I built a fun macOS app with zero market research - just shipped something I wanted to exist. Curious if fun apps can make money.
Googly X Uchiha came from watching Naruto as a kid.
I saw a similar eye-tracking toy on Mac a while back and thought, why isn't it animated? I'm a big Naruto fan, grew up watching it, so adding Sharingan felt like the obvious extension. One weekend later, I had animated eyes in my menu bar following my cursor.
Then I kept going. 17 Sharingan variants — Itachi, Sasuke, Kakashi, Madara, Shisui, Indra, Eternal Mangekyo, Rinnegan, Rinne-Sharingan. All rendered with Core Graphics, not PNG assets. Optional tomoe spin animation. Blinks on click: menu bar only, no Dock icon, no setup.
The honest part:
I did zero validation. No "is there demand for this" research. No landing page before building. I just built it because I wanted it to exist and figured other Naruto fans with Macs probably feel the same.
It's $4.99 with a lifetime license. Just launched. Zero revenue so far.
What I'm genuinely curious about:
Can a fun, niche, personality-driven app make money — even a little? Not trying to replace income here. But I'd love to know if there's a real market for "delightful desktop toys" on macOS or if this stays a passion project forever.
If you've shipped something similar — a fun app with no serious use case — I'd love to hear how it went.
