Are you as excited as I am? In my quest to find some of the best apps for you, I myself discovered some absolutely brilliant tools. The best thing is all the apps below are free and Open Source. Let's get started ππ»ββοΈ
1. Screencat π
π₯ Platform availability: All Platforms
π Github Link: Screencat
This next app makes screen sharing super easy. You can share your desktop with someone else while letting them share your mouse and keyboard remotely. It's built in electron.js.
2. Manta πΈ
π₯ Platform availability: All Platforms
π Github Link: Manta
The most frustrating part of any freelance gig is sending an invoice to the client. Searching a template online and then editing it in a word processor takes a lot of time and the result still looks ugly. Try Manta, a desktop application for creating invoices with beautiful and customizable templates. It will make the work hassle-free for you.
3. Brave Browser
π₯ Platform availability: All Platforms
π Github Link: Brave
Privacy and security should be everyone's top priority, and that's what I always talk about on my blog also. A browser is the first thing on the list when it comes to changing apps for the sake of privacy. Google tracks a lot of your data from Google Chrome, even if you are using a VPN. Use Brave, it's free and Open Source. Check some other cool apps for online privacy here
4. Mark text π
π₯ Platform availability: All Platforms
π Github Link: Marktext
Markdown is awesome and so are the markdown editors. There are many open source Markdown editors but Mark Text is the coolest I know. It has live preview which is one of my favorite features. Give it a try.
5. IconGenerator πΎ
π₯ Platform availability: Only MacOS
π Github Link: IconGenerator
If you have worked on Electron or made an iOS app, you know the pain of generating icons of various sizes. This nifty little app helps you do that very gracefully.
6. VMD π
π₯ Platform availability: All Platforms
π Github Link: vmd
A simple yet very handy tool. It gives you GitHub themed preview of any README.md file. Can easily be installed using npm. It has some other cool options also, check them out on their Github page.
7. Insomnia π΄
π₯ Platform availability: All Platforms
π Github Link: Insomnia
Insomnia is a cross-platform REST client, built on top of Electron. It has various plugins that you can easily install with npm and increase its functionality.
Conclusion
This is all for now guys. Hope you enjoyed this article. I will post another article soon with more apps, so don't forget to follow.
Please share with your fellow developers if you like itπ¨π»βπ».
One more thing π. I'm planning to work on some cool Javascript Projects and if you are too, then let's collaborate guys. Tweet to me at @sarthology.
Oldest comments (93)
I didn't know about Mark Text. That's cool! Have you used Typora? How does it compare?
Well for starters Mark Text is Open Source π
Didn't know either, seems cool!
I actually liked screreencat and also it is in electron js so.. Just awesome
I just discovered Mark text. Lots of thanks!!!
Glad could help π
If you're looking for something simple, check Markdownify.
I've never really liked using Postman, the UI just seemed so unintuitive and difficult to use. But I've never needed to use it enough (read: been frustrated enough with it) to go find an alternative. But with just one request sent in Insomnia, I already like it better than Postman, thanks for the recommendation!
Glad could help π
Thanks for sharing Insomnia!
Thanks for sharing Insomnia! + 1 =)))
Might have to give Insomnia another shot. Thanks.
I know right? And I love how you can save frequent requests so that you can have them handy when to test again. Great tool that I just can't live without anymore :)
Liked the post because of insomnia. Just discovered it, GraphQL support means never having to say you're sorry
The same goes here. I really liked Insomnia over postman. It even retains the response on the response window forever.
Insomnia looks pretty simple in comparison with Postman.
But Postman isn't just an HTTP requester with JSON pretty-print.
Postman has variables support, environments support, tests support, load tests support, cloud support, swagger support, and many other essential features for the everyday's life of a developer.
How do you integrate Insomnia in your CI ?
Glad I wasnβt the only one who thought this.
In Postman, I make an OAuth call, which sets the token value to my environment variables, which then are used to auth all my subsequent calls (which were imported from Swagger). Thatβs a huge part of my manual testing workflow now that I wouldnβt want to lose.
You don't lose this with Insomnia. Insomnia supports first-party OAuth authentication. However, if you want to do it manually as you mentioned, you can also use Request Chaining to reference values from other request's responses. support.insomnia.rest/article/43-c...
Just want to point out that Insomnia also has variables, environments, cloud support (end-to-end encrypted) and even a few other things that Postman doesn't like plugins, GraphQL support, and wider choice authentication methods.
To your point though, Insomnia does not support non-http-client functionality like load testing, testing, or mock endpoints, nor does it plan to support these features in the future (unless through community plugins).
Does insomnia support cloud storage/sync of data without premium subscription?
I've been using Insomnia for quite some time, since Postman stopped being a Chrome extension. For some reason the native version of Postman worked very slowly on my Windows 10, now I do not miss it. Insomnia supplies the main needs when working with APIs. Something that "I do not like" is that it is updated automatically, but hey, all Electron applications seem to do the same.
