Every phone-as-a-webcam tool I looked at (DroidCam, Iriun, Camo, EpocCam) needs an app installed on the phone. I wanted one that didn't, so I made it. It's free, open source, and everything runs locally — the video goes straight from the phone to the PC, there's no account and no server in the middle.

You open the desktop app, it shows a QR code, you scan it with the phone's normal camera app and a web page opens. Tap "Start camera" and your phone shows up as a camera called OmniCam in Discord, Zoom, Meet, Chrome, OBS, pretty much anything that lists webcams. The video goes over your own Wi-Fi using WebRTC, so nothing leaves your network.

Things worth knowing before you try it:

• It will eat your phone's battery. Streaming costs about what a long video call costs, and because the phone side is a web page the screen has to stay on with the page in front. A native app could stream with the screen off, which is the real tradeoff for not installing anything. Phone gets warm, so plug it in for anything long. It does drop to 5 fps when nothing on the PC is actually using the camera, so idling is cheap, but an actual call is not.

• Windows only right now (10 and 11, 64-bit).

• Your phone will show a certificate warning the first time. Browsers only allow camera access over HTTPS, and nobody can issue a real certificate for 192.168.x.x, so the app makes its own. You accept it once and that's it.

• The installer isn't code signed yet, so SmartScreen will give you the "Windows protected your PC" thing.

• Video only, no microphone yet.

• It won't show up in the Windows Camera app or the new Teams. Those use a newer camera API I haven't implemented yet.

It's MIT licensed, source and installer are on GitHub: https://github.com/Orest-Z/OmniCam

I mostly built it for fun and because I wanted it to exist, but I'd like it to actually be useful to people, so I plan to keep working on it. On battery specifically there's room to improve: dropping resolution instead of framerate when the phone starts heating up, a plain battery saver toggle on the phone page, and a lower default than 1080p. Linux support and a virtual mic are the other big ones on my list.

If you try it and something breaks, tell me, that's genuinely the most useful thing you can do.

Some of you have seen my earlier posts about KillerPDF - thanks for the support on those, it's genuinely what keeps me building this. Back with a chunky update.

Quick refresher: KillerPDF is a free, open-source (GPLv3), no account, no subscription, no telemetry PDF editor. It is a single portable EXE that runs off a USB stick, or a per-user install with no UAC. I'm a field tech who got tired of Adobe and built the thing I wanted.

I shipped a big 1.5.0 and then a 1.5.1 update about 2 hours later, because apparently releasing to you fine people is my QA process now. Testing in prod is the only thing that gets me excited these days. Combined rundown:

View / UI

- Four view modes: Single, Continuous scroll, Two-Page, and a Grid of every page

- A print dialog with an actual print preview (Windows' own dialog refuses to preview, so I built one)

- 6 themes - Dark, Light, High Contrast, Blood, Greed, Cyanotic - live switching

- Localized UI: English, Spanish, Traditional Chinese (PRs welcome for more)

Editing

- Inline text editing with font matching; double-click placed text to re-edit

- Highlights, freehand, text boxes, reusable signatures, drop images onto pages

- Crop tool with a coordinate editor and page-range apply

- Merge / split / reorder / rotate / extract pages

- PDF form filling, bookmark/outline nav, full-text search

The 1.5.1 "tested in prod" patches

- Multi-core Save Flattened - large docs flatten a lot faster

- Fixed a class of PDFs that wouldn't open ("Unexpected EOF" - a strict Flate inflater choking on multi-revision files; now recovered losslessly through PDFium). One of you reproduced it down to a 15-byte zlib blob, which was the best bug report I've ever received.

- Grid view loads all pages now and streams them in, instead of quietly stopping at 26

- A few zoom and scrollbar papercuts

Download: https://pdf.killertools.net

Source: https://github.com/SteveTheKiller/KillerPDF

Bug reports very welcome. Going by 1.5.1, I clearly need them.

