Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Desktop app displaying files on a 2D canvas
Hey all! I always wanted to arrange my text/markdown/pdf files on a 2D canvas and visualize them without opening all the windows. An extra feature I added is also visualizing folders within - so kind of a 3D visualization? It was also important to be an offline desktop app, rather than online tool like Miro or Mural, because once I edit files in Sublime or AdobePDF then I want changes to sync in the canvas right away. Some technical points and lessons learned: being Android developer helped a lot with this project since I used Kotlin Multiplatform with Compose Desktop renderer…
This desktop application displays text, markdown, and PDF files arranged on a 2D canvas, allowing users to visualize their documents without opening multiple windows. It includes nested folder visualization for a… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Desktop app displaying files on a 2D canvas launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
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Hi, I'm a developer and first time i shipped the real product after observing the startups and indie hackers community for years. I had made so many useless apps [you should check my website https://ansh.life], but this time I built a very useful product that has a number of super easy-to-use tools in one app for video, music, and photo files. Users can compress, convert, resize, and do so much more with easy-to-use tools. Background: I developed a frame-by-frame video cropper to upload cropped landscape videos to Instagram Reels. However, it required FFmpeg, and as a noob video…
2025 · pimosa.app · its alternatives →
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- 3LP
Hi HN! For the last 8 months we've been working on leaflet.pub, a web app for making delightful documents. We're trying to strike a balance between Notion and Google Docs — very fast, ultralight and easy to share, but also supporting rich blocks and multiple pages. Weirdly, none of the many notetaking/document apps that we could find hit this combination, so we made Leaflet. With it you can: - Instantly create a doc, without an account - Share read and edit links - Sign-in with email to sync your docs to different devices - Add rich blocks, like canvases, subpages, rsvps, and polls It's…
2025 · its alternatives →
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- 6CP
Hi HN! 2d spritesheets for game development are often distributed as a PNG image, sometimes with a separate JSON or XML metadata document describing the layout, including any animation sequences within the sheet. Sometimes there is no metadata document and you have to work it out and manually write custom code to chop up the spritesheet and reference the sprites you want. I think it would be good if it became standard practice to distribute spritesheet PNGs with the metadata inline inside a PNG "chunk" so the whole thing is self-contained. That way artists can just distribute one file, and…
2019 · mccormick.cx · its alternatives →
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Thank you for your comments, just some context: - The app is available for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Apple Vision Pro, and the Web. - The Web version is implemented as a Progressive Web Application that is very responsive, local first, offline first, can be installed, and is entirely free to use. - Native (hybrid) versions do not require subscription fees and have small one-time payment. - You can store your notes in Git using any Git provider such as GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. However, it has the best built-in integration with GitHub. Self-hosted scenarios like Gitea are also…
2024 · about.noteshub.app · its alternatives →
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It requires no registration, no installation, and no configuration. Just run it on any computer and start drawing freely.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Here's a project I've been working on for a little while now. Ripl is a JS library that provides a unified API for rendering shapes on both canvas and SVG interchangeably. Over the years I've used D3 extensively to create data visualisations so I figured I'd have a go at making my own version with a slightly more modern API and stricter TypeScript support. I am aware there are already libraries that can draw to multiple contexts interchangeably, but I've added a few little niceties to Ripl that (as far as I know) some other libraries don't have such as CSS-like query selectors, DOM-like…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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So I've been working on this app for a very long time now. Started off by wanting an app that separates long form notes from short form notes visually and keeps everything organized on a canvas. The app features: -Sticky notes for quick, small notes and A4 notes for long form documents -A quick mode that uses local storage to quickly open the app and jot down a thought on the canvas -A PDF export option that exports your notes into 3 custom designed PDF styles -Visual hierarchy to replicate file structure instead of a linear fashion, where your files are notes, stacks are folders and labels…
Jul 2026 · passinote.app · its alternatives →
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NotePlan 3▲264Native (Mac & iOS) note-taking based on local Markdown files
2020 · noteplan.co · its alternatives →
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A multi-threaded, GPU-powered, 2D vector graphics environment for Node.js - samizdatco/skia-canvas
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Cross-platform desktop note-taking app. Sticky notes with Markdown and Tabs. All in one .txt file. - zonetti/zonote
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14AZ
I'm building a journal app in Kotlin Multiplatform and for this purpose I have created a zoomable timeline interface. This is a side-project where I reuse the timeline interface to display 4 million events imported from Wikipedia / Wikidata, scored using PageRank. There is more information on the about page. If you're interested in the stack: I use Kotlin Multiplatform extensively, with Compose Multiplatform for the UI, communicates with the backend using Kotlinx-RPC and behind the hood a simple Postgres database on a Hetzner machine.
