Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier. the technology and the game I am working on for months launched in 2010; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

1. 1
   Project Soli by Google▲824

   Your hands are the only interface you'll need

   2016 · google.com · its alternatives →

2. 2IM
   I made a web-based, free alternative to Screen Studio▲462

   Hi HN, I've been working on this project for the last 5 months, inspired by Screen Studio but runs 100% in the browser. Here is a demo of the editor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7-etsFZgPI One of the big challenges of using the browser is getDisplayMedia, the API for recording screens, doesn't provide mouse coordinates for security reasons. Mouse coordinates are important for auto-focus animations. So I trained a YOLOv11 model to detect mouse cursors and I run inference in real time while you record. Also, I created my own Remotion-style renderer because I started with…

   2025 · screenrecorder.me · its alternatives →

3. 3
   Airpoint▲136

   Touchless computing with hand tracking and AI agents

   Mar 2026 · airpoint.app · its alternatives →

4. 4
   Cai▲179

   Hi HN, Cai runs actions on your selection via ⌥C, pick an action (AI, shell, GitHub issue, Linear ticket), done. Bundled local model (MLX Community), create custom actions with prompts, scripts and more. Free, MIT. Built after my Raycast extension sat in review queue for 3+ months. Wanted no typing, no app switching, no cloud. Repo: https://github.com/cai-layer/cai Demo: https://youtu.be/LH2MYNQ_wsk

   Apr 2026 · getcai.app · its alternatives →

5. 5
   Airdraw▲269

   Hey Everyone! I wanted to show my passion project I made a few years back and recently turned into a web app. Airdraw is an app that takes in your hand gestures and converts it into real time drawing capabilities. There are tons of stuff I want to build with this, but most importantly just put it out into the world! Hope you all enjoy :) Tested on my MacOS with Chrome, Safari, and FF I included a link to the original GH project I wrote here - https://github.com/arefmalek/airdraw and a link to the blog where I explained how I made it here -…

   2023 · airdraw.io · its alternatives →

6. 6
   Octi▲178

   New consumer AR app that recognizes your body / adds effects

   2018 · octi.tv · its alternatives →

7. 7
   Phantomy ▲152

   Hand gesture control for presentations and beyond

   2024 · phantomy.s3-website.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com · its alternatives →

8. 8
   Motion▲207

   Hey HN, meet Motion — a frontier agent for motion design. Here’s how it works: 1. Give Motion a prompt — include any context like product links, X threads, YouTube videos, personal assets, and design MD. Motion will reference styles, incorporate research, and storyboard scenes. 2. Motion creates the video — it can orchestrate entire explainers, launch videos, logo animations, convert articles to video, or even add motion design to your existing videos. 3. Edit everything — after generation, edit everything directly: resize, drag and drop, modify elements. Or just chat with Motion to iterate.…

   May 2026 · motion.so · its alternatives →

9. 9
   Placeit Video 2.0▲101

   Make your own app demo video with real hand gestures.

   2015 · placeit.net · its alternatives →

10. 10
    Beni AI▲78

    Hi HN, I built Beni (https://thebeni.ai ), a web app for real-time video calls with an AI companion. The idea started as a pretty simple question: text chatbots are everywhere, but they rarely feel present. I wanted something closer to a call, where the character actually reacts in real time (voice, timing, expressions), not just “type, wait, reply”. Beni is basically: A Live2D avatar that animates during the call (expressions + motion driven by the conversation) Real-time voice conversation (streaming response, not “wait 10 seconds then speak”) Long-term memory so the character…

    Feb 2026 · thebeni.ai · its alternatives →

11. 11
    ParallaxPro▲95

    AI tool that turns your prompts into real video games

    Apr 2026 · parallaxpro.ai · its alternatives →

12. 12
    Play brick breaker using webcam and hand tracking (open source)▲22

    I built this game to test out the MediaPipe hand-tracking API. Play brick breaker using your webcam + hand movement -- levels get progressively harder with faster speed / smaller paddle. All processing is done in real-time within your browser. This project is built using javascript, html canvas, and mediapipe hand tracking. This game is free and open source, offered under an MIT license. Github repo: https://github.com/collidingScopes/manual-brick-breaker Hope it's fun for you -- would love to hear feedback and suggestions for improvement.

