coming up in your blindspot” “hey, please can I merge I’m not trying to be a dick” “hey is this the exit for Wawa?”
I think about this every time I'm on the highway, it would be so fun/useful.
- I said it in another reply but I'll say it again here, CB radio is awesome. Especially on the highway there's tons of trucker chatter and just general nonsense.
CB radio is pretty popular depending on where you live. You'll start recognizing antennae everywhere once you get a kit and start messing around with it.
Won't hit everyone but it's pretty fun community usually. Trucks and just general weirdos, the occasional douche canoe but mostly good
For weather, the hottest/coldest part of the day are almost always around the same time. If you know those, it's pretty easy to say "the temp right now is the hottest it will be for the rest of the day", or "the high for today will be the hottest when we get there".
- Yeah, you're right. I'd still just like to see it. Maybe something like this:
  64° ─────●────────▲───── 83°
  With the dot showing the current temp within the day range and the arrow (up or down) showing if there is still a high or low spot left. As in, not the high for the day, maybe that's already past, but just to say, "there's a still a bit of hot left later"

An app that can fix audio in movies to make dialog easier to hear and understand.

It's called subtitles 😅
- Yeah, sucks having to spend so much time reading and missing the action. Plus they are AI generated a lot now. And they often get it very wrong. :(

I want an app that existed, and was killed before it's time by Intuit. Level Money

You put in (and it learned over time) your expenses, and it gave you a single number which was how much you could spend per day. It adjusted as you went, so if you under/overspent it adjusted.

It wasn't perfect, but was the last time I had a firm handle on my finances.

Fuck you Intuit, burn in every hell imagine able for your myriad of sins including this minor one comparatively.

Have you tried Cashew? I've tried tons of apps and it's easily the best
- No, but I just downloaded it! Thanks for the rec!
I work in IT and we get at least a dozen broken QuickBooks tickets a week. I fucking hate intuit and their products
Have you looked at your banks budgeting software? One of the key features mine has is it learns how transactions are categorized, so future ones will be categorized the same way even if the amount changes. While it’s far from perfect, it is a huge factor in making useful.
I used to try various money management tools but this made a huge convenience difference
- This kinda locks you into one bank which is not ideal
- I use CapitalOne, they have some things but nothing exactly right.
  I have also tried every budgeting software under the sun, and Level was the only one that worked for me sadly. I've thought about using vibe coding (not a mobile dev) to makey own android app to do something similar but also super lazy lol.

Digimon.

I have to carry my phone with me everywhere I go, I want a little guy that is personal and unique to me, it gets points for stuff I do, and them I can battle with other people who have their own little guys.

Pokémon go doesn't cut it for me, the battle isn't Pokemon. The games are great but it's me playing the guy not me being the guy.

I have the whole thing on paper but learning the programming to make it is discouraging and I'm already in college and writing full time

Sort of reminds me of Habbie
- Yeah, but with a unique leveling system and PvP.
So, kinda like Pou, but with PvP?
- Yeah. I even wanted to include an account based scanner for loot. You'd be able to scan barcodes and qr to get loot, battles, and stuff, but after the first scan it would remember and lock that reward so you could reclaim it daily.
  I imagined players keeping little collections of barcodes so you could easily reclaim useful loot and when players meet in the wild they could scan up each others collections to get codes they may hot have found in the wild.

I really want an app that locally indexes my locally stored photos and lets me search them locally, based on places, things or people seen in the photo.

Immich lets you do this
https://immich.app/docs/features/searching/
For example here's me searching for "forest". But it also supports looking for people (even multiple people in the same image), places, dates, or combinations of all of them. It'll also look for text in images. The link has more examples
All hosted and processed on my local computer, and connected to the mobile app
- I think there is a fine line between “installing an app” and “spinning up a docker image and keeping it maintained”.
  I’m in the camp that Docker images are what .exe’s used to be, but they’re not easily accessible still. So Immich doesn’t count I fear.
- All hosted and processed on my local computer, and connected to the mobile app
  The way you write this makes it seem as if the app doesn't actually locally index locally stored photos. Is that so?
Digikam
Fully local
Search by location and place on map based on exif data
Search by person (local facial recognition)
No search by "thing" without manually tagging though
- While this seems very interesting, it doesn't seem to exist as an app, the download page only lists downloads for desktop operating systems:
  https://www.digikam.org/download/
  Do they also provide an app somewhere where I haven't looked yet?
I second Immich. Does this great, and the local AI mapping is pretty good.

The only thing I've ever really wanted that didn't used to exist was an app that could identify things visually. So you find a bug or a bird or an object and snap a photo, and it tells you what it is instead of having to ask real people.

This is now possible and is getting better all the time. But I still haven't seen an all invlusive app for everything? Like there's one specifically for bugs. Another specifically for birds. Saw one that specifically was for identifying your dog's breed. Haven't seen one that is universal and can identify everything in an image at once.

Ideally, this would just be a feature of things like Google Lens. Like I could just open the camera, set it to ID mode, and just point it at the thing I am looking at and have it tell me what it is and not just find images similar to it.

i've seen commercials of Gemini doing this. not sure how accurate it is realistically...
- Gemini itself sucks for pretty much everything. The non-AI assistant that preceeded it did a much better job, IMO. Though, it didn't have item recognition capabilities at all out side of music. It feels like it's just a language bot being forced to do things it wasn't designed for, so you ask it what a thing is and it just spits out text that seems normal but is also completely wrong.
  The general "thing" recognition is better on my Quest 3's room scanning function. But it's not meant for telling you what things are, just for making furniture in real space appear in virtual space too 🤷‍♂️
Seek and iNaturalist is for all animals and plants. They use your photos to track data about the species you take pictures of, mostly just where you found them. It also keeps track of all of the species you've found and gives you challenges to find certain species depending on where you are in the world. If the AI fails to identify something, your photo can be peer reviewed by other users.
Obsidentify is that thing for nature related searches.

I would be ecstatic if someone ported AutoHotkey to Linux. AutoKey doesn't come close to cutting it for me.

Check out pyautogui, it's probably what you're looking for. You can manipulate the mouse and keyboard and even look for images contained on the screen.
Interesting. I use Autokey daily. By the minute even. I'll have to research what I'm missing.
I used to be in this camp. xdotool was the solution for me.

I'm looking for an app (on Android) that not only keeps track of birthdays, but also lets you add an extra date if that person has passed away. So it will display someone's age correctly instead of just counting on. And give reminders of both their birth- and their dying day. If it exists, please let me know...

This software probably already exits but I have been trying to make 3D panoramas. My current workflow is to take the 3D left-right images and separate them into left images and right images using a bash script. Then use Hugin to make two panoramas and combine them with gimp. It's kind of a pain. It would be nice hugin cloud just the 3D images and do it all for me.

Kind of reminds me of Goblin Valley. I don't think it is. Too green and rocks are the wrong color. But first thing that came to mind.

GPS app that gave more control over routing. You can use waypoints, but the ETA is based on the waypoint instead of destination, and you have to manually continue navigation once you reach the waypoint.

Have you tried Magic Earth, i seem to remember it being quite robus for that but ymmv
- I have not. May need to take a look.
One that will tell you how far to the next rest stop
- Or gas station or fast food or pizza place. With a "within 2 miles of route" and in the next 30 mins of travel. Would be great for family trips.

There's been a lot that I've been looking for but I've never been able to find. Here are the one's that I can remember off the top of my head.

The first, which doesn't need to be an app/program, is something that would allow me to get more use out of Flathub. I've been wanting to get more use out of Flathub but the biggest problem I have with Flathub, is that there is no reliable way to discover new apps. The reason for this is because of how the website sorts its apps. They seem to be sorted either randomly or by popularity, as the order changes occasionally, and it mixes new apps in with the old apps. What I've been doing is using a chart to keep track of what apps I've seen but I have no idea of how reliable this actually is.

The second, I've mentioned before on another post, is a companion app for GameFAQs that's similar to Anime Plus. If you're not familiar with Anime Plus, it's a website that works as companion app for MyAnimeList. It looks at your MAL profile and generates a temporary profile that offers a few useful features like a list of anime/manga that you've missed and recommendations for other anime/manga.

The last one that I can remember, is a reliable gamepad mapper app for android devices that doesn't require root. I've tried multiple gamepad mapper apps but none of them worked properly and I'm pretty sure that some of them contained malware, especially given the fact that they've been removed from the Google Play Store.

I wish there'd be a proper family tree generator, I've been searching for one for so long. All the things existing now seem to be old and made to create actual existing family trees with lots of limitations, but I'd really need a tool to use for world building and that kind of stuff. To allow you create profiles with a lot of data for the characters in the tree, so you could view the info in some easy way, maybe by clicking to open an info window, or something like that. To be able to easily link them to each other with other things than just family relations (like friends, lovers, enemies...). Being able to properly put a picture on the profiles so it would show there in the tree, not just a name. Just being able to properly view the whole family tree at once by zooming in and out would be so nice, and to link it with other family trees etc....

There are games that have some family tree functions, but I don't need nor want a gaming experience. I want to do these things freely, not with having to play some shit to be able to unlock something, or to have family trees generated around just played characters. I've tried using mind map generating stuff as well, but they have limited features, and it's difficult to just create branches with them since everything is supposed to link back to one single thing.

If anyone knows about something like this existing somewhere, please do tell me!

