Photoshop it's pretty damn expensive nowadays so I had to cancel my subscription a year and half ago due to specific circumstances I was in. For as much as I like to lie to myself about it, nothing gets close to how good it is. Photopea is kinda good but 20 layers in and the whole machine starts begging for mercy, gimp plain sucks, tried few open source/selfhostable alternatives and nothing takes the cake.

Anyone know of any valid alternative? I may need to start giving my money back to Adobe after all.

All images were made by myself, from the ground up, using various pixabay/envato elements images, there's a layer by layer video of the first one, some layers are grouped so it feels like an image is being dumped in, I just made it a while back to explain the process to somebody and it's still on my channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQWMuSFkTOQ

There's also similar videos on my instagram page fccview it's not very active, no need for follows, just giving as much info as possible to understand the process ♥️

Hope you like them :)

Kind and understanding friends with shared nerdy interests, I am here to present once more Jotty to yours truly!

• Repo: https://github.com/fccview/jotty
• Demo: https://demo.jotty.page/

The latest release features Tags and it's something I have been planning for months (since it was first requested) due to being way too worried about messing up with the simplicity of the app.

For anyone unaware, Jotty is a note taking/checklist app that keeps notes in your file system, no databases needed, no overhead, no complexity. It has everything you may want from a note taking app, packaged in a very simple and easy to understand UI (in my view also pretty polished, but it's not like I've extensively obsessed over every single detail or anything like that at all lol).

You can find a bunch of info about Jotty in the article I wrote on noted.lol where I go in depth on why I started the project, what kind of advanced features it offers and way WAY too much info about my personal life.

For anyone interested in performance, the app is actually fairly lightweight, I'm not just throwing that word around because AI told me to, I swear! The docker image is about 400mb (most of the weight is due to Alpine, the actual app is little over 100mb in size), couldn't get it to use more than 150mb of ram while active, haven't seen it go over 0% in cpu usage. If you don't believe me you can believe our friends in the proxmox community scripts .

Hope you like it, feel free to ask any questions <3

Hi!

2025 was a big year for my open source goals and I wanted to share some accomplishments with you, after all I wouldn't have gotten so far with any of my projects if it wasn't for the few selfhosted/open source communities I interact with daily <3

Thank you for all your support and here's a summary of everything I've built/maintained throughout 2025. Everything is free, self-hostable and entirely open source.

p.s. - no, these are NOT vibe coded.

jotty.page - 1.3k stars - 78.3K total downloads

repo: https://github.com/fccview/jotty

Jotty is a lightweight note taking/checklist app with a ton of features packed in a very minimal easy to use UI, it features two types of encryptions, drawio/excalidraw/mermaid diagrams, tons of language syntax highlighting for codeblocks, kanban boards and a lot more.

Cr*nmaster - 903 stars - 103K total downloads

repo: https://github.com/fccview/cronmaster

Crnmaster is a UI to manage cronjobs and easily create and schedule scripts, it allows you to log cronjobs (including live logging)*

Scatola Magica (beta) - 108 stars - 2.47K total downloads

repo: https://github.com/fccview/scatola-magica

Scatola Magica is a file upload/download system which allows you to upload files in chunk for maximum speed. The cool feature about it is that you can drop a file literally anywhere, from anywhere, including copy/pasting into the page, if you paste text it creates a file with the right file extensions - e.g. if you paste javascript it'll create a .js file) - it also has full web torrent support, but needs to be enabled in the settings page as it's in beta

Here's to a 2026 full of self hosting and coding <3

Hi!

2025 was a big year for my open source goals and I wanted to share some accomplishments with you, after all I wouldn't have gotten so far with any of my projects if it wasn't for the few selfhosted communities I interact with daily <3

Thank you for all your support and here's a summary of everything I've built/maintained throughout 2025. Everything is free, self-hostable and entirely open source.

p.s. - no, these are NOT vibe coded.

jotty.page - 1.3k stars - 78.3K total downloads

repo: https://github.com/fccview/jotty

Jotty is a lightweight note taking/checklist app with a ton of features packed in a very minimal easy to use UI, it features two types of encryptions, drawio/excalidraw/mermaid diagrams, tons of language syntax highlighting for codeblocks, kanban boards and a lot more.

Cr*nmaster - 903 stars - 103K total downloads

repo: https://github.com/fccview/cronmaster

Crnmaster is a UI to manage cronjobs and easily create and schedule scripts, it allows you to log cronjobs (including live logging)*

Scatola Magica (beta) - 108 stars - 2.47K total downloads

repo: https://github.com/fccview/scatola-magica

Scatola Magica is a file upload/download system which allows you to upload files in chunk for maximum speed. The cool feature about it is that you can drop a file literally anywhere, from anywhere, including copy/pasting into the page, if you paste text it creates a file with the right file extensions - e.g. if you paste javascript it'll create a .js file) - it also has full web torrent support, but needs to be enabled in the settings page as it's in beta

Here's to a 2026 full of self hosting and coding <3

edit

As of version 1.14.3 I have also introduced XChaCha20 encryption (used as default) to allow both symmetric and asymmetric encryption types.

