Best new open-source, reading and design resources: 20 October

Here's what joined the directory on 20 October: thirty free tools and websites, and ten open-source projects from GitHub. You'll find them below in five groups: writing, reading and calmer browsing, directories for finding more, design, open-source and self-hosted tools, and everyday utilities. Before you pick one, check its own page, because features and pricing change.

For writing, reading and browsing more calmly

Easily distracted when you write? FocusWriter is a free, open-source word processor for Windows and Linux that keeps its menus hidden until you move your mouse to the edge of the screen. It has themes, live statistics and daily word goals. DeepL Translator handles text and documents across dozens of languages. The free version limits text length and file translations, and DeepL Pro raises those limits and adds stronger data security. For scheduling with a group, Doodle lets everyone vote on a meeting time in a shared poll. Polls and calendar connections are free, while reminders, branding and removing ads need a paid plan.

If you read a lot online, Inoreader brings blogs, news sites, newsletters and podcasts together in one feed. The free plan caps how many feeds you can follow and shows some ads. On Apple devices, NetNewsWire is a free, open-source RSS reader for Mac, iPhone and iPad with no ads, no tracking and no account to set up. And SumatraPDF, a free, open-source reader for Windows, opens PDF, EPUB, MOBI, comic book and DjVu files almost instantly. There's even a portable version that needs no install.

A few browser upgrades, too. Session Buddy is a free Chrome extension that saves your open tabs and windows as sessions, so you can restore them after a crash. Vimium brings Vim-style keyboard shortcuts to Chrome, Edge and Firefox. Dark Reader makes websites dark, with controls for brightness, contrast and sepia. It's free on Chrome, Firefox and Edge, and the Safari version is paid. Then there's Zen Browser, a free, open-source browser built on Firefox with vertical tabs, workspaces, split view and a compact mode. Good news if you're switching: your Firefox extensions still work.

Directories that help you find more

Looking for a course? Class Central is a free search engine and review site for online courses, with filters for subject, provider and price. Desmos is a free graphing calculator that plots functions, inequalities and data as you type, and it also has scientific, matrix and geometry tools. Privacy Guides is a nonprofit, community-run site that recommends privacy-respecting software based on published criteria. And European Alternatives lists European providers of digital products, showing where each one is based.

selfh.st is a free directory of self-hosted apps, with a weekly newsletter and a free icon library on the side. AI Valley is a free directory of AI tools and ready-made prompts, and you can filter it by free, freemium or paid pricing. Public APIs is a community-maintained GitHub list of free APIs that notes the authentication method and HTTPS and CORS support for every entry. Finally, TOOOLS.design is a curated directory of design tools and resources, updated every week since 2019.

Design picks

Pattern Monster creates repeatable SVG patterns. Recolour them, resize them, then copy them as SVG or CSS. Animista is a free library of CSS animations where you tweak duration, easing and delay first, then copy only the code you need. Colormind uses deep learning to generate five-colour palettes. You can lock the colours you like, or have it pull a palette from an image you upload.

Font Squirrel collects free fonts licensed for commercial work. Even so, check each font's licence before you download it. HyperUI is a free, open-source set of Tailwind CSS components that you copy straight into a project. Humaaans, by Pablo Stanley, is a free illustration library for building people from separate parts, released under a CC0 public domain licence. Simple Icons has free SVG icons for thousands of popular brands, in their official colours. And Mixkit, from Envato, offers free stock video, music, sound effects and templates under the Mixkit licence, all downloadable without an account.

Open-source and self-hosted projects

Atuin swaps your shell history for a searchable database. It shows each command's exit code and how long it took, and it can sync history between computers with end-to-end encryption. Ferdium brings services such as Slack, WhatsApp, Gmail, Telegram and Discord into one desktop window, with workspaces and Do Not Disturb. With Deskflow, one keyboard and mouse can control several nearby computers over your network, across Windows, macOS and Linux, and encryption is on by default. scrcpy shows an Android phone's screen on your computer and lets you control it over USB or Wi-Fi. No root, and no app needed on the phone.

Glance is a self-hosted dashboard that puts RSS feeds, subreddits, Hacker News, YouTube uploads, weather and calendars on one page, and you set it up in a single YAML file. SilverBullet is a self-hosted notes app that stores pages as plain Markdown files, with wiki-style links, queries and Lua scripting. tududi is a self-hosted task manager with areas, projects, recurring tasks, CalDAV sync and Telegram capture. And changedetection.io keeps an eye on web pages and alerts you when they change. Worth knowing: the self-hosted tools need a server or Docker setup of your own.

Everyday utilities worth keeping around

On Windows, Notepad++ is a free, open-source text and code editor with syntax highlighting, tabs, regular-expression search and plugins. Setting up a new PC? Ninite installs or updates popular Windows apps in one download and skips the bundled extras. It's free for home use, and businesses can get Ninite Pro. Ventoy turns a USB drive into a bootable stick that can carry several ISO, WIM, IMG or VHD files at once. As with any tool that prepares a drive to boot, back up whatever's on the drive first, and double-check you've picked the right one.

Ente Auth is a free, open-source app for two-factor authentication codes, with end-to-end encrypted backups across mobile, desktop and the web. It holds the keys to your accounts, so make sure its backup is set up and kept safe. Fast.com, from Netflix, is a free internet speed test that also shows upload speed and latency. And Vocaroo lets you record audio in your browser and share it with a link, no account needed.

Those forty additions join everything else in the directory. Browse the full Best Productivity Resources directory to see how they compare with other tools in each category.