The 10 best Local-First Apps in 2026

Isabella_l

This is one of those tools you didn’t know you needed until you try it. Smooth experience

Mia_w

Very impressed. Simple, intuitive, and definitely something I’ll be using daily

khlebobul

Very cool app! I use it almost every day. Launching on uneed with you on the same day is an honor for me

paulp

Use it regularly for a few months now. Really the best tool out there for compression of images and videos ! Very easy to use and efficient.

mdr

Great to see RSS still chugging along! It's still my preferred way of catching up on news and I love that it's a local-first app.

buzzalertss-43da

Just got to know about codeburn and seeing what they are doing for observability is amazing.. and the side notch for apple mac looks stunning

Thomas_Sanlis

I remember seeing Pierre Gilles working on Gladys when I started indie hacking MANY years agoIt's super refreshing to see someone stick with a project that long 👏🏻I don't have a lot of connected devices, but I'll try Gladys today, and will install it on my umbrel (btw, an officiel app would be super cool and a nice acquisition channel) 🙌🏻Also, the new design looks super cool!!

thomas.lemaistre76-4069

Privacy-first home automation with impressive momentumI've been using Gladys Assistant since 2018 and contributing to it on GitHub, so take this as the review of a long-time user and contributor.WHAT I LIKE• 100% local and privacy-first: everything runs on your own machine (Docker, Raspberry Pi, mini-PC), no mandatory cloud account.• Clean, simple UI: far more approachable than most open-source alternatives. Non-technical family members can actually use it.• Energy monitoring with real cost tracking: on my multi-building property with ~25 kWp of solar and battery storage, Gladys is what I use to track actual electricity costs. Version 5.2 just added energy contracts for every country and a real thermostat with weekly schedules.• DuckDB-based history: fast, lightweight storage for years of sensor data.• Gladys Plus: an optional subscription that adds secure remote access and automatic backups, among other features. It's also what funds the project, so it's a great way to support it.WHAT USED TO HOLD IT BACK, AND WHY THAT'S NO LONGER REALLY TRUE• A smaller integration catalog than Home Assistant. It took 6 years to build 36 integrations into the core. Then external integrations arrived in August: one-click install from a built-in store, each running in its own sandboxed container. In just 10 weeks, 21 community developers published 100 of them, and the catalog passed 140 a few days later, growing by roughly 10 a day. Philips Hue, Sonos, Shelly, Tuya, Roborock, SolarEdge, Z-Wave JS, Proxmox… most popular HA integrations are now covered. I've published several myself.• Development relying on a single maintainer. This was a fair criticism until very recently. The project now has two additional maintainers, cicoub13 and bertrandda, who are running the releases: version 5.1.4 was the first ever not published by the founder. The project is clearly moving toward a classic multi-maintainer open-source model, with code reviews and regular releases.BOTTOM LINEIf you want a self-hosted smart home that's easy to live with day to day and doesn't send your life to the cloud, Gladys is one of the best options out there. Its pace right now is remarkable. Upvoted!

zain-sheikh

Keeping transcription fully local with no uploads or accounts is a huge win for anyone handling sensitive client calls. Can you search across several past meetings at once?