As Yatin Bayya (‘25) worked on his French homework, he frequently struggled to find the commands for accent marks, which pushed him to code his own google extension, “Easy Accent Marks.” Now, all he has to do is copy and paste the accent marks from a digital keyboard. 

Bayya’s process of developing the Google extension was fairly simple as he had prior knowledge of web development. Publishing the Google extension requires going through a few security checks.

“The Google Chrome team approved it two days after submitting it. Since they mainly look for the best privacy practices, it was easy for me to get (the extension) approved because it doesn’t collect any user data,” said Bayya.

He created this extension in Feb. 2021 and created and submitted the extension to Google within two days. Soon enough, it got approved, and a year later it got featured, as it had a high standard of user experience and privacy. 

“After a couple of days, (the extension) started picking up. There were about five to ten users added every day, and it slowly got bigger and bigger. At first, I was really surprised that this simple app could get this popular,” said Bayya.

This is not the first of Bayya’s innovations. He has created numerous remarkable apps in his free time to build his skills and gain further experience. 

“Yatin is one of the higher functioning computer science students that I’ve had the privilege to work with. He’s naturally curious. He finds things that he’s interested in, and he takes the time outside of class to pursue his passions,” said computer science teacher Kevin Kiyoi. “Similar to Mac or Windows, he built an app that walks you virtually through a house and helps you make it more feng shui.” 

Bayya is a part of the computer science program at AVHS and continues to create and collaborate with others on challenging projects in school. Outside of school, Yatin participates in coding contests. He also wrote a book that teaches the basics of a programming language, called Python for Beginners: Learn It as Easy as Pie

“I intend to create more projects like this. I’m really into app development and I hope to pursue this as a career. I also plan to push out a new update to the Chrome extension that I already have,” said Bayya.