    2025 · collidingscopes.github.io · its alternatives →

13. 13
    I Made Loom for Mobile▲69

    Hi everyone, I made this app Demo Scope lets you record or stream any mobile website with your face on screen and touch indicators showing every tap. I built it because I needed to demo my own side projects and hated the OBS/desktop setup. Load your site in the app, hit record, done. Or stream straight to Twitch/YouTube. Free to try: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/demo-scope/id6755395174 Would love feedback if anyone tries it. I made a landing site centered around mobile demos for professional projects, but my main use case honestly has been Twitch…

    Dec 2025 · demoscope.app · its alternatives →

14. 14
    Flixi▲71

    An AI powered tv & movie assistant

    2019 · flixi.com · its alternatives →

15. 15
    I built an Open Source screen timer for the m5stickc (Arduino)free▲17

    I've never posted on ShowHN before, but I wanted to share my Xmas 2025 project; to try a new approach to controlling our kids screen time. This also involved massively over-engineering a solution in order to play with a shiny new gadget (and avoid the in laws at Christmas, obviously) I've shared some learnings on AI coding with embedded devices, and how I approached the product design/hardware selection side of things. The Web App is at https://screenie.org - and I'm Open Sourcing the device and web app code later today (links to follow on that site)

    Jan 2026 · partridge.works · its alternatives →

16. 16
    AI Pulse a fake LED strip beside the macOS Dock that shows agent status▲19

    Hi HN! I run a few Claude Code sessions in parallel and kept cmd-tabbing around just to find out one of them had been sitting on a permission prompt for ten minutes. There's a hardware gadget I liked (called SidePulse.io) so before waiting to get my shipment I built the software version instead :D I hope you like it and find it useful as I do!

    Aug 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

17. 17
    Make AI motion videos with text▲6

    Saw the remotion claude skills launch earlier, and honestly even though I was surprised how decent some of the results turned out to be I ended up never trying it out with claude code because I knew I'd have to setup remotion, bundler etc and if I was already doing it once I thought I might as well turn it into a site where anyone could just write messages and get a video without any prerequisites. I also know Claude Code is not something everyone has and setting up remotion is a pain. And one of the biggest lessons I learned from this whole experience is that Opus is actually not that good…

    Feb 2026 · framecall.com · its alternatives →

18. 18ET
    Easy-to-use Gesture Recognizers for Leap Motion in Objective-C and C#▲15

    Upon getting a Leap Motion and wanting to hack the ever-loving crap out of it, we decided to make some gesture recognizers that allow listening and handling motions such as: Did swipe right with x fingers, y hands Did pan on screen with x fingers, y hands Did tap with x fingers, y hands Did rotate with x fingers, y hands Did pinch with x fingers, y hands These libraries make it easy to create a WPF or a Cocoa Mac OS X application for manipulating and using the Leap Motion. These are built on top of the Leap SDK, and a level of abstraction up. We hope that this can be the foundation for a…

    2013 · its alternatives →

19. 19
    motionbase▲6

    I got mass jealous of all these fancy explainer videos, so I built something I like designing, it's genuinely satisfying work. But motion design? That's a different beast. Time-consuming doesn't even begin to cover it. I kept seeing all these polished explainer videos on X or reddit. Smooth transitions, perfectly timed text animations, the whole package. And every time I thought "I could do that for my project", then reality hit. Learning AE properly takes a lot of time. Existing browser tools are either too basic or feel like piloting a spaceship. So I did what any reasonable developer does…

    Jan 2026 · motionbase.design · its alternatives →

20. 20
    ScreenCI▲25

    Prompt your AI agent to write a product video, grounded in a real Playwright E2E run of your app. Because every video is code, it re-renders as your product changes, so what customers watch never goes stale.

    Jul 2026 · screenci.com · its alternatives →

21. 21
    Let your body be the gamepad using a webcam▲14

    Hi HN, I made a keyboard emulator that tracks your body pose and emits the key presses accordingly. My main motivation was to make my kids move more on rainy days. I already made a couple of mini-games using the body pose [1-3], and those were definitely fun to make and play! However, once the kids learned the tricks, they got bored. I could only produce that much content myself, and soon realized that I lack time for churning out games. Finally, I decided to tap into an endless pool of PC games, preferrably simple and less addictive ones like the Gameboy and DOS games. This project has been…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

22. 22
    Camera Controls and Motion for AI Video Prompts▲11

    A reference for writing camera prompts for AI video generators: interactive modules for camera angle, movement and shot size, plus the vocabulary models respond to.

    7d ago · kapwing.com · its alternatives →

23. 23
    Control your Roku with only your hand gestures▲21

    HandiRokuRemote is a Python application that lets you control your Roku device with nothing but hand gestures! Using Mediapipe's Hand Landmark Detector, it tracks your hand, identifies gestures, and sends commands to your Roku via its External Control Protocol. Here's a gif demo: https://github.com/BBelk/HandiRokuRemote/blob/main/images/re... Features: •Real-time hand tracking: Gestures like "thumbs up" increase volume or pointing for navigation. •Cross-device support: Works with any Roku device on the same local network. •Easy setup: Plug in a camera,…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

24. 24
    Real-time virtual try-on using hand gestures and live video diffusion▲10

    LiveLook — Real-time virtual try-on with gesture control, powered by Decart's Lucy VTON model - manas15/try-on

    May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

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 →