EDIT: New Bug Detected! It has been reported so e users are having issues with "undo" in certain view modes. Be cautious until I can release a 1.5.2 bug fix later this week.

Hi everyone, I’m the developer of FocusHaze, so full disclosure up front.

I wanted something like HazeOver (macOS) on Windows and couldn’t find anything that felt native, so I built it. FocusHaze puts a translucent haze over everything except the window you’re working in, so the rest of the screen fades into the background. Clicks pass straight through the haze.

What it does

• Dims all windows except the active one; smooth fade when you switch
• Adjustable intensity, haze color and fade duration
• All monitors, or only the one with the active window
• Global hotkey Ctrl+Alt+H to toggle, lives in the system tray
• Optional start with Windows
• 14 languages, native WinUI 3 look (Mica)
• Works on x64 and ARM64

Privacy: no telemetry, no network connections, nothing collected.

It’s open source (MIT) on GitHub, and it’s $0.99 on the Microsoft Store (one-click install + auto-updates). I have 30 Store codes to give away.

Want a code? Leave a comment (bonus points if you tell me how you’d use it: multi-monitor, ultrawide, ADHD, coding…) and I’ll DM you one. First come, first served.

I’d really appreciate feedback, especially bugs and edge cases. One known limitation: “always on top” windows don’t get dimmed yet.

• Store: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9P3J7F0RK3RT
• Website: https://pietruh00s.github.io/FocusHaze/
• Source: https://github.com/pietruh00s/FocusHaze

Update: All available promo codes have been claimed! Thank you so much to everyone for the incredible interest and support. If you missed out, you can still check out FocusHaze on the Microsoft Store. 🙏

I recently tried finding a downloader that wasn't Subscription based. Since i didn't find any i decided to make my own. It's based on yt dlp so you can download almost any Video from the Web including Youtube, twitch, Instagram and more. This is my Second Project so Feedback is apreciated.

Repo

Hi all, I’m the developer of Pulse, so full disclosure that this is my own project.

I got tired of opening Event Viewer and seeing “Application Error, Event ID 1000” with no idea what actually happened. Pulse reads the same Windows event logs and shows them as a timeline in plain language, like “Explorer stopped unexpectedly and Windows restarted it”. The technical details and the raw XML are still one click away.

What it does:

Timeline of what Windows is doing (crashes, service changes, updates, restarts)

System health: CPU, memory, GPU and network at a glance

Hardware and software inventory

Exportable diagnostic reports

What it doesn’t do: it’s read-only. It doesn’t “optimize” or “clean” anything and never changes Windows settings. There’s no telemetry, no account and no cloud; everything stays on your PC.

New in v1.2.0: a complete visual redesign (dark theme, a summary of the last hour, a clearer event inspector), plus a fix where Windows 11 machines showed up as “Windows 10”.

It’s MIT licensed and built with Flutter and a small C++ Windows service.

GitHub: https://github.com/Regncreative/Pulse

I’d really appreciate feedback, especially on what’s still confusing or what you’d want it to explain next. Happy to answer questions.

KillerPDF is a free, local-only PDF editor for Windows. No subscription, no account, no telemetry. I've gotten a lot of support from Reddit these last few months, so I thought I'd reciprocate.

v1.4.0 just dropped with a bunch of stuff people asked for:

• Insert images onto any page as resizable annotations, burned into the PDF on save
• Rotate pages via right-click in the sidebar, single or multi-page selection
• Clickable PDF links including TOC cross-references and back-links
• Multi-page grid view at low zoom so you can see the whole document at once
• New blank document (Ctrl+N)
• Text size and color picker for the typewriter tool
• Signature resize by dragging the corner handle
• Insert blank page from the right-click sidebar menu

Download: https://pdf.killertools.net

Source is on GitHub (GPLv3).

Let me know what you think! Please submit bugs and requests to the GitHub Issues page: https://github.com/SteveTheKiller/KillerPDF/issues

Free and open-source, GPLv3 PDF Editor for Windows

v1.6.0 is out, and it's the big one!
Here's what is new since the last release:

- OCR is now built into the exe (Tesseract): OCR a page or a dragged region to the clipboard, make a scan searchable, or extract all text. Extra languages download on demand, fully offline.

