I’ve been trying to write this post for a while, but I kept throwing my words in the bin in hopes that things will improve. I believe it’s now time to put an end to this.

I started building Dank as a side project in January 2017. It was my playground for exploring Android. It was also an attempt to showcase a beautiful experience of what Android can offer to its users. There are many Reddit apps out there, but they’re all bland. There’s nothing inspirational about them.

After 18 months of development, I opened Dank for everyone to see. Reviews started pouring in through Twitter and /r/androidapps. I woke up to many hundreds of mentions and messages. The traffic took my website down. It was everything an indie developer can ask for.

It was unfortunately very short lived. I burned myself out trying to balance both my work and a side project. I went for a small vacation in hopes that a break would help, but it didn’t. I took another month off. It didn’t help either. Instead, it made me realize something else — I did not have any hobbies other than Android. It felt like I have this void in my life and I have no idea how to fill it.

I feel better now and I can go back to finishing Dank, but I’m not going to do it. I can either build a great app for Android or I can have a social life outside my computer.

I’m archiving Dank and releasing its source on Github. Feel free to try the app out, use its source for your own projects, or fork it and build your own Reddit app.

https://github.com/saket/dank

I’m sorry.

P.S.: Maintaining side projects is often times a very lonely experience. If you use an app that was created by a developer on their side, please drop them a message appreciating their work. As a person who often cries reading fan mail, I can tell you that you’ll certainly make their day.