Hi all!

Just wanted to give an update as it's been about two months since the last post I made about Jotty - see it here

We are approaching end of year and I just want to thank this amazing community for the huge support I have received, it has sincerely given me an amazing escape from a lot of shit stuff I had going on in my life (and still, unfortunately, do).

For anyone not knowing about Jotty, the tl;dr is this little snippet here from the readme:

A self-hosted app for your checklists, tasks and notes.

jotty·page is a lightweight alternative for managing your personal checklists and notes.
It's extremely easy to deploy, keeps all your data on your own server with your own file
structure (no databases!) and allows you to encrypt/decrypt your notes for your personal
peace of mind.

Last thing I want is people thinking this post is AI, so I won't give a full on sales pitch, but a bit of context is always needed I suppose lol

You can read about it more on the repo: https://github.com/fccview/jotty
And here's the website with the demo in case you want to play around with it before installing it: https://jotty.page/

Anyhow, PGP encryption has been a much requested feature, for a few months actually, but I didn't want to rush something as delicate as that, so I took my time and I think it's working pretty neatly, passphrase is never stored on the server, private/public key can be generated straight from Jotty or you can import your own/mount them from whatever folder you want on your system on read only.

There's also a ton of new features since the last post two months ago, but this is the one I'm the most excited about.

Let me know what you all think about the feature and Jotty in general and I'll see you in the comments <3

Lately I have been using AI more and more in my codebase and that's been a bit of a hit and miss if you ask me.

I reckon it's an amazing tool that allows developers to truly optimise their workflow, however at times laziness take over and code reviews are not as frequent as they should be.

I really REALLY wanted to build something without using AI after having spent months and months getting a bit too complacent. And this is the first idea that came to mind. Of course to celebrate this occasion I went for a technology I hadn't used in almost a decade: jQuery!!!

You can find the repo here: https://github.com/fccview/ackchyually-ai
You can play around with the tool on fccview.github.io/ackchyually-ai

Few disclaimers:

• I am a full stack javascript developer (with extensive knowledge of php and a very good grasp of shell). This means majority of the detection will be revolving around javascript, if you develop in a different language and you feel like you know AI patterns in that language PLEASE do create a pull request so we can make the detection even more accurate for other type of syntax!
• The tool uses MY OWN metrics, this is doing what I usually do to see if something is (in my opinion) been made with AI and barely reviewed by a human. It's not gospel, it's not a scientific method, it's most definitely going to be flawed, so keep it with a grain of salt, it can always be improved and collaboration/community support will definitely help with it
• I don't hate AI, on contrary I enjoy using it and I find value in not needing to "google it" whenever I hit a blocker, more times than not, AI has a valid solution that can be used, refined and applied properly. What I have mostly an issue with is people randomly generating code, not reviewing it and trying to sell you the moon when they barely understand the architecture of what they built
• Please do not make this post a fight between pro/against AI individuals, that's not the aim of it

All the patterns I am using to identify possible AI code are here: https://github.com/fccview/ackchyually-ai/tree/main/data if you come up with more patterns/ideas and have more ideas on what to look for please reply here, open an issue and/or make a pull request, but at ONE CONDITION, do NOT use AI for this. It'd go against the core principle of this one pure little app I decided to build <3

Lately I have been using AI more and more in my codebase and that's been a bit of a hit and miss if you ask me.

I reckon it's an amazing tool that allows developers to truly optimise their workflow, however at times laziness take over and code reviews are not as frequent as they should be.

I really REALLY wanted to build something without using AI after having spent months and months getting a bit too complacent. And this is the first idea that came to mind. Of course to celebrate this occasion I went for a technology I hadn't used in almost a decade: jQuery!!!

