Audio/Video Apps:
Open Video Downloader & Parabolic
Are both graphical front-ends for the same LEGENDARY command-line tool: YT-DLP formerly known as Youtube Downloader.
Which also includes FFMPEG for transcoding audio/video formats.
Youtube actually locks the ability to download videos behind Premium paywall, and so it's amazing that this exists at all because you can download for FREE.
They also work with over 1700 sites that are all listed on the YT-DLP Github page.
Both of these apps include hundreds of options so you can download playlists, subtitles, audio or video separately(or only).
You can use log-in credentials, or even spoof different operating systems or devices.
And they update everything from within the app.
Droidcam OBS
If you are a live-streamer or content-creator there's a good chance you use Open Broadcaster Studio. If you use a camera like I do this app is game changer. Why use a webcam if your smart phone has a high-quality 1080p or 4K video camera? And no wire necessary!
You just need it to be on your wifi network.
This is two-part app because you need Droidcam-OBS installed on your Android or iPhone, and then the extension installed in OBS-Studio(works with Linux, Mac, Windows too). On the phone app you can switch front/back, zoom, set focus color and light settings.
The phone app is technically a one time paid purchase to get HD.
It works for free, but has a watermark.
However, you can enable HD for free by watching an advertisement; so there are options. It also only costs like $8 US.
Soundux
Is a soundboard app intended for live-streamers(or maybe prank phone callers), but it does so much more. It works with Pipewire or Pulseaudio, and allows you to rout audio from one application into another. It even advertises itself as a workaround for using certain Discord features.
Settings include mixing for local/remote volume, mixing on a per sound-clip basis, and even a built-in sound clip URL downloader.
Hushboard
This app requires a caveat: It only works with X11 Linux desktops because it doesn't have Wayland support.
There is also potential security risks associated with it because of it's function: It looks for keyboard input.
It has no interface. Just a system-tray icon where you can turn it on or off. If you're typing into your keyboard it mutes your microphone.
The icon also animates to show when it's "hushing" or waiting. And when it's enabled/disabled.
It's very elegant and simple, and that's why I had to feature it on my list despite it being outdated.
Obviously it's ideal for video-conferencing or live-streaming/gaming where the keyboard would make all the clacking noises into your microphone.
Graphical Apps:
Upscaler & Upscayl
Both are front-ends for local hardware-accelerated image upscaling.
I'm not going to go into everything in detail because my last post here on Hive was actually about these apps.
But I will mention that Upscayl has a lot more options and features than Upscaler.
Font Downloader
This one is quite self explanatory.
It's an app that lets you browse all of the Google Fonts, and even see how they look before downloading straight into your font directory.
Has support for alternative language/glyphs as well.
Just a heads up, this app may no longer be actively maintained.
It has a minor security risk because as a Flatpak/Snap it has read/write access to your font folder in your home directory.
Friction Graphics
This one is kind of interesting because it lets you animate with SVG:scalable vector graphics.
It's fairly easy to understand if you're used to working with SVGs, but the drawback is that it's nowhere near as capable of feature-rich as Inkscape. When it comes to importing your Inkscape SVGs it was a litte hit or miss for me, but I could be missing some necessary understandings of how to optimize when going in between the two.
Either way, I definitely think this is an app more people should know about.
RapidRAW
This project started in 2025, and it's already possibly replaced the former open-source alternative to Adobe Lightroom; Darktable.
RapidRAW lets you edit and process RAW photography, and has advanced AI features and integration for ComfyUI.
It's main claim to fame over Darktable is it's beautiful and much more user-friendly user interface. Simplifying lots of advanced processing that would be done with a granular step by step matrix of hidden options in Darktable.
Terminal Tools:
The last 3 app recommendations are three different terminals that offer some interesting features. Guake, Terminator, and Hyper.js.
I'll just leave you to check those out in the video if you're interested.
That was really interesting. I don't keep up with all the new stuff. Droidcam looks useful. I am starting to play with OBS and my webcams are not great. For things like drum videos I may want multiple viewpoints. My new PC seems capable to handling that.
BTW I had an issue when my GPU stopped working, but it looks like it was a clash of kernel and nvidia driver versions and it's okay now.
When you had the issue with the GPU was that just in general or were you using it do something specific? Did you update or anything before the issue happened?
Also about your webcam: sometimes they are very light-dependent and unable to achieve steady frame rates particularly if they have auto-focus in a low-light environment.
And in OBS itself your webcams all have varying settings that you can adjust.
The codec can be very important. It's a drop-down list on mine and it has a few options that are nebulous like y4l, y4m-emulated, and the slowest one is mpeg I think.
I would def see which one of those it prefers, and also set the frames per second & the resolution to the one the webcam advertises.
At the very least lowering the FPS/resolution should often result in smoother performance, and making sure it has enough light.
There's a lot of variability in webcams, and OBS tries to make sure any of them can work.
Droidcam has no fuss whatsoever because your phone is doing all the work on it's own and sending the video to OBS.
The integrated webcams on new laptops with Linux can be a real pain I THINK because the laptop's firmware is trying to use it as a light sensor to adjust screen brightness automatically.
IF you are using OBS I would definitely make sure you have the video-encoder in the main settings set to NVENC capture because your GPU can just feed it the frames as it renders them. But yeah multiple cameras including Droid-Cam should be no problem on a newer computer especially with NVENC.
The GPU issue started after a kernel update, so I assume the driver just couldn't work with that. I used the PC in low res mode for a while, which was a bit painful.
The webcams I have are old 720p ones so not that great. The old PC struggled to record with sound in sync, but the new one seems much better. I need to experiment.
Cheers for the tips.
That's crazy because I also had my GPU issue start after an update, and I've still not been able to resolve it.
So I've been for several months now just using the open-source drivers for Nvidia. This is my main computer, and I think I'm going to stick a new drive in and do a new Linux install on that drive and then I'll just mount the other 3 and I'll have all my files.
Which distro are you using again? And which GPU?
I'm using Ubuntu and it's a RTX5060. Working fine now. I hope you can resolve your issue.
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