AlternativeTo Awards 2023: Best APPS of the year!

2024 is just around the corner, but hold on! Before we dive into the new year, let's rewind and take a glimpse at some of the coolest and most popular alternatives launched during 2023. From social networks to productivity and photography tools, and of course, a bunch of AI-based platforms that might have sounded like science fiction just a couple of years ago. Here are some of the fan-favorites on AlternativeTo this year:

ChatGPT from OpenAI is cool and all, but you know what's even cooler? HuggingChat from the well-known platform Hugging Face, an actually OPEN-source AI Chatbot Interface based on the Open Assistant Conversational AI Model. HuggingChat is pretty easy and straightforward to use —just visit huggingface.co/chat, and start a conversation without signing up if you don't want to. The interface is similar to ChatGPT, with quick options to change the model or toggle web search.

DeepL Write stands out as an AI writing tool for English and German. Beyond grammar, it suggests phrasing, tone, style, and word choice. Ideal for professionals and multilingual teams because of its polished writing. You should check it out if you're looking for an alternative to platforms like Grammarly or LanguageTool.

Poe is an AI-based messaging app from Quora that serves as a main hub where users can communicate with a wide range of AI chatbots and image generation models such as ChatGPT, Meta Llama, Claude, Stable Diffusion, DALL-E 3, among others. You can even create your own bot and market it through its creators' monetization program.

Spacedrive is a beautiful open-source, decentralized cross-platform file explorer with a 'Virtual Distributed Filesystem' (VDFS) in Rust. Spacedrive aims to unify all your files across different devices and cloud services into a single, easy-to-use explorer. Just beware that the software is still in alpha, but it is probably one of the most interesting proposals out there.

Proton AG has some of our favorite apps here at Alt2, so it's always exciting to learn about their new products. Proton Pass is an open-source and privacy-focused password manager solution with robust end-to-end encryption, created by the developers of Proton Mail and Proton VPN. Developed by CERN scientists, it's a great UN-recommended new alternative to LastPass, Bitwarden, or 1Password.

Mullvad Browser is a new privacy-focused web browser by Mullvad VPN and Tor Project. It minimizes tracking, offers Tor-like privacy with or without a VPN, anti-fingerprinting, no telemetry, and default private mode, with uBlock Origin integration to blocks trackers. Emphasizing a non-profit business model, it prioritizes transparency by eschewing data collection and offering user-centric browsing services.

Speaking of browsers, there's a new cool guy on the block with Arc Browser, focused on customization to the limit. Arc offers a more personal approach with several unique features such as a side panel for pinned tabs and bookmarks, split view, note-taking tools, collaborative easels, webpage redesign abilities, picture-in-picture, and much more.

LocalSend is a free, open-source cross-platform alternative to AirDrop for secure file and message sharing over a local network, no internet required. It facilitates device communication via a REST API with HTTPS encryption, operating fast and reliably without external servers.

Blackmagic Camera, from the DaVinci Resolve team, is a free powerhouse for mobile photography. It offers several professional digital film settings such as frame rate, shutter angle, ISO, 10-bit Apple ProRes recording up to 4K, and live sync to Blackmagic Cloud Storage for streamlined DaVinci Resolve integration.

Artifact It's a news-feed platform from the Instagram co-founders, with a bunch of AI-based features for personalized content, summarizing, anti-clickbait tools, and the ability to create a board of links to share with the community. It's a mix of Feedly, Pinterest, X, and Flipboard (weird, I know, but it works).

Certainly, we can't overlook Threads, Meta's take on Twitter/X (or whatever you want to call it now), following the numerous changes to the latter in the past year. While decentralized alternatives like Mastodon and the recent Bluesky exist, Threads provides perhaps the closest user experience to Twitter so far, targeting a wider audience. Recently launched in the EU, the promise of interoperability with the Fediverse might make Threads the go-to alternative in 2024.

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The list of new and interesting releases could go on for several more pages, but it's already quite long as it is, so we just want to make a quick mention to some major platforms of the year that we probably all already know. Starting with the new popular AI chatbots/assistants such as Google's response to OpenAI, Google Gemini ; Microsoft Copilot (previously Bing Chat) powered by OpenAI's tech, and Claude, the AI Chatbot interface by Anthropic. Also, there are new official mobile apps from ChatGPT with cool features like Live Voice Chat that you should try if you haven't. Finally, Final Cut Pro & Logic Pro have also made their way to the iPad, just like Procreate Dreams, a promising mobile animation tool from the creators of Procreate. If you want to discover the latest interesting releases, you can always check out our news apps section 😉

Wrapping things up, we also want to hear your personal recommendations for the year! 2023 was a great year for software and innovation, and we're confident that 2024 will be filled with hundreds of new and exciting alternatives to try and share together. 💙 From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for being part of the AlternativeTo community, and Happy New Year! 🌠