Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Kotlin/Elm/Electron Tech Demo
Another HN Desktop client: https://github.com/spennihana/HackerDesktop Last weekend user westoncb posted[1] an app built in kotlin/swing[2]. A comment there mentioned that an electron app might be an interesting alternative, and here is the result of this last week's hackings. It uses the firebase API underneath and elm/electron to interact with kotlin via the spark-kotlin micro rest framework. The icns were made with Adobe Illustrator. The dmg unpacks to a whopping 250MB (since it packages the JRE in addition to all of the usual electron junk). video link:…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Kotlin/Elm/Electron Tech Demo launched in 2017; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
A year ago, my co-founder launched Desktop Docs here on HN. It's a Mac app we built with Electron that uses CLIP embeddings to search photos and videos locally with natural language. We got positive feedback from HN and our first paying customers, but the app was almost 1GB and clunky to use. TLDR; rebuilding in Rust was the right move. So we rewrote the app with Rust and Tauri and here are the results: - App size is 83% smaller: 1GB → 172MB - DMG Installer is 70% smaller: 232MB → 69.5MB - Indexing files is faster: A 38-minute video now indexes in ~3 minutes instead of 10-14 minutes -…
2025 · desktopdocs.com · its alternatives →
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- 4
A Kotlin/Swing desktop application front-end for Hacker News - westoncb/HNDesktop
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 5
Electron Fiddle▲247Create, run, package, and share experiments with Electron.
2018 · medium.com · its alternatives →
- 6
Desktop runtime for apps built on web technologies, using the system's own web browser engine - pojala/electrino
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 7
A Lightweight Electron App Container. Contribute to thomastschurtschenthaler/electrico development by creating an account on GitHub.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 8
Is Electron "just Chrome in a frame" or is it so much more?
2016 · hanselminutes.com · its alternatives →
- 9
Hey HN! I'm the developer of one of the most popular Android clients for HN, Harmonic for Hacker News. Over the years I have recieved many requests to open source the app which I am finally doing - sorry about taking so long :) Having been very busy working on my PhD during the last two years - Harmonic has not recieved the attention it deserves. I therefore hope that open sourcing it can give it a new lease on life. I also hope that by posting here many of the nice people who have reached out to me will notice that the app is finally open source. I'm also happy to answer questions about the…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
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A video and channel downloader that supports 110 websites, powered by Electron and youtube-dl - mayeaux/videodownloader
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 11
Winrt APIs-node.js modules generator. Contribute to NodeRT/NodeRT development by creating an account on GitHub.
2016 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12
Hello everyone :) Recently, my team (at VirtusLab) released an experimental support for Kotlin in Pulumi. This means you can use a convenient DSL to deploy stuff to your cloud (see examples in the repository). Getting started guide should be enough for you to use this in a toy project :). This is a proof of concept, so we would really love to hear your feedback before moving on. Please have a look at the "Giving feedback" section of the README.md.
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 13
A little toy HN client for the desktop that I've been playing around with this week.
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14
Hi HN! I left AWS a few months ago and created CodinIT, a local, open-source AI app builder made with remix + Electron. The motivation: I tried one of the popular cloud-based AI app builders, but when I pulled down the app to run locally, it just didn’t work especially with the monthly costs needed to build something half decent without being limited. So I created CodinIT, an app builder that runs fully on your computer, making it easy to switch between CodinIT and coding tools like Cursor or Claude Code. Source code: https://github.com/codinit-dev/codinit-dev Download…
Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15
Unofficial Gmail native app. Contribute to paulot/gmail development by creating an account on GitHub.
2015 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 16
Spot configuration and performance issues right in your IDE
2025 · plugins.jetbrains.com · its alternatives →
- 17ET
Hi HN folks! I’m the creator of Exo and wanted to share my progress with the HN community. Exo is an electron app that uses a chat interface and open Ai to write code directly to your file system/repos. Exo is a work in progress - its very new and has many rough edges. I was hoping to get some early feedback from HN folks and hopefully some early users. Once you create an account the universal electron installer link is on the dashboard. Here is a quick explainer video: https://www.loom.com/share/5f34499ccfb54bfdae32ee50f454b365 Exo started as a thin wrapper around…
2023 · getexo.dev · its alternatives →
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TL;DR- Libninja will generate world-class client libraries for you, without you needing to fiddle with openapi-generator, maintain build pipelines, and so forth. If you just want Rust, reach out, and I'll create your client library at no cost, because I want to help Rust's ecosystem grow. -- Hi HN, I got into Rust in a big way about 9 months ago. While the language is quickly maturing, one large gap in the ecosystem is immature or non-existent client libraries for common API services like Plaid, Stripe, Twilio, Github, Slack, and so on. The existing openapi-generator templates create Rust…
2022 · libninja.com · its alternatives →
- 20
A Positively Charged JavaScript Runtime . Contribute to alshdavid-public/ion development by creating an account on GitHub.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 21
Backend APIs often grow into large orchestration classes full of duplicated calls and manual concurrency. I’ve been working on Mosaic, a Kotlin framework that composes responses out of small, request-scoped “tiles.” Each tile runs once per request, dependencies resolve automatically, and independent tiles execute in parallel without boilerplate. It’s still early (v0.2.0), but working today for caching, concurrency, and testability. Curious to hear feedback on the approach. GitHub: https://github.com/Nick-Abbott/Mosaic Maven Central: org.buildmosaic:mosaic-core:0.2.0
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22
Hi HN, For the last ~15 years I've worked on embedding web browsers into Java and .NET desktop apps (JxBrowser, DotNetBrowser). Over time, I watched many teams move from embedding web views into native apps, to building full desktop apps with frameworks like Electron and Tauri. Both are useful, but in practice I kept running into several problems. With Electron, beyond the larger app footprint, I often ran into: - lack of type-safe IPC - no source code protection - weak support for the modern web stack Tauri solves some problems (like app size), but introduces others: - different WebViews…
2016 · teamdev.com · its alternatives →
- 23
Howdy friends! Tell me if this is an atrociously terrible idea - I've been working on building a leetcode for clientside devs so we can practice React and Javascript interview questions in a more concise way, I call it clientside.dev I just finished a beta version of it yesterday and plan on releasing it with many more problems on Jan 1st but it's there if you wanna play with it open to any ideas / feedback however mean or nice it may be :)
2022 · vacation-call-335691.framer.app · its alternatives →
- 24
s0mbra▲6My mobile app experience with Kotlin was overwhelming and slow, so I decided to build something better from scratch. The result? An IDE written from the ground up for mobile developers who want something faster, leaner, and more focused. It's not a wrapper, plugin collection, or fork — it's built specifically to prioritize performance and simplicity. RAM usage stays between 200MB-1.2GB, even on resource-heavy tasks. Fast startup (boots in seconds, not minutes), minimal lag, and no distractions. More resources for your code, less waiting around. The setup includes everything needed to code…
2025 · s0mbra.com · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →