issue 05 · may 2026 · the small web

fresh catches from the indie web.

A small, hand-picked log of web apps worth opening twice. Five monthly issues since January 2026, twenty-four apps in the current catch across seven categories, two long-form reviews this month. No algorithms, no rankings, no sponsors.

24 apps 5 issues 7 categories 9 long-form reviews since jan 2026

The current catch — twenty-four indie web apps across seven categories

t
canvas

tldraw

An infinite canvas that feels weightless. Sketch, diagram, drop one button and watch your wireframe become a working app.

tldraw.com
e
canvas

Excalidraw

Diagrams that look like they came out of a notebook. Open source, end-to-end encrypted, and somehow the default for everyone now.

excalidraw.com
o
identity

omg.lol

A tiny, lovable corner of the web with your own .lol address. Profile, email, statuspage, weblog, pastebin — twenty bucks a year.

omg.lol
a
notes

Are.na

Slow social for ideas. No likes, no feed, no metrics. Just connected things, made by people doing serious thinking out loud.

are.na
t
notes

Tana

Notes that act like a database. Supertags turn a meeting note into a project, a person, a task — all at once, without templates.

tana.inc
a
notes

Anytype

Notion if Notion were yours forever. Local-first, encrypted, peer-to-peer sync. Your second brain finally lives on your hard drive.

anytype.io
s
planning

Sunsama

A calendar that asks you, gently, what you'll actually finish today. Daily ritual built in. The opposite of a productivity panic.

sunsama.com
r
reading

Raindrop

A bookmark manager that looks like a museum. Visual cards, deep search, nested collections, and a price that still makes sense.

raindrop.io
p
craft

Plausible

Web analytics without the spy stuff. One dashboard, one script, no cookie banner. Open source and EU-hosted by default.

plausible.io
c
reading

Cubox

Read-later that's actually pleasant to come back to. Highlights, summaries, full-text search across everything you've ever saved.

cubox.cc
m
craft

Mymind

A private visual memory for everything that catches your eye. No folders, no tags, no stress — the app figures it out for you.

mymind.com
p
craft

Pika

Screenshots that look like product shots. Drop in a window, pick a background, get a thumbnail your designer would approve of.

pika.style
b
notes

Bear

Markdown notes by an Italian design studio. Hashtag-based organization, sync across Apple devices, typography that makes you want to keep writing.

bear.app
l
notes

Logseq

Open source outliner with backlinks, queries, and a graph view. Local-first by default. The Obsidian alternative that's actually open under the hood.

logseq.com
i
writing

iA Writer

The writing app that gets out of the way. No AI, no toolbar, no tag soup — just typography sharp enough that you finish what you start.

ia.net/writer
b
writing

Buttondown

A newsletter platform built and run by one developer. Markdown in, beautiful email out. Free up to 100 subscribers, fair pricing past that.

buttondown.com
g
writing

Ghost

Open-source publishing that powers more indie newsletters than you'd guess. Paid memberships, no platform tax, your audience stays yours.

ghost.org
l
planning

Linear

Issue tracker that respects your time. Keyboard-first, opinionated workflows, no Jira complexity. The bar everyone else now compares to.

linear.app
c
planning

Cal.com

Open-source scheduling. Calendly without the trust issues. Self-host or use the cloud — same product, your data, no surprise pricing changes.

cal.com
r
reading

Reeder

The RSS reader by one developer who has been polishing it for twenty years. If you read more than fifty articles a week, this is the app.

reederapp.com
r
craft

Raycast

A launcher that ate everything — clipboard, snippets, scripts, AI, calendar, window manager. The keyboard-first command palette macOS deserves.

raycast.com
g
craft

Granola

Meeting notes that write themselves. Listen quietly to your call, take your own bullet points alongside, merge them into a clean summary on the fly.

granola.ai
k
craft

Krisp

Background noise removed from any call in real time, in any app. The kind of tool you only realize you needed after the first use.

krisp.ai
s
craft

Shortwave

Gmail reimagined by ex-Google folks. AI-powered triage that actually triages, real keyboard shortcuts, threads that finally read like conversations.

shortwave.com

two long looks, this month.

omg.lol — a tiny home on the indie web

issue 05 · identity · paid · $20 per year

If you have ever wanted a website that is genuinely yours — not a profile inside someone else's algorithm — omg.lol is the smallest version of that idea anyone has shipped. You get a name on the .lol TLD, a single page you control, an email address, a status page, a paste bin, and a weblog. All for twenty dollars a year, all without ads.