- Digital signatures with a cloud certificate (Certum SimplySign), reusable signatures, and click-to-sign form fields.

- Tabs - open as many PDFs as you want, each remembering its page, zoom, and view mode.

- Transform tool: rotate by a fine angle, scale, flip, and straighten a crooked scan by drawing a line along anything that should be level, with live preview.

- Editing upgrades: a Line tool, resizable word-wrapping text boxes with an optional whiteout fill, edit-existing-text, and a full RGB color picker with an eyedropper.

- Printing got a real overhaul: true 300 DPI, scale/position/margins/two-sided, and a proper preview.

- New translations: German, French, Bengali, Turkish, and Simplified Chinese (thanks to everyone who sent them in).

- Under the hood: the whole UI was split out of one 15k-line file into ~40 focused files, and the render pipeline was unified so annotations, search, and tools behave identically across every view mode.

- A full visual overhaul too: new logo, icons, and fonts throughout, plus 21 theme combinations - six base themes (Dark, Light, Black, Blood, Greed, Cyanotic) with six swappable accent colors on the neutral three.

Plus the usual pile of fixes: print crashes, form fields, grid-view navigation, search lag on huge docs, and more.

Check out the upgraded website with a new technical datasheet explaining some of the goings-on under the hood and a Help page with explanations of all the tools and shortcuts.

EDIT: I've moved to killerPDF.net !

Full changelog: https://github.com/SteveTheKiller/KillerPDF/releases/latest

Bug reports and feature requests welcome, as always.

EDIT2: Just released v1.6.1 bug fix

Hello All,

Check out this app that lets you control and manage multiple monitor while providing a very efficient, light weight and performative engine. You can do unison brightness, adaptive brightness sync, and interact with monitor through software and has a comprehensive oled protection features. teams stays active etc and much more.

Also the tool is very native, uses WINUI, , download check it out and let me know your thoughts. Also if you can do contribute by submitting your monitor details to repository.

DispCtrl -> Devices -> Contribute -> Open Github

The app supports bunch of features. and more to come. If you are a developer please check it out and do contribute in anyway.

Hope you like it

Source Code : https://github.com/jesvijonathan/DispCtrl

Microsoft Store : https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9pnqwknrgvr0?hl=en-GB&gl=IN

About a month ago I posted here because BetterTrumpet had just passed 6,000 downloads, which was already kinda crazy to me.

a bunch of you tried it after that post. Some loved it, some didn't, some found bugs I somehow missed for months lol. I got a nice amount of GitHub issues + PRs from you guys, so ty for that :)

I actually worked on a lot of them, but didn't push anything right away because I was about to go on vacation and wanted to take my time + properly polish the update instead of shipping something half-baked.

Then while I was away I checked the numbers and... 10k downloads !!!

I genuinely thought we'd maybe hit 10k before the end of 2027. Instead it happened in mi-August 2026.

When I got home, my fiancée had prepared a little surprise to celebrate it, so I wanted to share that too , check third pics :)
(and yes pls ignore the mess lmao)

Anyway, I'm back now, and BetterTrumpet 3.3 is out!

Quick rundown of what's new (i'm not an AI, i wrote this list myself haha) :

• The volume slider is wayyy smoother now.
• Settings got a complete redesign using WebView2. The old settings are still there if you prefer them.
• I completely removed Sentry. I made my own tiny ping system instead, basically just to know how many ppl are actually using BetterTrumpet. And yep, you can disable it.
• You can now automatically lower an app's volume when it's not focused.
• You can set a volume for an app before you even launch it. So for example, you can tell BetterTrumpet "all my Steam games = 67%" and they'll just start at 67%.
• I reworked the shortcut system, should feel a lot smoother now.
• You also get a notification when switching the default audio device.
• And a bunch of smaller fixes + optimizations™ that aren't very exciting to list here lol.

