We all love open-source software, but there are so many amazing projects out there that often go unnoticed. Let’s change that! Share your favorite open-source software that you think more people should know about. Here’s how you can contribute:
- Single Option Per Comment: Mention one open-source software per comment to be able to easily find the most popular software.
- No Duplicates: Avoid duplicating software that has already been mentioned to ensure a wide variety of options.
- Upvote What You Love: If you see a software that you also appreciate, upvote it to help others discover it more easily.
Check out last year’s post for more inspiration: Last Year’s Post
Let’s create a comprehensive list of open-source software that everyone should know about!
FMD (FindMyDevice) - An absolute necessity, especially if you aren’t using Google services.
It allows you to use any device/contact you’ve approved to send commands to enable/disable various settings on your devices, like bluetooth, do not disturb, camera, GPS, etc. via SMS, a FMD server (self-host optional) or from notifications (i.e. use Signal to send commands). So if you’ve simply lost your phone in your house you could make it ring no matter what, or if it got stolen you could lock it, use GPS, or factory reset it entirely.
The dev made it after he lost a phone that didn’t have Find My Device activated.
tag studio It’s a file manager designed to use tags instead of files because tags are a much better system. It’s still in alpha and I haven’t actually tested it yet but I plan to use it instead of regular file managers once it becomes stable and well supported.
SherpaOnnx TTS for Android. There are many different voices to pick from that sound very life like and are totally worth using with GPS apps like CoMaps.
Also, just found out about Medicat recently but haven’t used it yet. It looks fantastic though: Medicat is a toolkit that helps compile a selection of the latest computer diagnostic and recovery tools into an easy to use toolkit.
Ventoy is a software you put on a USB stick to make it so you can load as many bootable ISOs as you want on it at the same time and still use the leftover space for normal file storage.
alternativeto.net is great for finding these
NextCloud - Self hosted personal cloud solution that you can run on Docker or bare metal.
fzf fuzzy finder. Great tool to quickly find those files you were looking for.
sgt-puzzles. Simon Tatham’s Portable Puzzle collection.
Contains a bunch of simple puzzles, of the minesweeper and sudoku style. Loopy is my favorite.
Available for Linux, Windows, MacOS, Android, and anything with a web browser and a mouse. Packaged in Debian and F-droid, and probably many other places.
I like it for time wasting in lines at the DMV, for a low-stakes game when anxious, and for falling asleep.
Mihon Manga reader for android. Allows auto aggregation from web sources to make tracking and reading manga smooth and easy
Silverbullet is like Trilium or Obsidian a markdown notes app, which is lightweight and highly customizable (by css and scripting). And all files could be forever accessed as simple markdown-files in an easy folder structure without much overhead. The database is only for indexing and could be restored anytime.
CoolerControl - Fan control for Linux based on any available sensors.
I find it much easier to use than fancontrol included with lm_sensors and much more reliable for me.- Blender
- MyPaint
- Krita
- Openshot
Syncthing: Continuous, private, and encrypted file synchronization across multiple devices without using the cloud.
Syncthing has been a wonder to discover. Basically replaced any desire for me to rely on the cloud.
I’d love to use this but I just mostly don’t use multiple devices at the same time, so I don’t see how the sync would ever happen.
I have an instance on my phone running 24/7 which does the bridge. But i dont use much storage, i mainly work with text files, so the pc at work syncs with my phone, and when i get home my own pc gets the files from my phone immediatly. Its been working really well for years for me.
Yea my big problem is also that I need way more storage than what I have on my phone.
Absolutely LOVE syncthing. I recently had to go on an emergency trip and was glad I set up syncthing on my phone but hated that I didn’t set it up properly on my laptop.
I love syncthing, but never managed to get permissions to work right on any of my android phones. I chalk that up to phone vendor fuckery though.
You should know that there is no longer an official syncthing app and a clone has taken its place. It’s buggy but it works.
Permissions are a bit tricky to set up but I believe the clone app does it correctly by asking for full file browsing permissions.
Just to be clear, there is no official app for Android (and, I assume iPhone). If you are using SyncThing on desktop or laptop computers, there are downloads at the official syncthing.net site. On Linux, it should be available from your distribution.
I use Syncthing-Fork on my android phone, which seems to work fine.
I’ll have to try it the next time I have time, but I’m also trying to switch to a real linux phone. Right now, I have to wait for a friend to travel to the EU to be there while Pine64 has what I’m looking for in stock.
Pine64 is 2× more expensive in the EU
And doesn’t ship PinePhone Pro motherboards to the US at all.
I didn’t get into details because it wasn’t important, but they’re always be someone going “wELL AKTsHUally”. I already own a PinePhone, but it died. The easiest solution would be to get a new MB and swap it in.
Does it backup photos on iOS yet?