What sells it isn't the feature list. It's the tone. omg.lol is run by Adam Newbold, who answers support emails personally, ships software because he wants to, and treats the whole thing like a long-running art project. The dashboard reads like a friendly letter. The pricing reads like someone who has thought about money.

There is an internet that still feels like a place, where people sign their work and answer their own email. omg.lol is the directory.

We picked it because it is the rare service that gets better the smaller it stays. The whole product fits on one screen. The whole community fits in one IRC channel. The whole worldview fits on the about page. If you build anything online and want a tiny home to point to from a CV or a side-project, this is where to start.

visit omg.lol

Mymind — a private corner for visual thinking

issue 05 · craft · paid · $13 per month

Mymind is what would happen if Pinterest only had one user — you — and didn't try to sell you anything. You drop in images, articles, quotes, screenshots, links; the app quietly tags them, finds connections, surfaces things you saved nine months ago when they suddenly become relevant again.

There are no folders. No tags you have to write. No share buttons. No public profile. That's not a missing feature; it's the whole pitch. The team wrote a small manifesto called "Stop Pretending Social Media is Good for Creativity" and built an app around it.

Most "second brain" apps want to be your work software. Mymind wants to be a closed notebook nobody else can read.

It is opinionated about what it won't do — no collaboration, no public boards, no AI chat — and that's what makes it lovable. If you are a designer, writer, founder, or anyone who collects visual references for a living, the upgrade from a phone-camera-roll-of-screenshots to Mymind is the kind that resets a small part of your brain.

visit mymind.com

three cuts and a recommendation.

Most app lists rank by popularity. This one ranks by second visit. We start the month with a long list — submissions to hello@apps.fish, our own opens from the past four weeks, threads we saved, things friends sent in. Then we cut.

  1. did we open it twice on our own?

    Without a reason. Without being told. Most apps fail here. Many great products are great-for-the-moment but never opened again — these stay out of the catch.

  2. can we recommend it in one sentence?

    By name, to a friend, on a phone screen. If the recommendation needs three paragraphs of setup, the app is too complicated for this page, no matter how good it is.

  3. is it run by people, not a fund?

    We have nothing against venture-backed apps and don't exclude them. But indie or small-team apps tend to stay aligned with the people using them, and that's the kind of software we want to point to.

Anything left after that goes in the catch. Two of those get the long-form treatment in spotlight for the month, the rest stay in the grid. We've never removed an app from the catch once it's in — only added.


almost made the catch.

Six apps we've been opening lately but haven't earned a second visit consistently enough to enter the grid. Watch this space — half of them tend to graduate within an issue or two.

  • Cosmos

    visual

    Pinterest reimagined for moodboarding by people who care about how it feels to scroll. Pretty close to graduating.

  • Tot

    writing

    Seven dots, seven tiny note slots, one app. The smallest writing tool that's somehow indispensable on a busy day.

  • Free, open source, beautifully native macOS RSS reader. If Reeder is too much app, this is the right amount.

  • Maccy

    utility

    Open-source clipboard manager for macOS. Cmd+Shift+C and you have everything you've copied this week.

  • Mataroa

    writing

    A minimalist, naked, paid blogging platform. No tracking, no JavaScript, no analytics, no theme switcher. Just a writer and a publish button.

  • Bear Blog

    writing

    Markdown-first blogging platform, ad-free, performance-obsessed. Posts load instantly because there's nothing else on the page.


five issues so far.

