We went with a mix of curl, Invoke-WebRequest, favourite scripting language, HTTP files, IDE tooling, Insomina, after Postman went cloud online and became a forbidden tool on our systems.

Also I am not counting that Insomina won't follow the same footsteps as Postman.

>Now I just have a Makefile with a bunch of curl invocations

There are several FOSS command line tools that can do this easier, e.g. https://httpie.io/cli

What about Bruno[1]?

1: https://www.usebruno.com/

Hurl (https://hurl.dev/) is quite good

People that want to make money on their software obviously.

Connecting to a license server is pretty much standard.

For Postman it is annoying because it was never explicitly stated and it seemed like they are cool kids making nice helpful app. But really they are in for money. Which is not bad have to say but the way they did it is bad.

I switched to k6 the cli load test tool for its full js/ts scripting ability

Pretty obvious why if you use the software.

I get the whining, but teams need ways to share their complex workflows, and teams are where the money is for all dev focused software.

That's who pays for all your tools to have free versions.

People who use make and curl to jury rig some unshareable solution together that no-one else in their company would even bother trying to use aren't worth any money to companies.

> could have been a 10 Megabyte TUI app

Wow, in a world dominated by gigabytes of electron application, people thinks 10 MB is the optimal size for a simple utility TUI app.

As a reference, (from archlinux repo), vim’s install package is 2.3MB, curl is 1.2MB, lua (the complete language interpreter) is 362KB

Wow, I've been looking for a postman/Bruno/foo replacement that I could use inside a remote ssh server or remote dev containers in vs code. This might be it!

> even this kind of app manages to bring in Electron

Probably because it began as an chrome addon before it was "standalone".

Oooh this is neat! I've been using hurl (https://hurl.dev/) for the last few years and while it's fun, I've ended up with a ton of text files floating around a folder instead of any kind of organization. Might have to try this.

Posting has been the most lucrative option for me so far, but it'll take me some time to get used to the keybindings.

Because enteprise type devs love this shit

And yes. It's completely free. With plugin extensibility for anyone to build/install whatever they want.

The CEO committed to open-sourcing it, as well as to not monetize on anything that doesn't introduce operational costs to the team.

https://voiden.md/blog/why-we-rebuilt-bloated-api-tooling

A little bit of feedback, I could barely read any of the text in the interface as the contrast is almost zero and the font is unbelievably small. So I tried Cmd+ to zoom the interface, but nothing happened, so I tried Cmd, to open the settings to see if there was a zoom level or contrast setting, nothing happened. I like the idea of it, but it's totally unusable.

Voiden looks really promising, so I installed it to get started, and here's my hot takes so far before even using it.

* The text is tiny for my old eyes. I figured there's probably a setting for it and hit Cmd-, and found there's no settings UI whatsoever. No keyboard shortcut either it seems, and no help menu either, so no searching for "keyboard" with Shift-Cmd-/

* .void files may be markdown, but no markdown editor will recognize it as such. Maybe support .void.md as well. I also couldn't find any way to edit the markdown source of a .void file from voiden, which is a bit ironic for a tool that loudly advertises the markdown format as a central feature.

* Could there be a block that expands into the full URL of the request and parameters above it (or perhaps as args)? How about another that renders as a cURL command, which would cover POST/PUT/PATCH requests nicely too. My API documentation always has cURL request examples and I detest writing them by hand.

* While I'm suggesting blocks, one that renders the response headers/body to the preceding request would also be handy. It should support a placeholder response that gets replaced when the request is actually run (and perhaps a "save" button to persist it in the markdown). Responses get long, so maybe have a max-height for the block and make it scrollable

I'm actually really excited about Voiden and hope these can be addressed. It has a similar feel to Jetbrains' .http format, but an evolutionary leap beyond it. It also feels really raw and unfinished.

The vscore one is a plugin from some random person, to be called built in

Last time I checked, they don’t support the exact same format in each product.

Thus, we stick with hurl.

QA seems to stick to robot framework instead. Some use Bruno.

TIL about .http files. Thank you :)

Converted a bunch stuff just laying in my shell history into actual actionable files finally :D

A lot of organizations have very large suites of postman collections that serve as API documentation, regression and QA testing… they often heavily rely on the postman Javascript libraries and have custom code embedded directly in the collection.

In our case, some non-devs use http apis too, notably QA. Bruno currently fills that role.

> RubyMine, and I assume its cousin JetBrains IDEs, has a great HTTP client

It's great. You can even paste a curl command into it and it will automatically convert and format it. You can then use the Copy button to convert your changes back to curl.

$dayjob sent an email to everyone with postman installed and asked us to uninstall when postman switched to online. $dayjob IT still maintains a wiki page and includes it on the banned software list. Used to be ubiquitous over there.

If you give a man a fish he eats for a day, but if you teach a man to fish you give up your monopoly on fisheries.

