Best new self-hosted, design and web utility resources: 25 October

Forty more tools joined the directory on 25 October, thirty of them free tools and websites and ten open-source projects from GitHub. Below, they're grouped into planning, habits and reading, learning, writing and communities, design resources, web and developer utilities, and self-hosted open-source apps. Features and pricing change, so check each tool's own page before you rely on it.

Plans, habits and something to read

If you think visually, Milanote lets you lay out notes, images, links, files and to-dos on flexible boards, which suits moodboards, briefs and project plans. Its free plan has no time limit, but it's capped at 100 notes, images or links and 10 file uploads. MeisterTask is a Kanban task manager hosted in Germany. On the free plan you get unlimited tasks and team members but only three projects, and automations and reports need a paid plan.

Trying to build a habit? Habitify tracks routines with check-ins, reminders and progress charts, and its free plan covers three habits. Time.is shows the exact time, synchronised with an atomic clock, plus time zones, sunrise and sunset times and public holidays. It's free in the browser, with ads. And if you read a lot, Libby, made by OverDrive, lets you borrow ebooks, audiobooks and magazines for free with a library card. You'll need a participating library, and popular titles often have waiting lists.

Learning something new

Still typing with two fingers? TypingClub teaches touch typing through hundreds of short, gamified lessons. It's free for individuals and schools, and free users see ads. Grid Garden teaches CSS grid in 28 short levels with no sign-up, though it only covers the basics. Want to code? Codecademy's free Basic plan includes lots of introductory coding courses, while projects, certificates and career paths cost money. Alison has more than 5,000 free courses supported by ads, and you pay for its official certificates.

Things to read, and communities to join

Smashing Magazine publishes free, in-depth articles on CSS, accessibility, UX and front-end performance, and sells books and workshops separately. Thinking of starting a dev blog? Hashnode lets developers set one up for free on a hashnode.dev address or their own domain, and export every post as Markdown. AI writing help needs Pro. Lobsters is a calm link aggregator for computing topics. Anyone can read along, but to post you need an invitation from an existing member.

Run by the Free Software Foundation, the Free Software Directory catalogues thousands of free software packages with their licences and project links. Its wiki-style design does feel dated. Emojipedia tells you what each emoji means and how it looks on different platforms, and copying one takes a single click.

Design resources to bookmark

Free Design Resources gathers free fonts, mockups, templates, icons and UI kits. Licences differ from item to item, and some downloads go through third-party sites, so read each one before you use it. ManyPixels has illustrations you can recolour and download as PNG or SVG. They're free for personal and commercial use, but you can't resell or repackage them. And Cool Backgrounds generates abstract backgrounds for headers, slides and wallpapers without asking you to create an account.

Developers get a couple of avatar tools. Boring Avatars is an MIT-licensed React library that turns names or emails into colourful SVG avatars, and there's a paid hosted service for teams. DiceBear generates avatars in more than 60 styles through a free API, library or command line tool, though some styles carry their own licences. HTML Color Codes gives you HEX, RGB and HSL values, charts and a picker. And if you spot a font you like, WhatFontIs identifies it from an image, with five free identifications a day.

Little helpers for web and dev work

Am I Responsive shows your site in four device frames at once. Handy, but it's no substitute for testing on real devices. Browserling streams real browsers from the cloud so you can test. Free sessions last three minutes, and Safari and macOS need a paid plan. Curious what a website is built with? Wappalyzer shows you the technologies behind it. Free lookups are limited, and lead lists and API access are costly.

Epoch Converter turns Unix timestamps into readable dates and back again. Is a site down, or is it just you? Down for Everyone or Just Me checks, though it isn't a monitoring service. MxToolbox runs free DNS, SPF, DKIM, DMARC and blacklist lookups, with monitoring and alerts on paid plans. Naming a project? Instant Domain Search checks domain availability across more than 800 extensions as you type, and Namechk checks whether a username is free across many sites. Its results can occasionally be out of date.

2FAS Auth is a free, open-source two-factor authenticator that needs no account and keeps your data on your device. Since it holds the codes for your sign-ins, set up its encrypted backups. That way, losing your phone doesn't mean losing access.

Open-source apps you run yourself

Most of the ten GitHub projects run on your own server. Expect some setup, often with Docker, and remember that backups are your responsibility. Flatnotes stores every note as a plain Markdown file, with fast search and tags. Dashy and Homepage are both personal start pages for your apps and services. The difference? Dashy has a visual editor, while Homepage is set up through YAML files. Homebox keeps track of what you own with photos, locations, receipts and QR code labels, and Grocy manages groceries, best-before dates, meal plans and chores.

Want your photos on your own hardware? Immich backs up photos and videos from your phone to it, with albums, maps, face recognition and smart search. You'll need your own storage. Calibre-Web puts a clean web interface on an existing Calibre ebook library, so you can browse and read from it.

Three of the projects don't need a server at all. Fluent Reader is a desktop RSS reader for Windows, macOS and Linux, and it can sync with Inoreader, Feedbin and The Old Reader. VERT converts images, audio, documents and video, mostly right in your browser, though video conversion uses a server. Qalculate! is a desktop calculator for units, currencies, constants and equations on Windows and Linux. On a Mac, you'll need Homebrew or MacPorts.

Every one of these lives in the full Best Productivity Resources directory, along with every other tool and guide. Filter by category, pricing and platform to find the ones that suit you.