HUhu3·Sep 26, 2024
Dash is great. I use the free open-source alternative Zeal, works for Linux, Windows and macOS.
https://github.com/zealdocs/zeal
In Ask HN: What is one software product that boosted your productivity?zealdocs
zeal
C++2016–2024
zealdocs / zeal
zeal
Offline documentation browser. Your personal reference library, searchable in an instant.
Developer ToolsWeb DevelopmentSystems & InfrastructureLearning & ReferenceMobile & DesktopLibraries & SDKs
10Distinct people
10Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
12.9KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Offline documentation browser. Your personal reference library, searchable in an instant.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year10 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2016-10-06 19:26:11 UTC to 2024-09-26 12:58:49 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
10 sourcesThere is already open source dash (https://zealdocs.or) although they don't provide Mac build because of an agreement to use some of dash's lists.
But you can build it on mac (https://github.com/zealdocs/zeal/wiki/Build-Instructions-for...)
In DevDocsads don't have to proprietary
here's one example of ads in FOSS https://github.com/zealdocs/zeal/issues/779
In Simple Mobile Tools suite to be acquired by Israeli adware companyIt’s not widely advertised (probably this is the deal) but Zeal works fine on macOS, see this: https://github.com/zealdocs/zeal/wiki/Build-Instructions-for...
You don’t need to build it yourself, there is a brew formula.
In Zeal is an offline documentation browser for software developersHere is the github discussion created by dash author explaining the deal https://github.com/zealdocs/zeal/issues/24#issue-17915169
In Zeal is an offline documentation browser for software developersZeal seems, complicated. It hasn't seen a release since 2018 (https://github.com/zealdocs/zeal/discussions/1308 they're switching browser engines at some point, which affects default zoom level, though customizable CSS injection should be doable if they keep static CSS injection), and commits are a bit sparse (https://github.com/zealdocs/zeal/issues/1336), so I'm not sure my feature requests will be fulfilled.
Worryingly, while updating my 5 docsets downloaded months ago, I hit a segfault, and trying to debug it in coredumpctl repeatedly hangs gdb and makes it eat all available RAM. I suspect it's a lifetime or multithreading issue.
EDIT: Reported at https://github.com/zealdocs/zeal/issues/1426. QAbstractItemModel is the gift that keeps giving.
In I’m a productive programmer with a memory of a fruit flyFound a similar one for Windows & Linux: https://github.com/zealdocs/zeal
In Ask HN: Anyone interested in an offline version of Stack Overflow?That's a good opportunity to mention Zeal, an open source Dash alternative: https://github.com/zealdocs/zeal
In Making world-class docs takes effortFunny, I've been looking for something like this, without knowing that I was really.
Unfortunately I am getting "Content rendering error
An unhandled error occurred in the application. We apologize for the inconvenience!" for the HTML, CSS and JS references.
edit: That appears to be a bigger issue which has been discussed for some time by a few people (https://github.com/zealdocs/zeal/issues/1155).
find ~/.local/share/Zeal/Zeal/docsets -name "react-main.*.js" -exec rm -rf {} \;
here's a fix that worked for me on Manjaro (Linux) for the time being.
In Daily Life with the Offline LaptopEven if you are, https://github.com/zealdocs/zeal/wiki/Build-Instructions-for....
It works quite well for me.
In Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store