Jul 2026 · app.everything.diena.co · its alternatives →
- 15IM
Hi HN, Since 2019, I’ve been working on a writing platform designed for creating complex documents (e.g., theses). I personally use it for everything as it also allows to classify documents in categories so you can organize them efficiently. As of a few months ago, the app is also available in the browser, and you can now invite coworkers to collaborate on a document in real time. The app is somewhat inspired by LyX. It offers an intuitive, modern editor, but users don’t need to know any LaTeX. When it’s time to export, they can choose from a range of templates (IEEE paper, thesis, etc.). A…
2025 · its alternatives →
- 16M2
Hey HN, I want to share with you something I and my four colleagues have been working on for the last several years. It’s a whiteboarding and notes tool called Muse[1]. We just released a 2.0 version which includes local-first sync. A little backstory: I’m one of the authors of the 2019 essay Local-first software[2]. (Past HN discussions[3][4].) The thesis is to reclaim some of the ownership over our data that we’ve lost in the transition from filesystems to cloud/SaaS. So I’m excited to bring CRDT technology “out of the lab” and into a commercial product as a chance to prove the value…
2022 · museapp.com · its alternatives →
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As a teacher, we keep our slides as markdown files in git repos and want to build these automatically so they can be viewed online (or offline if needed). To achieve this, I have created MkSlides. This tool converts all markdown in a folder to slides generated with Reveal.js. The workflow is very similar to MkDocs. Install: `pip install mkslides` Building slides: `mkslides build` Live preview during editing: `mkslides serve` Comparison with other tools like marp, slidev, ...: - This tool is a single command and easy to integrate in CI/CD pipelines. - It only needs Python. - The workflow…
Nov 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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LocalMark Studio▲112A fast, local-first Markdown editor for real work.
Jan 2026 · editor.karthikponnam.dev · its alternatives →
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Hello internet folks! I'm happy to share the first TestFlight release of Glyph3D, a 3D text visualizer for macOS and iOS. It's free, supports pretty much any utf8 data, and is a pretty interesting way to navigate your repositories or data directories without the limitations of standard text windows! Download and bookmark for macOS and iOS: https://github.com/tikimcfee/LookAtThat/ - You should be able to download public repos from GitHub and render them. - Play with opening and closing windows. I've disabled many of the in-flight features to keep user confusion down,…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Flatdraw▲93Open-source canvas drawing web app with responsive UI
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
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After several years, with a small hiatus in the middle, I've finally got Ripl to the point of being published. Ripl is a library for rendering 2D and 3D shapes to any context (canvas, SVG, WebGPU, and Terminal supported by default) using a single API. The library mimics the DOM as much as possible, replicating the event system, object graphing, CSS-like querying, gradients, and keyframe animations etc. I also built a complete data visualization library using the core package which is available as @ripl/charts. And yes, you can even render the charts to a terminal with about a 2-3 line…
Mar 2026 · ripl.rocks · its alternatives →
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NotesHub 2.x▲74Markdown based note-taking app with git sync & kanban boards
2023 · about.noteshub.app · its alternatives →
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