Unhookis a browser extension for YouTube (Chrome/Edge) which disables the homepage and lets you hide all recommendations. It also lets you disable other features (e.g. autoplay, comments), but doesn’t have so many customizations that I get distracted.
Setup time: 2m-10m (depending on whether you customize).
CopyQ.exe (Linux/Windows, portable, FOSS) is a really goodclipboard manager.
Setup time: 5m-10h
Setup can be <5m if you precommit to only using the clipboard-storing feature and learning the shortcut to browse it. But it’s extremely extensible and risks distracting you for a day or more...
You can use a shortcut to browse the most recent copies (including editing, deleting), and the window hides automatically when unfocused.
It can save images to a separate tab, and lets you configure shortcuts for opening them in particular programs (e.g. editor).
(LINUX): It has plugins/commands for snipping a section of the screen, and you can optionally configure a shortcut to send that snip to an OCR engine, which quietly sends the recognized text into the clipboard.
Setup time: probably exceeding >2h due to shiny things to explore
(WINDOWS): EDIT: ShareX (FOSS) can do OCR-to-clipboard, snipping, region-recording, scripting, and everything is configurable. Setup took me 36m, but I also configured it to my preferences and explored all features. Old text below:
(WINDOWS): Can use Text-Grab (FOSS) instead. Much simpler. Use a configurable hotkey (the one for Fullscreen Grab) to snip a section of the screen, and it automatically does OCR on it and sends it to your clipboard. Install it and trigger the hotkey to see what it does.
Setup time: 2m-15m
Alternatively Greenshot (FOSS) is much more extensible, but you have to use a trick to set it up to use OCR via Tesseract (or configure your own script).
Also if you use Windows, you can use the native Snipping-Tool to snip cutouts from the screen into the clipboard via shortcut, including recordings.
LibreChat (docs) (FOSS) is the best LLM interface I’ve found for general conversation, but its (putative) code interpreter doesn’t work off-the-shelf, so I still use the standard ChatGPT-interface for that.
Setup time: 30m-5h (depending on customization and familiarity with Docker)
It has no click-to-install .exe file, but you can install it via npm or Docker
Docker is much simpler, especially since it automatically configures MongoDB database and Meilisearch for you
Lets you quickly swap between OpenAI, Anthropic, Assistants API, and more in the menu
(Obviously you need to use your own API keys for this)
Can have two LLMs respond to your prompt at the same time
For coding, probably better to use a vscode extension, but idk which to recommend yet...
For a click-to-install generalized LLM interface, ChatBox (FOSS) is excellent unless you need more advanced features.
Vibe(FOSS) is a simple tool for transcribing audio files locally using Whisper.
Setup time: 5m-30m (you gotta download the Whisper weights, but should be fast if you just follow the instructions)
Unhook is a browser extension for YouTube (Chrome/Edge) which disables the homepage and lets you hide all recommendations. It also lets you disable other features (e.g. autoplay, comments), but doesn’t have so many customizations that I get distracted.
Setup time: 2m-10m (depending on whether you customize).
CopyQ.exe (Linux/Windows, portable, FOSS) is a really good clipboard manager.
Setup time: 5m-10h
Setup can be <5m if you precommit to only using the clipboard-storing feature and learning the shortcut to browse it. But it’s extremely extensible and risks distracting you for a day or more...
You can use a shortcut to browse the most recent copies (including editing, deleting), and the window hides automatically when unfocused.
It can save images to a separate tab, and lets you configure shortcuts for opening them in particular programs (e.g. editor).
(LINUX): It has plugins/commands for snipping a section of the screen, and you can optionally configure a shortcut to send that snip to an OCR engine, which quietly sends the recognized text into the clipboard.
Setup time: probably exceeding >2h due to shiny things to explore
(WINDOWS): EDIT: ShareX (FOSS) can do OCR-to-clipboard, snipping, region-recording, scripting, and everything is configurable. Setup took me 36m, but I also configured it to my preferences and explored all features. Old text below:
(WINDOWS): Can useText-Grab(FOSS) instead. Much simpler. Use a configurable hotkey (the one forFullscreen Grab) to snip a section of the screen, and it automatically does OCR on it and sends it to your clipboard. Install it and trigger the hotkey to see what it does.Setup time: 2m-15mAlternativelyGreenshot(FOSS) is much more extensible, but you have to usea trickto set it up to use OCR via Tesseract (or configure your own script).Also if you use Windows, you can use the nativeSnipping-Toolto snip cutouts from the screen into the clipboard via shortcut, including recordings.LibreChat (docs) (FOSS) is the best LLM interface I’ve found for general conversation, but its (putative) code interpreter doesn’t work off-the-shelf, so I still use the standard ChatGPT-interface for that.
Setup time: 30m-5h (depending on customization and familiarity with Docker)
It has no click-to-install .exe file, but you can install it via npm or Docker
Docker is much simpler, especially since it automatically configures MongoDB database and Meilisearch for you
Lets you quickly swap between OpenAI, Anthropic, Assistants API, and more in the menu
(Obviously you need to use your own API keys for this)
Can have two LLMs respond to your prompt at the same time
For coding, probably better to use a vscode extension, but idk which to recommend yet...
For a click-to-install generalized LLM interface, ChatBox (FOSS) is excellent unless you need more advanced features.
Vibe (FOSS) is a simple tool for transcribing audio files locally using Whisper.
Setup time: 5m-30m (you gotta download the Whisper weights, but should be fast if you just follow the instructions)
Windows Voice Access (native) is actually pretty good
You can define custom commands for it, including your own scripts
I recommend using pythonw.exe for this (normal python, but launches in the background)
AlternativeTo (website) very usefwl for comparing software/apps.
Alternatively check out AlternativeTo’s alternatives to AlternativeTo.