MS Vizio can do what you're talking about. It's a flow chart designer on crack. I'd bet there's quite a few modules designed for family tree building you can get for it.
Instead of a family tree planner, maybe start looking at flow chart builders? Or workflow planners or project management schedulers. They all can do something like what you're talking about, even if they're not directly designed for purpose of family tree diagrams.
- Thank you, I'll look into those!

Might exist, or maybe there's some API that I can utilize in which case I could script it. I've done a very cursory search but nothing stood out.

I would love something that would grab x most popular songs from an artist/genre/year range that I have in my music library and create a playlist file. For if I'm just feeling like some "greatest hits" style music. And I don't want an LLM involved.

Drop-in cloud/API replacement for YouTube front-ends. It would keep track of watch history and return recommended videos from an algorithm that's user configurable

An app that exports all the events (title, date, time, url link) from my newsletter email inbox. Bonus points for same but for Instagram. I vibe coded something but gave up... For now.

Just use rss

Something to use in place of Microsoft Active Directory, but FOSS
A program that automagically removes any DRM from an executable, whether it's a simple CD check or fucking denuvo
Anything that makes playing fullscreen games in low resolutions NOT mess up your desktop - if you ever played something in like 1024x768 on a 1920x1080 default resolution, you should know what I'm talking about

LDAP? It what AD is based on, at least originally. I haven't looked at either in 10+ years.
https://github.com/fmstrat/samba-domain
Works with all AD tools. I've been using it for years.
- How well do you suppose that scales to enterprise levels?
Something to use in place of Microsoft Active Directory, but FOSS
We're using samba pretty well. I'm hoping it'll stay awesome.

Recommendation algorithm/engine for self hosted media server. If someone knows where I can get a large amount of watch data for a large amount of people I could write such a thing.

I have 2 years tautulli logs for a plex server of 10 users. Only has 3-4 users regularly watch stuff and 90% is my kids watching that same thing over and over, hahhaha. Maybe one day I’ll find good use of the data.
- I would probably try implement Netflix's algorithm which is essentially finding what u haven't seen that has been seen by people who watch things similar to what u watch. Essentially just heigh dimensional embedding and some clustering. So u would want at least 1000 (absolute bare minimum) users.
  Data is only really usefull in the context of all other users. So 3-4 users of data on their own don't really give any useful insights.
Trakt.tv has a lot of data, and they provide recommemdations

Navigation app the prioritizes things important to me. I'll got an extra distance if I turn less or I right turn only or I have no speed bumps.

Brouter used to be capable of this, but it was configured with JSON.
I wish for something for summer months, I don't care if the route is longer if I walk in the shade.
Edit: it's a full blown programming language https://brouter.de/brouter/index.html

I really want an all-in-one android app that just let me connect 2 portable ssds (via a usb hub) and then make a list of hashes for the folder structure and file names along with the hashes, all on a single sor of "index" file and I can run a "verify" function like every so often (like maybe once a week?) to check if there are any decay, also copy everything to the 2nd drive, and then run the verify to check if its done correctly, and correct any file corruptions.

Like its a very ghetto way to doing a NAS on a budget, but its just a $50 spare android phone connected to a usb hub with the power connected, and a bunch of drives attached.

I can run hash checks manually with some F-Droid apps, and keep the hashes on a file, but there us no way to automate this.

There's The Eternal Jukebox which does pretty much exactly what you're looking for, unfortunately it doesn't seem to be well-maintained and doesn't work so well any more.

Very cool altho I want an app that i can have and also that can export the loop so i can use it wherever
- It does seem to work in Firefox on my phone if that helps at all.

Anyone suggest a decent FOSS CAD program good for designing 3d prints? IDK if there is one.

The only 2 I know are FreeCAD and OpenCAD, neither quite "good", just passable, I guess
FreeCAD is what I've been using. Works pretty well for 99% of things, and good Youtube tutorials out there.

I once thought it would be cool to have a program you could feed a photo of an evil boss's or slimy politician's face, from which it would then create a little cartoon character. That you could subject to various simulated tortures. Throw knives at it, lower it into boiling oil, draw and quarter, etc. Would probably be a hit in some offices.

I want MoviesFad back... Greatest movie-app ever!

ed(1) but with a left pane and right pane, where the left had the content of the file and scrolled to where you are editing and the right is just regular ed output.

I want a something like a custom radio station that combines my music playlists and podcasts with local and world news, maybe have it read news using some nice ai voice if it has to be trendy

I'm willing to pay for this to help local news businesses stay afloat

A service or a website to find other websites. Search engine nowadays uses sentences, but why can't we use tags and filters?

Google and duckduckgo may give 4 HUGE websites, but nothing more than that. Why can't I just see all the unique different services all listed up?

I'm not recommending Perplexity, but when trying it out I clicked some of the sources it used, and I haven't seen such sites as search results in ages. Articles in personal sites, blogs etc. were not uncommon.
Now I wish for a search engine that would use results from these kinds of sites, without the LLM.