Also, one last thing: I made r/BetterTrumpet!

If you're using the app and wanna share feedback, ideas, bugs, setups, complain about something I broke, etc... feel free to join :)

That's pretty much it.

Seriously, ty to everyone who tried BetterTrumpet, opened an issue, made a PR, left feedback, or just downloaded the thing.

Thanks again guys ❤️

github link : https://github.com/xammen/BetterTrumpet

site link with web demo (try it) : https://bettertrumpet.com

Hi everyone, solo developer here. I've been building Sidsmail, a lightweight email client for Windows, in my spare time. It's out today, free, no ads, no "Pro" tier hiding features.

• Every account in one inbox - Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, Yahoo, any IMAP server
• Sign in with Google or Microsoft (browser), or an app password
• Real-time mail (IMAP IDLE), quiet hours, snooze, keyboard-first triage
• Everything stored locally, remote images blocked by default, passwords encrypted with Windows DPAPI, one-click export/wipe
• Light/dark theme, six accent colours, 23 languages, auto-update with a changelog

https://sidsmail.com

I'm one person, so bugs and rough edges are guaranteed - tell me what breaks or what's missing.

On Mac there are shelf apps like Yoink and Dropover for parking files mid-task. I couldn't find one I liked on Windows, so I built Wedge.

How it works

- Start dragging a file (from File Explorer, the desktop or a browser) and colored shelf tabs slide out of the right edge of the screen. Drop it on one and keep working.

- Click a tab and the shelf opens as a drawer. Drag the file straight into any app: an email, a chat, an upload form.

- Files stay where they are on disk. Wedge only keeps a reference.

Also

- Real previews, and search inside PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint files

- A Pocket: gather files from different folders, then drag them all out at once

- Right-click > Add to Wedge in File Explorer, Ctrl+V, or send from your phone with a QR code

- Shared shelves backed by a Google Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox folder

- Temporary shelves that clear themselves, plus notes, tags and reminders

- Ctrl+Shift+Space opens a drawer from anywhere; the tabs hide for full-screen games and videos

Details

- Free and open source (MIT), Windows 10 and 11

- 5 MB installer (Tauri + Rust, uses the WebView2 that comes with Windows), no CPU use while idle

- No account, no telemetry; updates come from GitHub Releases and are signature-checked

- Not code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may warn the first time (More info > Run anyway)

Site: https://wedge.regncreative.com

Source and downloads: https://github.com/Regncreative/Wedge

Feedback is very welcome, especially if you've used a shelf app before and something here feels missing or in the way.

I kept retyping text from paused videos and screenshots, so I built Shuck.

Press Ctrl+Shift+2, drag a box over any text, and it's on your clipboard.

- Runs entirely on your PC. No account, nothing uploaded.

- Reads even tiny text accurately.

- Spots links and email addresses and gives you a one-click button. Reads QR codes too.

- Free, 6 MB.

Windows and English only for now.

Get it: https://github.com/shuck-app/shuck

If it misreads something, tell me what.

[20.10.26] Update (1.0.1): portable version, option to turn off notifications, lighter dim, and adjust-the-box-before-copying, all from your comments. Thanks!
https://github.com/shuck-app/shuck/releases/latest

I've always found Markdown editors a little strange.

You either edit the raw Markdown, or you get a preview next to it. What I wanted was something different:

Edit the Markdown itself as a document.

So I built Mark O Down, a free and open-source Windows Markdown editor.

The interesting part isn't the WYSIWYG editing itself. It's what happens when you save.

• Open a .md file and save it without changes → byte-for-byte identical
• Edit one paragraph → only the changed block is rewritten
• Existing * vs - list styles are preserved
• __bold__ vs **bold** is preserved
• ~~~ vs ``` fences are preserved
• BOM and CRLF/LF line endings are preserved
• HTML, front matter, footnotes and other unsupported Markdown remain intact
• GitHub-style README HTML, images, badges and tables are supported
• Drag & drop images and Markdown files
• Export to standalone HTML

It's built with Tauri 2 + Rust + TypeScript + ProseMirror + remark.