  1. 05may 2026

    the small web

    Personal corners of the internet. The apps that make you remember the web used to feel like a place, not a feed. Six new catches: a tiny home for a .lol address, a private visual brain, two macOS tools that disappear into muscle memory, and one AI sidekick for meetings. Spotlight on omg.lol and Mymind.

    added: omg.lol · Mymind · Pika · Raycast · Granola · Krisp
  2. 04apr 2026

    saving and shipping for one

    Read-later that respects the queue. Bookmarks that look like a collection. Two newsletter tools for writers who want to own their list. One email client that finally treats inboxes like the messy human things they are. Five tools that survived the move from "I'll try this" to "I open this every day".

    added: Raindrop · Cubox · Buttondown · Ghost · Shortwave
  3. 03mar 2026

    drawing and shipping

    Two whiteboards that beat every diagram tool we know of, one issue tracker that quietly raised the bar for the entire category, and one open-source replacement for the most-resented scheduling service on the planet. The "things teams should standardize on" issue.

    added: tldraw · Excalidraw · Linear · Cal.com
  4. 02feb 2026

    notes that act like databases

    The "second brain" finally moves past the buzzword. Five picks that built real structure on top of free-form notes — supertags, encrypted local graphs, hashtag-first markdown, an open-source outliner with backlinks, and a daily ritual we actually keep.

    added: Tana · Anytype · Sunsama · Bear · Logseq
  5. 01jan 2026

    a quiet beginning

    The first catch. Four apps picked on the same day this domain was registered — one analytics tool that respects readers, one slow social network that still feels like the early internet, one focused writing app, and one RSS reader that's outlived a dozen platform redesigns. We started here.

    added: Plausible · Are.na · iA Writer · Reeder

This is a quiet log of small web apps we keep coming back to. A few at a time. Twenty-four so far. No sponsors, no affiliate links, no SEO tail.

Most lists rank by popularity. This one ranks by second visit. If we didn't reopen it on our own a week later, it didn't make the page.

started january 2026, kept by a small team in Poland · updated on the first weekend of each month · single static page, served from a Cloudflare edge worker

privacy & cookies

This site sets no cookies and does not fingerprint individuals. No Google Analytics, no Facebook pixel, no advertising scripts, no tracking cookies. We collect aggregate visit numbers (no per-visitor identity) via Cloudflare Web Analytics — disclosed below.

What we technically use:

  • Cloudflare Web Analytics (static.cloudflareinsights.com) — a small beacon script that reports anonymous, aggregate page views, referrers, country (from your IP at the edge), browser, and device class. No cookies, no localStorage, no fingerprinting, no cross-site tracking, no individual visitor profile. Cloudflare documents the full data model in their privacy-first analytics post. We use it to see which issues land, where readers come from, and which categories are popular — nothing tied to you specifically.
  • localStorage — a single key (apps_fish_consent_v1) to remember that you have dismissed this notice. Functional, never read by anyone but your browser.
  • Google Fonts (fonts.googleapis.com, fonts.gstatic.com) — typography is loaded from Google. Loading it sends your IP address to Google as part of any HTTP request. We may self-host fonts in a future issue to remove this dependency.
  • Cloudflare edge logs — Cloudflare, who serve the site, keep short-lived edge logs for security and abuse-prevention purposes per their own privacy policy.

That is the full list. We treat changes to this as an editorial line, not a footnote — if anything ever changes, we add a line to the back issue for that month.


need a small app that doesn't exist yet?

The catch is what we read. The other half of what we do — we design and build small, custom web apps for teams who need their own. A one-pager calculator for an oddly-specific job. An internal dashboard a team actually uses. A pricing widget that doesn't need sixty kilos of JavaScript. A private alpha for the first hundred users of an idea.

Short briefs. Fixed scope. No quarterly retainers, no roadmaps with sixteen swimlanes. Usually a single page on a single edge worker — exactly like this one. We ship in two to six weeks, send one invoice at the end, and hand over a repository you actually own.

