Hot Web Dev Magazine - 12 Dev Tools From 2025

If you have been following the monthly Hot Web Dev magazine, you will find at the end of each edition, I recommend a tool of the month. Over the years, the tools used have varied from open-source apps and JavaScript UI frameworks to server tools, AI, CSS, desktop, and web applications. Here’s a list of the tools from 2025, along with updates on new features and development.

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SpicyCamCast ✅

SpicyCamCast may sound raunchy, but inevitably it is an open-source JS module that allows you to integrate camera and screencasts into your project. It’s built using modern JavaScript, leveraging ES6 classes, private fields, async/await and promises.

Its features include detecting and selecting video devices, starting, and stopping camera and screencast streams, capturing photos in JPEG, PNG or WebP format and mirroring video streams. As of 2026 the project continues there hasn't been anymore development since January 2025.

Brisa ✅

Brisa is a web platform framework that enables developers to build fast, simple web applications. It offers server-side rendering, web component support, and browser event handling on the server. Brisa is fully integrated into Tauri to provide multi-platform capabilities, allowing developers to easily convert web applications to native Android, iOS, and desktop applications. The latest version was released in October 2025 and is still under active development.

Laravel Herd ✅

PHP and Laravel have been featured several times over the past year. Laravel Herd is a PHP development environment. It can be used for other PHP projects, including WordPress and other PHP frameworks. Herd manages and installs Node, PHP versions, the Composer installer and Expose, making them accessible from the terminal. It’s currently available for Windows and Mac. If you want extra features, a pro version is available, for $99 per year. As you may imagine Herd is still around a year later and won't be going away any time soon. Give it a go If you need a configurable PHP server for your development projects.

Bruno ✅

April's tool of the month is software that rivals Postman, a popular API testing tool. Bruno is an open-source API client that is offline-first, Git friendly and designed for simplicity, efficiency, and freedom for developers. Collections are stored locally and version-controlled using Git. The aim is to solve the issues of collaboration and data privacy in API clients and provide developers with a better experience. Everything is stored locally on your computer with little need to connect to the cloud or any data syncing.

Bruno is now on version 3, boasting numerous features and improvements. These include a red status indicator for script errors, support for missing environment APIs and the ability to remove headers from requests via scripts. Translation capabilities have been enhanced, error handling improved and telemetry tracking refined. New features include onboarding preferences a welcome modal for new users and support for multipart/mixed requests.

GSAP✅

Want to add some animation to your website? GSAP have recently announced that their professional JavaScript animation library is now free too all, including commercial use. The news arrived after being acquired by Webflow, a web publishing platform. GSAP supports Webflow as well as WordPress. It is platform-agnostic, so it can also work in React, Vue, Angular, and more. A positive purchase that allows all web devs to flip and tween to their heart’s content. GSAP is still going strong with the latest update in December 2025.

Kelp ✅

June's monthly pick is a new UI library for HTML enthusiasts, powered by modern CSS and Web Components. Kelp offers a no-build step system that employs a HUG CSS approach, eliminating the need for classes for core styles. For instance, a button is created using the HTML button tags and nothing else. Utility classes are provided to fine-tune styling as needed, and classes can be grouped to simplify the styling of more complex components.

Kelp is a design system that maximises your pages, including typography, forms, components, badges, avatars, callouts, and skeletons. Kelp is currently in alpha and under active development, so it may not be suitable for production environments. I’m grateful to Chris Ferdinand for his release, and I look forward to trying it out on new projects soon. Kelp is currently thriving. Since its initial recognition in June 2025, it has seen numerous enhancements including dropdowns and a file picker. It now also includes form validation and a host of other features.

Responsively ✅

Responsively is a must-have tool for web developers. It offers a comprehensive toolset for creating pixel-perfect, responsive websites. It includes real-time mirrored interactions across devices, quick context switching, and a large collection of device profiles. The Unified Inspector allows you to inspect elements across all devices at once. It also offers one-click screenshots of all devices, individual devices, and the viewport. Responsively is open source and is sponsored by GitHub and Syncfusion. Responsively is still going strong with frequent updates adding the latest devices and UI tweaks.

Pattern Craft ✅

The tool of the month for August 2025 is a CSS background pattern tool. CSS patterns are a blast from the past, but on PatternCraft, you will find CSS patterns and gradient snippets. The patterns of old were small images with which you tiled using the background property. The modern way uses copy and paste snippets, saving heaps of time. Currently PatternCraft has over 250 patterns which can be copied in CSS and Tailwind format.

Windhawk ✅

September's feature tool is a powerhouse for tweaking Windows 11. If you don’t like Windows’ default look, Windhawk may be a solution that meets your needs. Once installed, you can enable whichever mod you wish without the abundance of options available from the outset. For example, if you don’t like the current taskbar, you can find a mod that displays it like a dock, move the taskbar to the side or top or even change the size. Mods can be filtered and sorted by the most popular and the highly downloaded. Windhawk is designed for stability and performance, running in the background without impacting the system. It is user-friendly, allowing for easy installation and customisation of sophisticated mods. In 2026 Windhawk is still as popular with the Windows 11 Start Menu Style mod being used by half a million users.

Handy ✅

Handy is a simple, offline speech-to-text app that inserts spoken words into a text box. Unlike existing apps, Handy was designed to be open-source and extensible. It encourages users to experiment with voice computing and accessibility features and share their creations.

Press a shortcut to start or stop recording, or use push-to-talk mode. Silence is removed using the VAD filter (silero). Whisper Small transcribes your speech, and the text is directly pasted into the app you’re using. It runs entirely on your machine with GPU acceleration when available. This app works on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Handy is actively maintained and updated with v0.8.0 adding speed improvements for Whisper models and audio recordings saved even if transcription fails. A db upgrade is included, but it is not backwards compatible.

Mend Renovate ✅

Mend Renovate automates dependency updates for developers by detecting newer package versions and pushing updates directly into the application code. It offers various deployment options, including self-hosted and cloud, with different features and pricing. Mend Renovate integrates with repositories, creates pull requests for updates, and provides merge confidence workflows. There is an open-source CLI version, a free community version and an enterprise version available for self-hosting and cloud hosting.

FlyEnv ✅

FlyEnv is a comprehensive environment management tool designed to streamline development. It offers multi-version switching full-stack technology support and a seamless cross-platform experience. This integration of essential tools for various programming languages enables developers to concentrate on creation rather than debugging. With support for PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, Java, Go and Rust amongst its programming languages and support for popular databases including MySQL and PostgreSQL.

FlyEnv is open source and ensures consistent environments across macOS, Windows, and Linux, optimising resource usage and providing developer-friendly tools like config management, local web hosting, and one-click SSL. Since it was reviewed FlyEnv now supports RustFS, SDKMAN, and custom interface font settings. It also offers enhanced project service support for all languages, including custom commands, port configuration, and HTTPS integration.

Conclusion - Hot Web Dev Magazine Tools for 2026

Like previous years, 2025 offered a wide variety of 12 tools for development and content creation. My most used tool in 2025 was Bruno I used in my honors project. It's hard to pick a favourite out of this bunch. I am looking forward to seeing the development of Responsively, Kelp and Brisa in the future.

If you have a recommendation for the top tool of the month for future editions of the Hot Web Dev magazine, you can get in touch using the contact form or message me on social media. See you next year for updates on the top tools from 2026.