You can find the repo here: https://github.com/fccview/ackchyually-ai
You can play around with the tool on fccview.github.io/ackchyually-ai

Few disclaimers:

• I am a full stack javascript developer (with extensive knowledge of php and a very good grasp of shell). This means majority of the detection will be revolving around javascript, if you develop in a different language and you feel like you know AI patterns in that language PLEASE do create a pull request so we can make the detection even more accurate for other type of syntax!
• The tool uses MY OWN metrics, this is doing what I usually do to see if something is (in my opinion) been made with AI and barely reviewed by a human. It's not gospel, it's not a scientific method, it's most definitely going to be flawed, so keep it with a grain of salt, it can always be improved and collaboration/community support will definitely help with it
• I don't hate AI, on contrary I enjoy using it and I find value in not needing to "google it" whenever I hit a blocker, more times than not, AI has a valid solution that can be used, refined and applied properly. What I have mostly an issue with is people randomly generating code, not reviewing it and trying to sell you the moon when they barely understand the architecture of what they built
• Please do not make this post a fight between pro/against AI individuals, that's not the aim of it

All the patterns I am using to identify possible AI code are here: https://github.com/fccview/ackchyually-ai/tree/main/data if you come up with more patterns/ideas and have more ideas on what to look for please reply here, open an issue and/or make a pull request, but at ONE CONDITION, do NOT use AI for this. It'd go against the core principle of this one pure little app I decided to build <3

Hi all!

Just a quick update on Scatola Magica - a self hosted file transfer and management system I built - it's almost out of beta and I'd love to have people test it out and raise issues on github in case something is incredibly off.

Repo: https://github.com/fccview/scatola-magica

Quick youtube demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvn0KHxzesE

enable subtitles in the demo for some commentary

Some quick highlights on the features I wanted that made me build this:

• Drag/drop anywhere to upload files/folders (yes even unzipped folders)
• Copy a file and paste it straight on the UI to upload it
• Copy some text and paste it straight in the UI to create a .txt file with the pasted text
• Click on the recursive button to see all files within all folders, multi select them all and download as zip (regardless from if they are in the same folder or not)
• Full on, easy to use encrypt/decrypt of files using the keys generated from the app OR any random public key I may want to use
• Encrypted file transfer
• (for my own taste) Slick UI.

The latest update features full on PGP encryption, transfer encryption (I don't want to call it e2e because files do end up decrypted on the server unless you purposely upload them via the "upload encrypted file", but it's effectively e2e, they get encrypted on your browser - requires https/localhost - are transferred encrypted and get decrypted once safe on your server).

I also have added some fun theming options for people who, like me, grew up in the late 90s, bit of nostalgia never hurts. This is fully featured in the demo video

Some of you may know me for my two other apps I have published here jotty and cronmaster, been a developer for half my life and all I do in my spare time is code and create open source apps. Been into self hosting for quite a while and I have very specific tastes and want very niche features, so I always end up building my own applications, it's a good way to keep up with latest tech and keep the love for my job alive.

Let me know if you like it! Super proud of this one, I am really enjoying using it in my homelab.

Hi all!

Some of you may know me for jotty and cr*nmaster, today I wanted to share my latest creation, it happened on a whim, someone on our discord server needed a simple and lightweight file sharing system (something that works similarly to dropbox) and I really wanted to challenge myself and learn the latest standards for next15/react19 (i'm a tech lead in a software engineering company I, use nextjs/react at work so I tend to try and learn stuff on my own time to not be left behind).

Anyhow! I really wanted to make something that felt.. magic (hence why the name Scatola Magica - Italian for magic box).

Repo url: https://github.com/fccview/scatola-magica

My plan was to make something that

• Allows folder upload (it was a must)
• Allows uploading from ANYWHERE by just dropping a file on the page (yes you can literally drop a file in the settings page and it WILL still get uploaded)
• Breaks files in chunks and uploads them in parallel (this way it truly feels stupidly fast)
• Looks/feels nice and professional (still working on it, it's a beta)
• If you copy something in your clipboard and paste it, it'll upload it (not text, literal files).
• Allow users to upload files onto your server within their own folder, no need for permissions, works like an operative system, each user have their own folder they have access to (unless they are admin, at which point they see anything you mounted on the docker image/anything in the dedicated upload folder)

There's a bunch of shortcuts, it already has OIDC login and most things have been documented in the repo howto/ folder.

Short term goals

• E2E encryption (or some sort of encryption DURING upload)
• Better upload feedback when uploading folders with tons of files (it currently hangs until it starts uploading, not great UX)

I always get a few every single post, so let's get the cat out of the bag, no, this is NOT vibe coded, yes, I obviously use AI in my workflow - what developer wouldn't in 2025 - especially in my personal projects, doesn't take away the huge amount of work I put in everything I do :)

Remember this is still a beta, it may be a bit quirky and have bugs, feedback are EXTREMELY appreciated and feel free to open issues on the github page, I am fairly active and keep an eye on things. Another way to directly contact me is via the official discord for my apps - you can find that on the repo, I don't want to spam things here.

Hope you like it :)

Hi,
A small chunk of you of you may know me for my app Jotty, however I also published a slightly less popular (entirely open source) app called Cr*nmaster.

repo: https://github.com/fccview/cronmaster

Cr*nmaster (cronmaster) is a pretty powerful tool that allows you to view/create/edit/manage all your host cronjobs comfortable from an intuitive UI, it has features such as pausing jobs, adding comment to them, running them right from the UI, and from the latest update you'll be able to have nicely structured logs for your jobs on top of exit statuses being shown right there and then. You will be able to see if a job failed at a glance and view the logs to see what's going on.

