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For developer tools, I noticed that CyberChef [1] wasn't on the list so I submitted it. I regularly use it for
- URL encoding/decoding
- QR code generation
- JSON and XML pretty-printing
- Base64 encoding/decoding
but it does way more than that.
For anyone who isn't convinced yet: it can not just do all those things, it can chain them. You can build a pipeline jist by dragging and dropping blocks, with live results and even recommendations when some formats are detected .
During a reverse engineering project I built this to extract some audio data from a very strange API: string replace | json parse + query | base64 decode | gunzip | add wav header. Switching to zstd and a different bitrate took 2 clicks. Really helped me stay "in the zone" while working - having to open up a code editor and Python docs to write this from scratch would've taken me completely out of it and wasted a significant amount of time.
I feel like I shouldn't trust an encryption website by the British NSA not to steal my data, but given a million other people must have had the same thought, and that it's open source, maybe someone would have noticed by now.
Friendly reminder to consider that any and all information supplied to these services may be harvested (with or without knowledge by the creator, depending on how they deploy).
Consider using tor or similar to mask your IP, don't upload a scan of your passport to an online image editor, and so on.
For tools that provide source, it's often straightforward to run them locally.
Came here to say this too. A super useful addition to this website would be a blurb on each tool page that discloses how they make their money to keep the lights on, and what their privacy policy looks like. If they're fully supported by donations (or paid users, but have a no-account freemium plan somehow), and have a strong privacy policy, great! But if they support themselves by granting themselves a perpetual-use license to anything you upload, and sell whatever data on you they can, that's... not so great.
Add https://8mb.video/ to the list - it does exactly what it says on the tin (and while it doesn't explicitly mention it, its broader purpose is to compress videos down to Discord's file size limit)
Looks like this does the work on the server? I wonder if it could be done in WebAssembly to avoid the round trip and server load?
Thank you! I've spent far too much time in HandBrake when I could've been using this. You have improved my life
I've had a bash script in my PATH that uses ffmpeg exactly to do this for the longest time. This is great!
I wonder if the tools are also vetted for security. IIRC there was some supply chain attack that had to do with similar no-signup tools injecting SEO scam code (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27427330)
Good point. I'm very wary of submitting anything security sensitive to an unfamiliar web site, especially one I don't have a business relationship with.
If you have a business relationship with them (i.e. give them money), they're less likely to do something bad with your data since it may cause you to stop giving them money.
That's why I won't use tools like an online PDF tool when I'm dealing with PDFs that contain sensitive information.
That wouldn't do any good; these are network services, so they could always add attack code after the vetting, or perform a de-anonymization attack (trivial if you're not using TOR, potentially jury-riggable (eg based on what files you use them on) even if you are) and send it only to targeted visitors.
Although it's got some nice things listed, the site seems to be missing some of the best tools out there. I recommend Diagrams.net [1] for creating diagrams. I use it as my primary diagramming tool.
Great idea! I've submitted my side project, https://siftrss.com/.
It lets you add filters to any RSS feed for free in a few seconds. It's great for filtering news, podcasts, and anything else you get via RSS down to just the items you want to see.
I bookmarked this two months ago--what a fantastic utility!
remove.bg marked as Free has to be a joke, right? It's literally 1 credit for the "Free" experience...
nice "Staff pick"
Agree. They only let you download a low resolution version of your image by default. To download full resolution, sign up is required, and to use it again will require getting credits if you want to download full resolution of those other images.
Should not be considered a “no-signup tool” imo
If there's no signup and it's free, you have to very wary on what the "trick" is, because nothing is truly free. Most of the potentially useful ones looks like trial with locked features.
We’ve put mindwendel[0] out for free - no tracking, no ads, no data harvesting.
It’s a tool to brainstorm and vote on ideas.
We did so because we are using it ourselves and the resource usage is so low it doesn’t cost us more to share it with others.
Or it could be some dude’s personal tool that’s easier to also make available to others. I do that a lot because remembering a custom domain is quicker than some CLI incantation.
For example: https://techletter.app – I use it to construct my newsletters. Markdown with a few customizations into HTML for WYSIWYG editors. It’s cheap enough to run that I don’t care if others use it. I think the AWS credits add up to $3/mo.