The goal was basically:

Markdown in → edit visually → Markdown out, without mangling the file.

It's MIT licensed and completely open source.

GitHub:
https://github.com/Harveyhase68/mark_o_down

I'd particularly like feedback from people who maintain GitHub READMEs, documentation or Markdown-heavy projects.

What would make you actually switch from your current Markdown editor?

So I've been developing this for about a week after realizing something

I use my screenshot tool over 100-200 times a day, yet I was stuck with an ugly, cluttered, and featureless tool that was built 20 years ago, and the built in tools arent any better

I came to the conclusion that a great screenshot tool needed a few main components

- Recording (GIF, MP4, MKV, WebM)

- Search through screenshots using smart OCR

- OCR (with all languages & local free translate)

- Color picker

- Sticker maker (remove background locally instantly)

- QR/Barcode scanner

- Annotation tools (arrows, texts, blurs, emojis, all the main ones)

- Of course screenshots with window detection/free form and all that

And a simple settings that was customizable to fit 99.99% of users without being cluttered, just one simple settings nothing else

And surprisingly after 5+ hours of searching NOBODY had that, so I started my own open source tool called Yoink (cause you yoink) and I added everything i just said above and more (but not bloated)

And after a day of using my tool ive already decided I dont need my OBS screen recorder, dont need my current screenshot tool, dont need google translate, searching files is so much easier (I can search through screenshots with OCR), and sooo much more

And + the ui is up to date with windows 11 it looks elegant, the same as settings, to any other built in UI you are used to (windows only for now sorry, mac/linux soon if this does well)

Its open source so I would love to hear your issues, and make a PR, I dont care if its good or not I need advice so I can make this even better

Heres the github, 100% free for the models and all: https://github.com/jasperdevs/yoink

(get it in releases section of github)

Six months ago I forked EarTrumpet. I've been using it for like 3-4 years and always thought it was one of the best audio mixers on Windows, but over time it started feeling a bit outdated, so I just made my own version.

I started changing stuff the way I wanted it, adding features I always wished it had, cleaning up old things, and eventually released it as BetterTrumpet.

Since then it's basically been my daily driver. Every update comes from me actually using it every day, adding random ideas, fixing old bugs, and sometimes fixing the bugs I literally created 20 minutes earlier while touching things that didn't need to be touched (sry about all the hotfixes btw)

Today BetterTrumpet is on 3.2, and honestly I'm really happy with how it's turned out.

Over the last 6 months I've added custom accent colors, satisfying little sounds, presets, a proper updater, media popup, CLI support, migration to .NET 8 (huge gap) and a ton of smaller QoL improvements. I also went through a lot of the issues people opened on GitHub, so thanks to everyone who reported bugs or left feedback, it genuinely helped make the soft better.

I also completely remade the website. You can now try a pretty accurate version of BetterTrumpet directly in your browser, and I even added a small quest system because... why not lol.

still got a lot of ideas I want to add. This is nowhere near finished :)

link : bettertrumpet.com

github link : https://github.com/xammen/BetterTrumpet

I built and use (not published) a Windows desktop clock widget in old-school Win32, cpp and Direct2D without the overhead of additional frameworks. Many downloaded ones were taking more RAM than what they were worth and CPU was ticking continuously.

It was obsessively tuned to keep the footprint as small as possible:

• Binary size: 133 KB (no app icon or other resources yet)
• RAM usage: Idles around 5 MB at the default size.
• Without the second hand: It goes to sleep and wakes up exactly at the start of the next minute. Task Manager reports 0% CPU/GPU usage between updates.
• With the second hand: It wakes once per second, spends less than 1 ms drawing the frame, and goes back to sleep. Still reads around 0-1% in Task Manager.
• Can survive a Win + D (Show desktop)

The GIF shows some of the procedural clock faces which were created (Red color is lost while converting video to GIF). A fully animated aesthetic flip clock is also there, but I could not get the ram/cpu to the lowest as others and is not shown.