I have also added translations that can be customised locally on your own machine (or you can be an angel and create a pull request with your own language so we can officially support it, together!)

The whole thing is very easy and straightforward to setup both with and without docker, the repository has a lot of guides in the `howto` folder on top of a very verbose readme file.

Here's a few of the key features:

• View/edit/delete/run your cron jobs from an intuitive UI
• Log your cronjobs (it uses a proprietary wrapper, you can modify the wrapper as much as you like from the mounted ./data folder).
• At glance exit statuses for all your jobs
• System stats to see how healthy your host machine is
• Ability to create custom scripts (using handy snippets - which you can easily add more of) for your cron jobs straight from the UI, these scripts are stored in your mounted folder and can be easily used when creating a cron job

All this to say that I am extremely excited for everything that's coming with this latest update, you can read about the latest release and all the improvements that came with it here

Let me know your thoughts and if you run in any issues i'm fairly active on github and on my discord server :)

NOTE for docker users:
Due to this needing to be able to read crontabs the docker has to run as root and have read/write access to your cron jobs. There was no way around it, so I suggest you keep this within your home network and not exposed to the web for security reasons.

Hi, This is my first post here, quite intimidating indeed :')

I initially shared this on reddit and yesterday found the courage to share it on !selfhosted@lemmy.world , and one of the members suggested I'd also post here, so here we go!

A couple of months ago I have built a checklist/note taking app for myself and called it rwMarkable, posted it on reddit and a lot of people seemed to resonate to it, so I kept adding new features and enjoying the small but very involved community that has built around it.

For anyone who hasn't heard of the project before, here's a quick bullet list of some features:

• Checklists: Create task lists with drag & drop reordering, progress bars, and categories. Supports both simple checklists and advanced task projects with Kanban boards and time tracking.
• Text Notes: A clean WYSIWYG editor for your notes, powered by TipTap with full Markdown support and codeblock syntax highlighting.
• Sharing: Share checklists or notes with other users or publicly with shareable links.
• File-Based: No database needed! Everything is stored in simple Markdown and JSON files in a single data directory.
• User Management: An admin panel to create and manage user accounts with session tracking.
• Customisable: 14+ built-in themes plus easy custom theme support.
• API Access: Programmatic access to your checklists and notes via REST API with authentication for various integrations.
• OIDC integration: Use any provider to authenticate, follow this tutorial on how to

There have been a lot of requests to change the name due to it sounding a little too close to reMarkable (the tablet - which, btw, i had no idea existed at the time lol) and after getting some amazing community suggestions we landed on jotty.

You can find all the info (and a demo) here: https://jotty.page/

You can find the repo here: https://github.com/fccview/jotty

Let me know what you think, the app is very much open source, still in development and every week new features get added (that said, I really value the simplicity and lightweight nature of it, so I will not add anything that compromises it).

Few screenshots

p.s. Nice to meet you all <3

Hi, This is my first post here, pretty intimidating! haha

I shared this on reddit, and one of my community members told me this is a good place to also share it, so here we go!

A couple of months back I have built a checklist/note taking app for myself and called it rwMarkable, posted it on reddit and a lot of people seemed to resonate to it, so I kept adding new features and enjoying the small but very involved community that has built around it.

For anyone who hasn't heard of the project before, here's a quick bullet list of some features:

• Checklists: Create task lists with drag & drop reordering, progress bars, and categories. Supports both simple checklists and advanced task projects with Kanban boards and time tracking.
• Text Notes: A clean WYSIWYG editor for your notes, powered by TipTap with full Markdown support and codeblock syntax highlighting.
• Sharing: Share checklists or notes with other users or publicly with shareable links.
• File-Based: No database needed! Everything is stored in simple Markdown and JSON files in a single data directory.
• User Management: An admin panel to create and manage user accounts with session tracking.
• Customisable: 14+ built-in themes plus easy custom theme support.
• API Access: Programmatic access to your checklists and notes via REST API with authentication for various integrations.
• OIDC integration: Use any provider to authenticate, follow this tutorial on how to

There have been a lot of requests to change the name due to it sounding a little too close to reMarkable (the tablet - which, btw, i had no idea existed at the time lol) and after getting some amazing community suggestions we landed on jotty.

You can find all the info (and a demo) here: https://jotty.page/

You can find the repo here: https://github.com/fccview/jotty

Let me know what you think, the app is very much still in development and every week new features get added (that said, I really value the simplicity and lightweight nature of it, so I will not add anything that compromises it).

Few screenshots

p.s. Nice to meet you all <3