  • internal toolsqueues, reviewer dashboards, approval flows, admin panels
  • calculatorspricing, sizing, eligibility, ROI, savings, custom quotes
  • one-pagerslanding, microsite, product manifest, launch announcement
  • small saasprivate alpha → first hundred paying users, billing on day one
  • data-driven pagesmaps, charts, leaderboards, public registries
  • browser extensionsfocused, opinionated, one button
typical scope1 → 6 weeks
pricingfixed, upfront
retainersnone
repoyours, day one

recent builds

  1. 2 weeks

    An internal pricing calculator that replaced an eight-tab spreadsheet

    For a sales team of twenty. Three input groups, conditional logic, audit-trail export. Lives on a single edge worker. Used daily; no support tickets so far.

  2. 1 weekend

    A public directory fed by a Google Sheet

    For a community of independent makers. The owner edits the sheet, the site updates within sixty seconds. Indexed in Google within a week of launch.

  3. 6 weeks

    A reviewer dashboard with role-based access and full audit logging

    For a remote ops team handling regulated submissions. Two-person review queue, escalation paths, signed exports. Built on the smallest stack that could pass a security audit.

  4. 3 weeks

    A launch page with a custom interactive demo

    For a YC-backed startup announcing a developer tool. Hero animation, embedded sandbox, waitlist with email verification. First five hundred signups within twenty-four hours.

We are not a forty-person agency. We are two engineers and a designer who like small problems, real briefs, and finished software. If that matches what you need built — drop us a line.


about apps.fish.

How many apps are in the catalog?

Twenty-four right now, across seven categories — canvas, notes, writing, reading, planning, identity, and craft. We add three to six new picks per monthly issue. The aim is a list short enough to read in one sitting and broad enough to cover the categories we actually use day-to-day.

When the page starts feeling like a directory rather than a list, we'll split it or stop adding. Not before.

How often do you update the catch?

The first weekend of every month, since January 2026. New picks get added to the grid; older ones stay unless we genuinely stop using them. We have not removed an app from the catch yet — only added.

Are these apps free?

Most have free tiers that go a long way — tldraw, Excalidraw, Are.na, Plausible (community version), and Anytype are all usable for years without paying. A few are paid-only and worth the money. We flag the price model in each card and in the spotlight reviews when it matters.

Do you take sponsorships, affiliates, or paid placements?

No. The page would lose its only useful property — that we mean what we say. No affiliate links, no sponsored picks, no "in partnership with". The custom-build practice (see beyond the catch) is how we pay for the domain and the lights.

Can I submit my app for a future issue?

Yes — send a one-line pitch and the URL to hello@apps.fish. We will not promise placement, but we will open the app twice on our own time. That is how all twenty-four current picks got in. Please keep it short; a long email moves you down the queue.

Who runs apps.fish?

A small team in Poland — two engineers and a designer — who also build custom web apps for other teams. The reading list came first; the build practice grew out of it. Editorial decisions are made by humans, on the first weekend of each month, over coffee.

What kind of apps do you build for clients?

Small, custom web apps with short scope and fixed pricing: internal tools, calculators, dashboards, one-pagers, early-stage SaaS, browser extensions. Most ship in two to six weeks. We send one invoice at the end and hand over a repository you fully own. Brief us at build@apps.fish.

How is this site built?

One static HTML file, served from a Cloudflare edge worker, with no framework and no analytics that follow you around. The whole site is roughly 68 kilobytes uncompressed. We mention it because it's a quiet demo of the kind of work in beyond the catch — small, fast, owned end-to-end.

What about cookies and tracking?

No cookies. No fingerprinting. No advertising or marketing trackers. We use Cloudflare Web Analytics — a cookieless, aggregate-only beacon that tells us how many people read each issue and roughly where they're from (country level, from the edge). It does not set cookies, does not use localStorage, and does not build a visitor profile.

The site itself sets one functional localStorage key (apps_fish_consent_v1) to remember that you dismissed the privacy notice. Typography is loaded from Google Fonts, which sees your IP. Full detail in the privacy note.

Why is the domain called apps.fish?

Because fishing is patient, slow, and produces one good thing at a time — the same way good apps surface. Also because the .fish TLD was available and a domain like this should sound like what it does.


spotted something biting?

Send a one-line pitch and the URL. If it earns a second visit, it shows up in the next issue — the first weekend of the month.