Note : some of the analog faces are good looking MIT licensed codepen html/js ported to Direct2d cpp with help of AI. Shall credit if I ever publish.

There can be many feature rich clocks. The only advantage of mine is its featherlight presence.

If I decide to publish this, what features would you expect from a desktop clock widget? Please suggest ideas that may not significantly increase CPU or memory usage.

[Edit 2026-09-11] - I published it and is available at https://github.com/riyasy/DeskTick

Deja is a local memory for your PC: it records what passes on your screen, transcribes audio, and makes everything searchable in seconds.

It takes screenshots at 1 fps, applies OCR, transcribes audio with Whisper, and stores everything in a local semantic index. So you can find pages, sentences, apps, and moments even if you don't remember the exact words.

Built for Windows, with no cloud, no subscriptions, and no leaking your data everywhere.

Privacy‑first, with concrete security and privacy controls.

You can also ask questions in natural language to an AI chat that searches your personal history.

And many more features!

Give it a try!

Github

Website

---------notes----------

I open-sourced this app, so you can see what's under the hood.

It's still a work in progress and far from perfect, but with user feedback, Deja will definitely get better.

Hope someone finds this app useful!

A few months ago I posted KillerPDF here and got a ton of great feedback. I've been working through the suggestions and just shipped v1.3.0.

What's new based on your feedback:

• Image signatures - import a PNG/JPG/BMP instead of drawing one
• Scroll past page edge now advances to next page
• Full-document search instead of just current page
• Zoom preset dropdown (50/75/100/125/150/200%, Fit Page, Fit Width)
• Close file without quitting (Ctrl+W)
• Unsaved changes warning, title bar dirty indicator, save icon changes color
• Owner-password PDFs now open correctly
• Re-drop a PDF onto the window without restarting
• All dialogs are now dark themed
• Icon overhaul throughout

Still no installer needed, no account, no subscription, no telemetry. Single ~6MB EXE, no runtime required.

Download: https://pdf.killertools.net
Source: https://github.com/SteveTheKiller/KillerPDF

EDIT: Just released v1.3.2 with a couple bug fixes. It should be running pretty smooth now, please give it a shot and let me know. Also, I don't think it's being blocked by smartscreen any more which is a huge improvement!

I kept seeing the same pattern: someone wants to record their screen with mic + desktop audio and maybe a webcam overlay, opens OBS, and bounces off the scene/source/mixer setup. So I built FastCast, a native Windows app focused on that one job.

What it does:

• Local MP4 recording (monitor or window capture)
• Desktop audio + microphone capture
• Webcam picture-in-picture overlay
• Custom RTMP/RTMPS streaming via stream key
• Portable ZIP, no installer, no accounts, no telemetry

What it deliberately doesn't do: multiple scenes, chroma key, plugins, browser sources, multistreaming. If you need those, OBS is the right tool and I'd tell you to use it. FastCast is for the single-scene "just record my screen" workflow.

Honest caveats: it's an open beta and the build is currently unsigned, so SmartScreen will show an "Unknown publisher" warning. Code signing is in progress. A SHA-256 checksum is published with the release so you can verify the download. Source is private; this is a solo indie project, not open source.

Free tier covers 1080p30 recording and streaming during the beta. There's an optional Pro license (1440p/4K, 60fps) but nothing in the free version is time-limited or watermarked.

Requirements: Windows 10 2004+ or Windows 11, x64. Hardware H.264 encoding recommended.

Download: https://github.com/CalvinSturm/FastCast-releases
More info: https://www.calvinsturm.com/fastcast

Happy to answer anything technical. It's built in Rust on Windows Graphics Capture, WASAPI, and Media Foundation.

Clarification: the linked GitHub repository is for public releases, checksums, issue tracking, and release notes. FastCast’s source code is private.