If you're looking for a much faster, simple postman alternative, you should checkout postwoman.io
we β€οΈ open source: github.com/liyasthomas/postwoman
If a picture is worth a thousand words...how much is a screen cast? Screen casts have saved days of frustration.
I would submit GiT is a great OSS tool for devs as well :)
Thanks for suggestion π
Some great suggestions above. I recently discovered iTerm2 which is a big improvement over the default terminal on mac, especially when paired with oh my zsh
On Windows, Cmder is a good replacement for the default terminal.
Or, if you are on Windows 10, get "real" terminal via WSL ?
WSL is a shell, not a terminal/console. You can run WSL inside Cmder :)
umm... Right.
I am a macOS user (considering moving to Windows+WSL+Ubuntu) So you are probably right (Haven't used Windows in several years)
If and when I move to windows, I'll give Cmder a try. Read good things about it (and how people use it with WSL)
Sorry, I should have posted more details in my comment!
A terminal emulator (sometimes referred to as a "terminal" or "console") is the app that gives you the interface to type commands into and see their output. For example, iTerm2 and Terminal are terminal emulators on MacOS.
The shell is the app that processes the commands. For example, bash and zsh are shells.
You run a shell inside a terminal emulator. When you run iTerm2, it runs bash (or whatever) inside it :)
Technically WSL is neither... It's a compatibility layer that allows Linux apps to run on Windows. It converts Linux API calls to native Windows API calls - Basically the opposite of the WINE project (which lets you run Windows apps on Linux). However, WSL comes with Bash, so when people "run WSL", they're running Bash (the shell) in CONHOST.exe (Console Window Host, the default Windows terminal emulator, the same one that CMD.exe uses).
Cmder is a replacement for conhost/cmd.exe. It can run the default Windows shell (cmd.exe) and WSL within it. Similar to how iTerm2 is an improvement over Terminal.app, Cmder is an improvement over conhost, providing features like tabs. You still run all the same shells (just like how you can run bash in either iTerm2 or Terminal), it's just running within a different terminal emulator.
If you do try Windows, try PowerShell in addition to WSL. It has its own unique set of features, and you may like it. PowerShell can run inside Cmder too. I even use PowerShell on Linux now, due to how powerful it is. The key difference with PowerShell is that it treats command output as objects rather than strings, so you very rarely need to parse command line output using grep/sed/cut like you do on Linux. Instead, you simply access properties on objects.
i 've set up something (i'm not the only one) that really makes me enjoy CLI on Windows 10 :
Run Debian WLS, install fishshell.
Run CMDER set up a new task with command "debian.exe"
---> Enjoy Fishshell in a Debian env on Windows 10 :)
Oh man, you save me from this pain when generating icons for the ios.
thx !
I know man π
If you're into CLI-based tools, httpie, and its partners in crime: http-prompt and jq, are worth checking out π
Thanks a lot, Jonas π
If you like httpie, you should definitely try curl! It's just like httpie, except that it is more flexible (not just for HTTP), and leaves things like syntax highlighting up to you (just pipe the output into your favourite program - like jq for instance!).
I use httpie if it happens to be installed, like on my development laptop(s), otherwise it's curl all the way ππ»
A big thank you for Marktext.
So I get to know mermaid and its flowchart.
And the app I am using to get some notes, Boosnote, supports this.
So it is going to be very useful for me.
I really love that this kind of reading and sharing experiences can lead to great things.
Thank you.
Glad could help π
I don't think it's open source, but I am a huge fan of LightShot. It takes over the Print Screen key and makes it useful.
Pretty much two clicks and you can have a screenshot of anything
Hey, if you're looking for something that takes over the printscreen key, there is an awesome open source app called Katana. If you're looking for a Windows app, i would suggest Screenpresso. ( Yes I know, it isn't open source :) )
I'm pretty happy with LightShot at the moment, but I'll definitely check those out!
I can recommend Greenshot too - open source Windows screen grabber, though that doesnβt really do it justice. Integrated upload to imgur and other places, all that stuff.
They already have a mac version aswell! :)
Ah - somehow I'd missed that when downloading the PC version at work. Thanks, I'll go grab it now. :)
For Windows, I'd highly recommend ShareX. It's open source!
Just to add to the discussion: I've been using ShareX for a couple years now and I absolutely love it. It's open source, customizable, doesn't bog down my machine, can automatically upload screenshots and videos to almost any site (even Gfycat!) you can imagine, and so much more. I can't sing its praises enough.
There are plenty of screenshot tools which are open source, though.
My best except it doesn't have an option for specifying size
Nice article!
Thanks
For markdown I use VIsual Studio Code. It has an option to see md results. It's not the best but just works for the sake of not having too many programs for everything.
Postman sucks ++
Well Said
Thanks man. Now I will look to Manta.
Glad you liked it π
fish is probably the best compromise between "easy" and "fast". You'll still need a good scripting shell though.
Man! Insomnia ππ!! i've been using Postman for at least 3 years and, call me lazy, but never actually looked for alternatives, even when i'm always complaining about it!
Thanks for the post!
PS. Im totally in for some JS projects!.. let me know