StockTracker started in October 2021 because I had a simple question: as retirement approached and I began shifting my holdings toward dividend income, when would the money actually arrive?
I wanted to know what dividends were coming, when they were expected, and roughly how much income I could plan around. That sounds like basic information, but getting it was more annoying than it should have been. It often meant signing in to brokerages, updating spreadsheets, hunting through statements, or doing the kind of tiny manual chores that somehow become a project of their own.
So I built something for myself.
At first, StockTracker was not a product. It was not polished. It was not meant for anyone else. It was just a practical tool that answered the questions I cared about: what do I own, what income is expected, and when is it coming?
I also knew what I did not want. I did not want another online account. I already manage enough passwords, two-factor prompts, email confirmations, and security rituals. I wanted software I could just use.
That became one of the core ideas behind StockTracker: no sign-in required.
The app is local-first by design. Your data stays on your machine. As I started thinking about possibly sharing StockTracker with other people, that became even more important. I did not want the responsibility of storing anyone's financial data, and I did not want users to have to trust me with it. The best way to protect that data is simple: I never have it.
For a long time, StockTracker stayed that way: a personal app, built by a solo developer, shaped around my own investing habits. Most of it was written before the current age of AI coding agents, one commit at a time. Today the project has 695 commits behind it, which is really just a nerdy way of saying it has been lived in, adjusted, fixed, and improved over years of actual use.
A few years ago, I was sitting in a pub with a couple of friends and they asked me, "Why don't you sell it?"
At the time, the answer was easy: because it was not ready. It worked, but it was built for me. The functionality was there, but the polish was not. Turning it into something I would feel comfortable offering to other people would take time.
Well, it has been a few years, and that time has slowly happened.
StockTracker is for normal investors. Not professional traders. Not people looking for an all-in-one financial empire. It is for people who want to track their holdings, understand their dividend income, and maybe have a little fun watching the money roll in.
That is why it has the little dividend counter showing how much cash you are making every second, for doing nothing. Is it strictly necessary? No. Do I enjoy it? Absolutely.
StockTracker is not a brokerage replacement. It is not financial advice. It is not trying to be a Bloomberg terminal. It is a focused portfolio tracker for people who want a clearer view of their investments without another account, another password, or another company holding their data.
I built StockTracker because I wanted a private, no-account, no-cloud, no-drudgery way to understand my dividend income.
I did not set out to build a product.
I built the portfolio tracker I wanted to use.