It used to considered vile that drug dealers tried to hook their users and force dependence... turns out that they were just ahead of the curve.

Everyone accepted because it slowly became standard tool. I have business guys using postman and sharing collections is kind of must.

I hate it, for myself I don’t use it but when having to share API stuff I have to use it because that’s what other people understand.

Good for postman business, bad for everyone.

Been using Yaak for 6-9 months now, initially built from source, but now a paying subscriber. Recently saw that you post open metrics[1] on subscriber count and revenue, and love getting a little look behind the curtains.

[1]: https://yaak.app/open

Curious to know more about the commercial licensing scheme for Yaak: if i’ve read correctly, purchasing a pro license if based on « good faith » as the features are exactly the same as the MIT licensed Hobby version?

Sincere question, been studying lots of OSS commercial licensing and always wonder what works in which context

So you sold insomnia, sold it, and then created another competing tool? There where no restrictions in the deal?

I fell in love with Insomnia pre-acquisition so I'm thrilled to see it has a spiritual successor. Good on you Greg.

Currently using Bruno. Saw your comparison. If Bruno has everything I need, what would you say is your biggest benefit compared to Bruno?

This looks great. If you can wait 8 years before you sell out, that should be long enough for me to retire. Give me a headsup if they offer you a billion earlier so I can start looking for Yaak's replacement.

You should consider updating your free license to allow some time period of professional use, otherwise it's not possible to evaluate it at work without violating the license.

That Hotdog theme is stunning but I'm not sure if I mean "it's beautiful" or "it makes my head hurt."

I was looking at Yaak, and wondering if you've plans to bring it inside VS Code some day?

how would someone use this in a project that operates within VS Code Remote where the source sits on a remote server and isn't physically on the file system.

off topic, sorry: Looking at the docs and I don't find a quick answer. I really want an API client that will do OAuth and handle token refresh, and I haven't found one. The use case is that (obviously) I control the redirect URI, so I'd like to map it back to client (some kind of proxy that I run and make external with all of the requisite DNS and TLS) or maybe via a hosted service (which I'm willing to accept for the convenience.)

I haven't used postman or insomnia in a while since they went to the cloud, so I could just be missing it, but that's also a non-starter for me.

was going to say "what makes this better than Insomnia" before i saw this!

> Having created and sold Insomnia in 2019

Hey @gschier this is awesome. I've been a long time user of Insomnia and since the acquisition it's ever so slowly, well... it's been a challenge for me.

I didn't know you created Yaak!

I just downloaded Yaak and it's been awesome, thank you!

I downloaded this through AUR on Arch and one bit of feedback is that I wish you'd make the sig verification a whole bunch easier, thanks!

Very cool.

Can you provide clarity on is a commercial license is needed. The license appears to be MIT but the yaak.app website gives the impression a license is required, even stating as such in FAQ.

Hey Greg! Can you clarify that building from source and using in a commerical environment is permissable under the MIT license? I have built from source and yet the program is under "trial mode" currently and looks to have a 30 day ticker of doom. Is this a bug? Is there a flag missing? I cannot find any detailed instructions on setting flags or environment variables to turn this off.

Thanks!

Hey, happy user of Yaak here, thanks for building this. Wish you success and peace.

Just noticed that with my star on GitHub it now has over 9000 stars!

Hey thanks, this looks great. I'm still on Paw but I've been looking for something new since it's been languishing as "RapidAPI" for years.

First time hearing about this app, sounds like it totally fits my use case. Gotta give it a try!

Quick request, if it's doable: would you mind making a portable version of this? We're super locked down on our machines (even as developers), and all programs that need to be installed need to be approved. Portable programs fly under the radar, so they're easier to try discreetly, then we can make an official request to get them approved or buy a license.

Edit: oh my, you also made Insomnia, that I used when Postman was on the enshittification path...

This looks awesome! I've been wondering what to do with Insomnia since its enshittification.

One idea: since you are doing good-faith licenses anyway, maybe you could add in the possibility to pay for some kind of one-time license? I don't particularly need or want updates from my API tool, I just want it to work and not break. I would be fine with paying a one time commercial license that gives non expiring right to use a particular version.

One thing I despise about postman is how much friction there is to creating a new request. In my line of work, I'm often using an API client as a scratch pad to validate /poc. At the same time, it would be nice to just have a simple "history" that I could go back and search if I needed to find some request I made a few weeks ago.

Thanks for making this. May this stay un-enshittified by VC money for a very long time.

Hey Greg!

You're already going down the path Postman did. No way I'm using that.

Web app. The entire point here is using something local and not web based

Not Postman specifically but a client like that will allow you to prepare a whole set of different requests and save them so you can build up a test suite, plus some of them do things like scripting, chaining requests together etc. It's like the difference between a text editor and an IDE, so it depends on your needs really.

