How we rate

Where apps come from

We start from the catalogs people already trust to install software: F-Droid, Flathub, Homebrew and winget, plus GitHub search and Show HN for younger projects. Each candidate is matched to its source repository and checked.

Who gets in

• An OSI-approved or free license, read from the repository and compared with the install channels (see License policy).
• A real project: not archived, not a fork, mirror or template, with code changed in the last two years.
• Enough adoption or momentum (stars, catalog presence, recent attention).
• At least one official way to install it, or clear self-hosting instructions.
• Apps that F-Droid flags for tracking, ads or non-free network services are left out.

Health

Health is shown in bands (Solid, Fair, Check first, Weak) instead of a score, with the full list of checks on each listing:

• Maintenance: when the code last changed.
• Releases: a release in the last 90 days, versioned tags, release notes or changelog.
• Issues: whether most reported issues get closed.
• Documentation: install instructions, screenshots, website or docs, contributing guide.
• Security basics: security policy, checksums or signatures for downloads. OpenSSF Scorecard and known-vulnerability checks are planned and shown as “not checked yet”.

Checks that do not apply (for example releases on a two-week-old project) are not counted. With too little data the band is “New, not enough data”. Health is an automatic indication of basic practices at the date of the check. It does not say the software is safe, free of vulnerabilities or malware, and it is not a substitute for your own checks (see Disclaimer).

Rising

A project is “Rising” only when at least two independent signals agree, for example many new stars per week and a recent Show HN, or a recent catalog acceptance and fast growth. The reasons are listed on the listing.

Get

The Get button suggests the official channel for your system (winget on Windows, Homebrew on macOS, Flathub on Linux, F-Droid on Android, otherwise the project's GitHub release). Commands are generated from fixed templates and every identifier is validated. We never host or repackage downloads, and the software you get is third-party software under its own license (see Disclaimer). winget packages are matched by checking that the installer URL points to the project's own repository.

Descriptions

Descriptions are written by our editors with automated assistance from public material (README, catalog metadata), in our own words, and are marked as not reviewed until a person checks them. Developers can ask for corrections at any time.

Auto-listed

Some listings are created automatically by our daily discovery: it searches GitHub for new open source apps, discards forks, mirrors, templates, libraries and projects with suspicious star growth, checks that there is an official way to install them and has the README assessed automatically. These listings carry the “Auto-listed” badge: the description is generated, nobody from the project has verified them and they are different from listings marked “Verified by developer”.

An automatic listing leaves the catalog on its own when the repository is deleted, archived, inactive for 12 months or no longer under an open source license. If you are the developer you can claim it and replace our texts with yours, or ask us to remove it from the Report page: we remove it at once and it is not proposed again.