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1,362 open-source desktop apps

Open source software for Windows, Mac and Linux

Open-source desktop software publishes its source code under a license that lets anyone use, study and change it, and most of it is free to download. appsgit lists 1,362 open-source desktop apps on GitHub: 1,047 for Windows, 1,100 for macOS and 1,007 for Linux. Each page shows the platforms, license, GitHub stars, install commands and the commercial software it replaces.

Open source desktop apps
1,362
Official
295
Categories
25
Updated
Oct 28, 2026

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Ranked by GitHub stars gained between two of appsgit's daily star snapshots 3 to 14 days apart, as close to 7 days as the data allows, scaled to a 7-day rate so repositories with different snapshot gaps compare fairly. A repository is held for review and left out of the ranking (it stays listed) when its gain scaled to 7 days is over 50,000 stars, when more than half of its stars arrived inside the window (repositories with 5,000 stars or more), or when it leads with at least 1,000 stars and more than 10 times the next repository's gain. A human releases a held repository after review.

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Top 12 desktop apps

Ranked by GitHub stars. Every page has the platforms, license, install commands for Flathub, Homebrew, winget or Chocolatey when available, and the paid software it replaces.

Official desktop apps

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Open source desktop apps: FAQ

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What is the best open source software for Windows?

By GitHub stars, the most popular open-source apps that run on Windows are yt-dlp, Visual Studio Code, Ollama. appsgit lists 1,047 Windows apps; 819 of all listed apps also run on macOS and Linux.

Is open source software free?

Open-source licenses let anyone use, copy and change the software, and almost every app listed here is a free download. 1,358 of the 1,362 apps use an OSI-approved or FSF-free license; 4 are source-available (the code is public but the license restricts use) and are labelled on their pages.

Which open source apps replace paid software?

155 apps are marked with the commercial software they are commonly used instead of, for example Krita or GIMP instead of Photoshop, FreeCAD or LibreCAD instead of AutoCAD, RustDesk instead of TeamViewer. Each app page lists what it replaces.

How are these desktop apps chosen?

Apps come from desktop awesome lists (Awesome Linux Software, awesome-mac, awesome-windows, awesome-electron and the media and file sections of awesome-cli-apps), more than 70 GitHub topics such as desktop-app, electron-app, tauri-app, gtk, qt, macos-app, pdf-editor, cad and remote-desktop, and a hand-picked list of flagship apps. An app is listed only if it has a license (one GitHub detects, or one appsgit checked by hand), a README and a commit in the last six months, is not archived or a fork, and has 1000+ GitHub stars (topics), 500+ (awesome lists) or 100+ (hand-picked). It must also be an end-user application with a desktop signal: installers in its releases, install instructions for Windows, macOS or Linux, or a Flathub, Homebrew, winget, Chocolatey, Snap or AUR package. Libraries, frameworks, themes, plugins and servers are left out, and source-available apps are labelled as such. Official means the repository belongs to the project or foundation behind the app, such as GNOME, KDE, Mozilla, VideoLAN, Blender, LibreOffice or OBS (a fixed, hand-checked allow-list), or to a GitHub organization with a verified domain, rather than a fork or third-party build.