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Show HN: Prism.Tools – Free and privacy-focused developer utilities

377 points by BLGardner

by alsetmusic

6 subcomments

There are lots of these, but this is the first that I've seen that focused on frontend dev a bit more. I've saved it to my list of tools for reference.
Here's another with a more local / backend / IT flavor: https://it-tools.tech
I have a couple more local apps with similar functions. Here's one that's cross platform[0]. This one appears to be Mac only[1].
Someone else mentioned not being able to remember these sites when needed. I recently started manually keeping track of web tools in html files inspired by a random repo[2] that fit well into a mode of category-abstraction that suited me. I don't recall how I landed there, but I liked the minimalism and adapted it to be a jumping-off point to a personal kbase that I made with another tool[3] some years ago. I have no design skills, so this (start-page) was just the right combo of minimalism and tasteful CSS for what I wanted. Works with markdown, which I also recently started using a lot more.
I ended up writing a lot more than I originally intended because I kept thinking of more links. They may be out of order because of non-linear editing and my having to rearrange them, so heads up. Also, it's early and I might just have made dumb mistakes.
0. https://devtoys.app 1. https://devutils.com 2. https://github.com/oinam/start 3. https://github.com/alanagoyal/docbase
Edit: Oh, looks like the it-tools link came from cruising the repo of start-page or vice-versa. Ha!

by jaden

1 subcomments

I love these kinds of collections but often don't recall the site in the moment I have a task they could fulfill.
To combat that I've been self-hosting https://github.com/CorentinTh/it-tools which has a lot of overlap with these tools and might provide some ideas.
https://github.com/ksdme/ut is a rust CLI with a similar purpose.

by alwinaugustin

0 subcomment

I have created one for my own usage - https://toolbit.app . There used to be a desktop also available.

by psv2522

0 subcomment

https://shaders.paper.design/
Wanted to share this since we are talking about tools, I really like the mesh gradients

by vivzkestrel

6 subcomments

- my gripe with most of these tools is that whenever i actually need one, i can never seem to remember their name.
- That kills like half the traffic for you guys.
- For example look at this dude https://gchq.github.io/CyberChef/ This is easily one of the most comprehensive tools I have ever seen anyone build
- I literally bookmarked that site under a tools tag and that is how I am able to find them. I can't ever seem to remember their name when I need these quickly
- Perhaps get a good DOT COM domain name and host your site there. It would make a huge difference in usage.
- Discoverability is the problem. Since these tools I believe are not there to sell subscriptions, that means they don't make much in revenue. Organic marketing is the best way for such tools and an easy to remember name makes a huge difference.

by ahmetomer

3 subcomments

I like initiatives like this but the issue I have mostly is that whenever I have a specific need, say, I need to format a piece of JSON, I would directly google "json formatter" instead of remembering that there is a website with a suite of tools that I can go on and find that specific tool I wanted. And I would probably do the same for all of the tools listed there. It's more convenient, I think, to do a quick search and click on one of the first that came up. I've just never come to leave this habit.

by stronglikedan

0 subcomment

Thanks for this. I know we're technically supposed to use the upvote button to express gratitude, but that just doesn't feel sufficient in this case.

by cadamsdotcom

1 subcomments

Thanks for making these and for making them available.
A testament to the power of the web, and the power of a motivated individual giving a damn and making something cool for everyone.

by hersko

1 subcomments

This looks great and will definitely check out! I've been using DevToys on my local machine for years but a recent update made it almost unusable.

by toastal

3 subcomments

```
    > Free
    > Privacy-focused


    > GitHub (Microsoft)
    > Cloudflare
```
Which is it? These US megacorporations are respecting neither users’ privacy nor their freedom. Then on top is a proprietary license stating: “No Re-hosting: You may not host these Tools on other websites or public repositories” even if you wanted to host it locally or your own server.
https://mako.cc/writing/hill-free_tools.html
https://httptoolkit.com/blog/public-cdn-risks/
Also not to be confused with PRISM Break <https://prism-break.org/>, an aggregated list of privacy-focused tools.