This is a good point.
There should be separate categories for FOSS and no-hidden-monetization tools v.s. the other fly-in-the-soup tools where you have to drink around the fly...
the FOSS community might disagree with this statement
A couple of my tools that don't require signup:
- Grapher (a visual editor for graph datasets with features like nested nodes, custom attributes on nodes and edges, and export in Cytoscape JSON or SVG format. Accessible at: https://grapherx.netlify.app/
- LearnDB (A curated collection of links to educational resources organized by topics, formats, reviews and other tags). Accessible at: https://learndb.vercel.app/
Semi-related:
Ever since moving from Windows to MacOS, I was desperately looking for a replacement for MSPaint for the following use case: "paste an image, crop it properly, crop further, put red bold square box around the interesting part, add some text and arrows".
All tools are tried make this way less ergonomic than ol' good MSPaint.
Then I remembered this ridiculous idea someone had to port MSPaint to JavaScript: https://jspaint.app/
Hallelujah!
You can do this with Preview → Annotations
You can have the annotations palette always displayed. I haven't used MSPaint since the Windows XP days, but I don't think it can be any easier than this.
Preview, despite its name, does this really well. Its freeform drawing tools are a little different (shapes and lines are vector, not pixel) but they're very easy to use.
I mostly need to do that kind of thing on screenshots. The Flameshot app has worked really well for taking screenshots and annotating them.
I would take a screenshot of part of my screen (CMND+Shift+4), mark up the screenshot with a red box then send.
A screenshot is plenty high res enough already. If anything you’ll want to shrink or before sending.
I like photopea nowadays.
Alternatively, you can use http://bugmenot.com/ (doesn't work that often I must admit)
This used to be a great tool but hasn’t worked for me since 5-7 years. Maybe it can be implemented in Web3.0 to make it more reliable?
In case the owner reads this, category filter check boxes are missing IDs which makes the label not associated with them and it can't be used to check/uncheck.
Oh, my site https://snaplink.dev in in there, so random!
Smort.io doesn't require a signup too! Smort lets you easily annotate and share an article or arXiv paper. Just add Smort.io before any URL to read it in Smort.
Demo: https://smort.io/demo/home
Disclaimer: I built Smort
No Excalidraw?
I just checked it out. That's a really cool drawing tool. I love how it allows you to give a hand-drawn feel to your drawings and diagrams.
I would add https://scrumpoker.app/ to the list also. Great initiative otherwise, have you considered driving the catalogue through GitHub PRs so the list can stay up to date?
RemoveBG is clearly not free (unless we count one single image) and you need to register (to get that single image). Love the product, but the "to-go" prices are too high imho.
Trainline.com is for buying train tickets in the UK/EU, doesn't require any signup at all. Pretty good.
Site needs some work:
- Clicking text in filter categories doesn't work
- Images have pointer cursor but clicking them wont open the link
Found https://www.onelook.com/ under writing, looks good for word related lookups.
I'd add https://edit.photo/ "No popups to close. No ads to ignore. No cookies to accept. No account to create. 100% Free"
I typed "upscale" and got nothing.
Is there any good AI based image upscaling software online?
Search for waifu2x websites, there are tons on the internet. Here's one: https://waifu2x.io/
Doesn't load for me, just says "there's nothing here yet"
Disclaimer: I'm a Co Founder of the service I'm linking.
Scraping Fish (https://scrapingfish.com) doesn't require a sign up. It is a paid service though. We (obviously) don't sell your data.
Yazz.com, a low code tool needs no sign up to use
I love when the website you land in is the app, with no signup, like tldraw (https://www.tldraw.com/).
Why I should...
* Remove a background "online"?
* Write a resume "online"?
* Create an E-mail signature "online"?[1]
* Create a profile picture "online"?
* ...
Here some personal recommendations:
* Use GIMP or KRITA
* Use LibreOffice or Latex with moderncv[2] (We're on hackernews, right?)
* Use your E-Mail application and plaintext!
* Again GIMP or use included tools of the application or network (Signal and other provide it)
* For polls you can use often included features of messengers (e.g. reactions in Signal) or non-commercial sites [3]