Update: Added HDR support in v0.5.1

Download ~1.5mb: https://github.com/CalvinSturm/FastCast-releases/releases/download/v0.5.1/FastCast-0.5.1-win-x64.zip

Hey everyone, I've been continuing work on Fluent Sensors, a native Windows 11 hardware monitoring app built with WinUI 3. The latest addition is a native taskbar widget, live sensor graphs can now be pinned directly into the taskbar.

Performance and optimization and stuff is still ongoing, any feedback is appreciated.

The whole thing is open source, everything can be checked in the repo.

One important thing: the app needs admin rights to install and run. Please don't just install unsigned apps that ask for admin rights without checking them first, e.g. via VirusTotal or the source code. I'm working on getting it properly signed through SignPath Foundation.

GitHub: https://github.com/cechout/fluent-sensors

Uninstalr is a fast, lightweight and accurate way to uninstall software in Windows.

This is how it looks like in dark mode:

With this major new version, I’m also releasing an updated benchmark to show you how Uninstalr is able to uninstall apps in Windows better than the other popular uninstallers.

By better, I mean two objective factors:

1. Uninstalr can perform an unattended batch uninstallation of the test apps where every other uninstaller failed to do this.
2. After Uninstalr is done, there are way less leftovers remaining from the removed apps than with any other of the tested uninstallers.

To see the benchmark results, the full Change Log of what is new and to give it a try yourself, please visit: https://uninstalr.com/

If you want to read more about its development and what goes one behind the scenes, you can read my blog post about it: https://jv16powertools.com/blog/uninstalr-2-0-or-why-making-this-windows-software-uninstaller-was-the-hardest-thing-i-have-ever-done/

Uninstalr is freeware and comes as a single file portable version that is only about 6 MB in size. A setup version is also available.

Confession: I love File Pilot. The speed, the UI, the vibes. It's the main inspiration for this project, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

But I work on big Unreal Engine projects, and on those my file manager slowly turned into a second game engine, memory-wise. Several GB of RAM at times, to show me some folders. I tried Files too, hoping for salvation. Same story. At some point I realized that the thing I use to look at files was heavier than the things in them.

So I did what every reasonable person does: instead of buying more RAM, I spent my evenings writing a file manager in Rust, right??

The one rule: memory stays bounded.

• No recursive folder sizes, no recursive watchers. A folder costs what it shows, not what it could show if you gave it the whole disk.
• The tree view only keeps the folders you actually opened. Collapse one and its memory is gone.
• Icons and thumbnails live in caches with a fixed byte budget, not a "we'll see" budget.

The UI runs on GPUI, the GPU-accelerated framework that powers the Zed editor. Yes, I'm GPU-rendering a list of files. No regrets.

What it does today (v0.2.0):

• Tabs you can reorder, detach into their own window, or throw at another window
• Details, tree, list and M/L/XL icons, switchable with Ctrl + mouse wheel (the File Pilot influence is strong here)
• Native Windows icons and thumbnails, preview pane, favorites and drives in the sidebar
• Editable path bar with folder autocompletion, plus a quick filter
• Its own context menu, with Explorer's full one still there when you need "Send to" and friends
• Per-folder view and sorting: right-click a column header to make a folder remember how you like it
• Dark, light and dimmed themes; English and Italian

What it does NOT do yet, in the spirit of honesty: multi-selection, rename, copy/move/delete, clipboard, drag & drop to Explorer, folder watching, and search (planned through the Everything SDK). Right now it's a very fast, very polite way of looking at your files. Managing them is on the roadmap.

It's MIT licensed, with a ready-to-run exe in the releases:
https://github.com/XPOL555/GPUIFileManager

Feedback is very welcome, especially from people with scary folders: game dev, monorepos, anyone who has ever opened node_modules on purpose. What's the one thing that would make you switch?

Tokri is a desktop basket to drag and drop text, URLs, images, and files.

I updated it to feel platform native on Windows/macOS/Linux - using the platforms window decorations and file explorer shortcuts.

https://github.com/ysuraj1999/tokri