A laptop ready for a long bookmarking session. Photo: Radek Grzybowski, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0 public domain).
Most of the internet’s best tools never trend. They just sit there, quietly solving a problem, until somebody sends you a link and you wonder why you didn’t have this bookmarked years ago. Here are 50 of those sites, the ones that feel like a hidden toolbox: free research papers, a Photoshop stand-in in your browser, a place to check if your email got leaked, and a café soundtrack when the house is too quiet.
Each one is linked directly. A few have moved or changed hands, and I’ve noted those so you don’t hit a dead end.
Free Books & Research
- unpaywall.org — Free research papers
- openlibrary.org — Borrow books online
- doaj.org — Free academic journals
- alternativeto.net — App alternatives
- justwatch.com — Find where to stream
- archive.org — Internet archives
- gutenberg.org — 70K+ free books
- openstax.org — Free textbooks
- openculture.com — Free courses
- wolframalpha.com — Solve complex problems
Images & Design
- photopea.com — Photoshop alternative
- squoosh.app — Compress images
- remove.bg — Remove backgrounds
- cleanup.pictures — Remove objects
- unscreen.com — Remove video backgrounds. (Unscreen now lives at Canva, and this link goes to the current page.)
- carbon.now.sh — Beautiful code images
- ray.so — Code screenshots
- shots.so — Product mockups
- smartmockups.com — Create mockups. (Smartmockups is now part of Canva, and this link goes to the current page.)
Privacy & Security
- haveibeenpwned.com — Check data breaches
- virustotal.com — Scan files & URLs
- privnote.com — Self-destructing notes
- temp-mail.org — Temporary email
- file.io — Temporary file sharing
- archive.ph — Save webpages
- similarsites.com — Find similar websites
Music & Focus
- radio.garden — Explore global radio
- everynoise.com — Discover music genres
- tunefind.com — Find songs from shows
- musicforprogramming.net — Focus music
- mynoise.net — Custom background sounds
- coffitivity.com — Café ambience
Research AI
- elicit.org — Research assistant. (The site now lives at elicit.com.)
- consensus.app — Research-backed answers
- connectedpapers.com — Research connections
- semanticscholar.org — Academic search
- scispace.com — Understand research papers
- summarize.tech — YouTube summaries. (This site was returning an error when we checked and appears to be offline.)
Developer Tools
- phind.com — AI for developers
- regex101.com — Test regex
- codebeautify.org — Format code
- jsonformatter.org — Format JSON
- explainshell.com — Understand terminal commands
Everyday Utilities
- raindrop.io — Bookmark manager
- downdetector.com — Check outages
- tineye.com — Reverse image search
- fast.com — Internet speed test
- smallpdf.com — PDF tools
- ilovepdf.com — Merge/split PDFs
- 10minutemail.com — Temporary email
What I’d grab
You don’t need to buy anything to use this list. But if you’re settling in for a long stretch of research, design, or late-night tinkering, these three make the work a little easier:
- SanDisk 128GB Ultra Flair USB flash drive: a small, metal-cased drive for parking papers, photos, and backups you don’t want stuck in the cloud.
- Yubico YubiKey 5 NFC security key: a physical key for your logins, so a leaked password from a breach checker like Have I Been Pwned isn’t enough to get into your accounts.
- Nulaxy adjustable laptop stand: lifts the screen to eye level so a long bookmarking session doesn’t turn into a sore neck.
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