Best new self-hosted, research and design resources: 19 October

Forty new things landed in the directory on 19 October: thirty free tools and websites, and ten open-source projects from GitHub. That's a lot to wade through, so here they are in groups: open-source work tools, focus and calm, planning and private email, research and learning, launch platforms and maker communities, design, and utilities and developer references. One thing before you dive in: features and pricing change, so check each tool's own page before you commit to one.

Open-source tools for everyday work

Running a team wiki? Docmost is free, open-source and self-hosted, with real-time editing, spaces with groups and permissions, full page history, and diagrams built in from Draw.io, Excalidraw or Mermaid. The catch is that it needs Docker or a server, and SSO, AI and Confluence import live in the paid Business edition. If you'd rather keep a knowledge base, Alexandrie is also free, open-source and self-hosted. It's built around an extended Markdown editor with LaTeX, diagrams, snippets and Kanban boards, and you can install it as an offline-first app that syncs once you reconnect.

Leantime is a free, open-source project management system for people who aren't project managers, designed with ADHD, dyslexia and autism in mind. You get Kanban, Gantt, list and calendar views, along with goals, timesheets, docs and retrospectives. Tired of dead links? Linkwarden, a free, open-source, self-hosted bookmark manager, saves every link as a screenshot, PDF and HTML copy so the page survives link rot. FreshRSS rounds this out. It's a free, open-source, self-hosted reader that collects your RSS and Atom feeds into one list, and its API lets it work with popular mobile RSS apps. Worth knowing: self-hosted tools need a server, and looking after it is your job.

Now the desktop. Files is a free, open-source file manager for Windows 10 and 11, with tabs, dual panes, tags and a command palette. On a Mac, AeroSpace is a free, open-source tiling window manager that arranges windows so nothing overlaps, and you configure it all in one plain-text file. Handy, a free, open-source dictation app, transcribes your speech on your own computer using local Whisper or Parakeet models, so no audio ever goes to the cloud. If you like writing by hand, Rnote is a free, open-source app for notes and sketches with pens and drawing tablets, plus PDF annotation and an infinite canvas. Finally, Stretchly is a free, open-source break reminder for Windows, macOS and Linux that prompts you to take micro breaks, stretch and do eye exercises.

When you need focus and a bit of calm

Noisli is for anyone who works better with some background noise. Mix rain, wind, a coffee shop, white noise and more into your own blend. You get 16 sounds and 1.5 hours of streaming a day on the free plan, and Pro takes the limits away. Prefer music? lofi.cafe plays continuous lofi streams in a browser tab for free, and you don't need an account. And for winding down, Medito is a free, open-source meditation app run by a registered non-profit in the Netherlands. Guided meditations, courses, sleep stories, breathing exercises. No premium tier, no ads.

Planning, plus email that stays private

Whimsical keeps boards and docs together in one workspace, so flowcharts, wireframes, mind maps and written plans all live side by side, and every plan supports real-time collaboration. On the free plan, there's a monthly limit on board objects and doc blocks. Tuta, which used to be Tutanota, is an encrypted email and calendar service based in Germany, and its apps are open-source. You get one address and 1 GB of storage for free, while custom domains need a paid plan.

Tools for research and learning

If you spend time with academic papers, these three are worth a look. Elicit is an AI research assistant that searches papers and summarises the findings, and its free Basic plan covers search, summaries and chatting with papers. Consensus is an AI-powered academic search engine that ties every answer back to the peer-reviewed studies behind it, with a free plan for everyday searches. ResearchRabbit works differently: give it a few seed papers and it maps their citations, references and co-authors on interactive graphs. Its Free Forever plan allows up to 50 seed articles. One honest reminder, as with any AI summary: read the papers themselves before you rely on a finding.

Ever hit a paywall on an article? Unpaywall is a free browser extension from the non-profit OurResearch, and it shows a green tab whenever a legal, free version of that article exists online. Open Culture, meanwhile, is a big collection of free cultural and educational media, with more than 1,700 free online courses alongside audiobooks, ebooks, films and language lessons.

Places to launch and meet other makers

Building something? Indie Hackers is a free community where founders share progress updates, revenue milestones and questions, and post their products for feedback. Peerlist is a free professional network for people in tech, and every Monday its Launchpad opens a fresh launch round for upvotes, feedback and first users. Launching Next publishes new startups and side projects daily. You can submit for free if you're fine waiting for a review, or pay to be considered faster. And SideProjectors is a community marketplace for showing off side projects, selling them or finding a co-founder. Basic listings are free, and submissions are reviewed.

Design inspiration and building blocks

Let's start with inspiration. One Page Love showcases single-page websites. Browsing is free, and the templates are a mix of free and paid. The Component Gallery is a free reference of interface components, with examples from lots of public design systems. And Checklist Design gives you free best-practice checklists for pages, elements and flows like sign-up, buttons and onboarding, which helps you catch missing details before a design ships.

Ready to build? The WebAIM Contrast Checker tells you whether a colour pair passes WCAG 2 contrast requirements. RealFaviconGenerator takes one image and hands back a full favicon set, plus the HTML to add to your site. For shapes, Get Waves and Blobmaker are free tools for SVG waves and organic blobs, and Gradient Hunt is a free collection of colour gradients, updated daily, with codes and CSS ready to copy. On the component side, daisyUI is a free, open-source Tailwind CSS plugin with ready-made component classes and dozens of themes. Flowbite is an open-source Tailwind CSS component library with React, Vue and other versions, and if you need more, Flowbite Pro adds extra blocks and a Figma design system.

Handy utilities and developer references

Developers, two quick ones first. DevDocs, maintained by freeCodeCamp, gathers documentation for hundreds of languages and libraries into one searchable interface that can even work offline. Can I Use tells you which browsers support a given HTML, CSS or JavaScript feature. For everyday jobs, Bulk Resize Photos resizes a single image or a whole batch right on your device, with no sign-up. PeaZip is a free, open-source archive manager for Windows, macOS and Linux. It opens more than 200 formats, creates encrypted archives and can securely delete files, so double-check before you delete anything with it. AudioMass is a free, open-source audio editor that runs in your browser, with effects like fades, normalisation and reverb. And TinEye is a reverse image search engine that finds where a picture shows up online, including edited or cropped copies. Searches are free for non-commercial use only, and commercial use needs a paid plan.

That's forty new additions, sitting alongside everything else already in the directory. If you want to see how they stack up, browse the full Best Productivity Resources directory and compare them with other tools in each category.