by photon_lines

1 subcomments

I love what you have here. Thank you for open sourcing your work -- but why the custom license? Why not just do a standard MIT license?

by likium

0 subcomment

I do like the standalone HTML file approach. With coding agents it's quite easy to build a suite of tools for personal use. Additionally if you review the code, you can trust if it's really private/secure.
The ones on mine are more visual focused since cli tools are better at conversion, formatting and such.

by quentinadam

1 subcomments

This is super useful ! A few more tools that I use regularly, if you are looking to expand: - Base58 encoding to Hex conversion - Hex to decimal and vice versa - Strlen - Compute SHA-256 of text or hex string - Compute Keccak-256 of text or hex string

by hahn-kev

1 subcomments

A lot of people mentioned not being able to find this when you want it later. I wonder if a list of tags in a Firefox bookmark would make it show up when typing in search to use instead of just googling for it

by 2TheMoon73

0 subcomment

I’ve been seeing this topic pop up across different discussions lately. It’s interesting how early signals tend to cluster before becoming mainstream.

by esperent

0 subcomment

What would make this really useful to me it's having it in Vscode as an extension.
I'm sure lots of the tools are already available but a visual panel would help to remember them.

by Sat_P

1 subcomments

This website is an absolutely brilliant resource. I've got bookmarks for a few tools that are similar to the ones in your website. But man, this is amazing! Thanks so much for sharing it.

by syngrog66

1 subcomments

CLI programs have existed for decades. no browser or connectivity needed. more private, more composable
going to a random stranger's website (with a 2 day old account, and new no-history GitHub account) to generate one's privacy-critical passwords or hashes is particularly insecure and insane. glaring antipattern. trusting that "it always only runs in your browser" is foolish. This is how malware gets injected when the rug gets pulled out
there are safer, less brittle and more modular and scalable ways of doing all the above. avoid it, kids
shame on everyone involved

by MarleTangible

1 subcomments

Would there be a way to resize the input/output fields?
Current layout only accepts 3 lines which is not sufficient when formatting SQL or JSON.

by sirjaz

0 subcomment

This would be a great tool if it was a local tool that could run in a tui or as a desktop app ala devtoys on Windows

by lukaslukas

1 subcomments

Nice! I made something very similar, but with a focus on frequent daily use, means no clicking required, you can only use keys
Look at stringify.cc

0 subcomment

by keriati1

1 subcomments

I’m not sure why, but the first thing I did was check if HTTP status code 418 was listed.

by tbrannan

1 subcomments

I haven’t come across anything else like this. It’s genuinely impressive.

by dinoqqq

1 subcomments

Great work! I really appreciate these tools with the privacy angle!

by Computer0

1 subcomments

The text to ascii text is broken for a few of the options.

by fevangelou

0 subcomment

@BLGardner
Thank you for building and sharing this.

by netdevphoenix

1 subcomments

Is the name choice intentional? I wonder if it was inspired by the notorious privacy busting program.

by lrpe

1 subcomments

Can I turn off dark mode?

by koakuma-chan

1 subcomments

I hate these "browser" tools that actually upload your data to their server for processing, and even if you ignore privacy implications, they also obviously have file size limits, even though the actual work can be done entirely on the client.

by maximgeorge

0 subcomment

[dead]

by huflungdung

0 subcomment

[dead]

by belter

1 subcomments

How is an account created two days ago able to post a link? Can the mods comment?

by rvz

3 subcomments

Nice, however:
> Vanilla JavaScript (ES6+) CSS3 with CSS Grid Minimal external libraries: marked.js, exifr, highlight.js, sql-formatter (all from CDN) No frameworks, no bundlers, no npm Hosted on Github Pages
One problem. - "Hosted on Github Pages"
I don't think either using GitHub or hosting it on Github Pages respects the user's "privacy".
A better way is to self-host on your own server + domain instead.