8 Free Online Tools Worth Bookmarking in 2026

Photopea is the closest thing to 'real Photoshop' you'll find without an Adobe subscription. The keyboard shortcuts match, the file dialogs match, PSD / XCF / Sketch files open natively, and the layer system is the same vocabulary. It's not as polished as Photoshop, but it's free, no account, and works offline once loaded.

For one-off tasks ('just crop and re-export this PNG', 'open this AI file for a quick edit'), Photopea is faster than launching the heavy software. Theads and Twitter demos rely on it constantly.

Excalidraw renders diagrams in a deliberately hand-drawn style. The aesthetic alone puts people at ease — your diagram looks like it's been sketched on a whiteboard, which is the point. Live collaboration is built in (open the same URL with someone else).

It's used heavily for technical diagrams, sketches in blog posts, and quick architecture explanations. Exports PNG, SVG, or copy-pastes the underlying XML.

Tldraw is the closest thing to a 'Miro but free' that's actually good. The canvas is genuinely infinite, you can drop in sticky notes / arrows / shapes / free-hand, and recent updates added an AI prompt that turns a rough sketch into a diagram of icons.

The free tier is fully usable; the paid tier adds bigger collaboration rooms and AI credits, neither of which you'll need for solo work.

Remove.bg removes image backgrounds in one click using a trained model. For people in photos and product photos, the result is essentially perfect. Hair edges, glasses and fuzzy animals are where it occasionally struggles — and where Photoshop's manual 'Select Subject' still beats it.

The free tier caps you at lower resolution. For full-res you pay per image (cheap), or use Photopea's 'magic wand' for the same effect for free.

Squoosh is Google's open-source image compressor in browser form. It runs the actual encoder in your browser (lib image happens locally, no upload), so you can compress a 12MB phone photo to 1MB at the same visible quality and not worry about a server seeing your pictures.

Side-by-side preview lets you drag a slider to see before/after at the exact same crop. Supports WebP, AVIF, JPEG XL, MozJPEG, OxiPNG.

10MinuteMail gives you a real, working email address for 10 minutes. A timer counts down; copy the address, paste it into whatever signup form is asking for an email, refresh the inbox page to read the verification link. When the timer hits zero, the address stops existing.

It's the easiest way to deal with the 90% of signups that exist solely to email you marketing you'll never open. For real accounts you intend to keep, use a real email.

Pomofocus is the simplest Pomodoro timer that still has the features people actually want: it logs completed sessions (today / week / total), it shows the task you're working on, and the UI is calm enough that you don't feel nagged.

If you already use a Pomodoro workflow, this is the one that requires zero mental overhead. If you don't, it's a 25-minute commitment to find out if focus sprints work for you.

A Soft Murmur lets you build a soundscape from individual sliders: rain, thunder, fire, wind, ocean, birds, coffee shop, whiteboard. Each one has its own volume. The presets ('Coffee Shop', 'Library', 'Storm') are surprisingly good.

For deep work, the favourite is usually rain + coffee shop on low. For winding down, fire + wind. Nothing fancy, just works.