Sindre Sorhus

Full-time open-sourcer maintaining 1,000+ npm packages and dozens of indie Mac apps

@sindresorhus Norway66K followersMac & Desktop App Makers Open Source Makers Developer Tools

About Sindre Sorhus

Sindre Sorhus is a Norwegian developer who works full time on open source and native Apple apps. He is one of the most prolific maintainers in the JavaScript ecosystem, responsible for more than 1,000 npm packages and widely used projects such as the Awesome lists, along with many small, dependable Node.js libraries and CLI tools that sit deep inside countless dependency trees.

In 2014 he quit his office job to backpack around Southeast Asia while doing open source, and by early 2018 he was fully funded by community sponsorship. Since then his focus has shifted heavily towards macOS and iOS development in Swift, where he has released an unusually large catalogue of focused utilities — from the paid power-user tool Supercharge and the menu bar calendar Dato to free apps like Gifski, Plash, Velja and Pure Paste.

His approach is a rare model for the indie world: a single developer sustaining a living through a mix of sponsors, donations and paid apps, while shipping dozens of tiny, polished tools that each solve one annoyance well.

Products by Sindre Sorhus

Supercharge

sindresorhus.com

Paid Mac utility that adds dozens of small power-user improvements to macOS.

Dato

apps.apple.com

Menu bar calendar and clock with time zones and upcoming events.

Gifski

apps.apple.com

Converts videos into high-quality animated GIFs on the Mac.

Velja

apps.apple.com

Browser picker that opens links in the right browser or app.

Plash

apps.apple.com

Turns any website into your interactive Mac desktop wallpaper.

Aiko

apps.apple.com

On-device audio transcription app powered by Whisper.

Actions

apps.apple.com

Adds a large set of extra actions to the Shortcuts app.

Refined GitHub

github.com

Browser extension that simplifies the GitHub interface and adds useful features.

Awesome

github.com

The original curated meta-list of awesome lists on GitHub.

Builds indie alternatives to:Otter.ai

Sindre Sorhus's journey, 2014–20185 milestones · self-reported

First product
Went full time
Launch / milestone
Started 2014

2014First product: Launched Awesome
2014Went full time: Quit his office job
2014Milestone: Created the Awesome list, which became one of the…
2018Milestone: Became fully funded by the community to do open source full time
2018Launch: Released Gifski for Mac, one of his first widely used native…

Timeline

2014 — Quit his office job to backpack around Southeast Asia while working on open source.
2014 — Created the Awesome list, which became one of the most-starred repositories on GitHub.
2018 — Became fully funded by the community to do open source full time.
2018 — Released Gifski for Mac, one of his first widely used native apps.

How Sindre builds

Small, focused modules and apps that do one thing well.
Fix the everyday annoyances that platform vendors ignore.
Open source can be a full-time job when the community funds it.
Ship many tiny utilities rather than one sprawling app.

Sindre Sorhus FAQ

Who is Sindre Sorhus?

Sindre Sorhus is a Norwegian full-time open-source developer and Mac app maker who maintains more than 1,000 npm packages and has released dozens of macOS utilities.