I use a mix of tools, depending on needs: `curl` scripts for things I might need to automate on barebones OS installations (Linux/macOS), HTTPie on my local CLI env if I'm debugging something where I need to mutate parameters quickly: making sequential calls, many requests with varying parameters; and Insomnia as GUI where I can save requests with parameters, headers, etc. to be re-used during development.

Each one has its strengths, and weaknesses, Insomnia can export the saved requests as `curl` commands so it's a nice visualisation to iterate over a complex call until it's working, and then be exported if needed to be automated; `curl` is quite ubiquitous but clunky to remember the exact arguments I might need; HTTPie has a nice argument syntax so it's quite readable to be quickly edited but isn't present without installing Python, pip, and pulling it.

We use it a bit at our company. We have a collection file that includes a ton of requests with headers and body. Developers can with ease load that collection file and run it against their own server, and also quickly change to a different server with just a click.

I guess a substitution would be a git repo with curl scripts and environment variables?

We also have some non-tech people who use postman to run tests.

I used to use postman, before they become greedy, now I use Bruno.

But to your question - I have saved based authenticated request to our company useful APIs - github/jira/artifactory - so when I want to string together some micro tool to do something in batch, I don't have to remember where do I create API key, and how do they accept it.

The UI/UX, however you can get similar workflows in Insomina (while it doesn't follow Postman's footsteps), and IDE tooling.

We use it at my work because one team will create the backend, and another team will create the frontend, and its useful to be able to share a big list of all the endpoints, along with how to use them and the expected result that can all be run, as well as handling all the auth for you

These days I use jupyter notebooks and requests.

At the end of the day with Postman you wind up trying to codify requests via collections, which tends to just be programming in a more limited language.

The only nice feature is being able to paste a url, get parsed parameters, and then edit all the things using the UI.

Other then that, its same old curl.

No, but you probably miss something for not using HTTPie

That's a really great concept and I could see how one could get used to the workflow with this!

But, why such low stats on github?! I guess everyone is jamming on postman, eh?

I had a weird issue when trying to import via pasting curls. I got fixed, and it’s been totally 100% great otherwise

'Telemetry' that, among other offenses, secretly leaks customer secrets that they expressly claim to protect, according to that post.

"needs"...

+1 for .http files

Also, TIL that these are not IntelliJ-specific (that’s where I use them)

not possible once you sign away your allegiance to a VC

One of the things I've thought about for startups are things with the general theme of "complete control over your data", how could I write something like this into the articles of incorporation (or similar) to make some of those values at least somewhat irrevocable?

When Postman started becoming shit, I started using Insomnia, which is also turning into shit now.

Same but since a lot of bigger scenarios I need to test the scripting quickly becomes a lot so I often do this using Groovy (as I am a Java developer this is nearly the same). I now have a collection of scripts I often reuse and adapt.

There’s also Bruno!

« Offline only - We take security and privacy seriously. Bruno is an offline tool and there is no syncing of your data to any cloud »

https://www.usebruno.com/

Restfox [1] is worth checking out. It's fully offline and lets you version control your collections with git or any sync tool you prefer. The postman import is well tested and the app also allows you to export back to Postman collections.

Disclaimer: I maintain it.

[1] https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox

I use a simple bash script:

    #!/bin/bash -x

    TOK="my-jwt-tok"

    case "$1" in
        get-foo)
            curl -H "header: bearer $TOK" "http://www.example.com/foo" | jq .
            ;;

        post-bar)
            curl \
              -H "header: bearer $TOK" "http://www.example.com/bar" \
              -H "content-type: application/json" \
              --data-raw '{"baz":"bap"}'

            ;;  
        *)
            ;;  

    esac

    ./example.bash get-foo

I'm one of the creators of Kreya [1]. We were one (or the) first to support a fully-offline, git-centric local data storage in this space.

Kreya is privacy-first since its first commit five years ago, since we were fed up with Postman and Insomnia. Happy to answer any questions

[1] https://kreya.app

RapidAPI for Mac, formerly Paw, it's free for individuals.

https://paw.cloud/

Self host Yaade. If you dont have a server run it locally in a Docker container.

I just memorized curl like a lunatic.

Don't you love how slimeballs cant help themselves though? Instead of just letting free and easy happen the one time a year they go down... they just spit in everyones face to remind them now they have time to go find an alternative

Hey, I'm the creator of Yaak! Let me know how it could be even better :)

Or just use an alternative, and there are plenty of them in that segment, no need for the legislator to do anything here.

Isomnium is even better, although it's been archived.

> It will never disappear

They started hardening our images and curl went poof.

And each of those are just thin wrappers around curl I guess. We should be glad that some good free software could be produced in the past to serve as the foundation for today's greed.

Please can you address the claim that Postman is silently leaking customer secrets to your servers as part of telemetry?

https://anonymousdata.medium.com/postman-is-logging-all-your...

It’s annoying that the marketing and brand recognition has worked so well. My whole company uses postman and it’s a huge uphill battle to use anything else.

There are SO many alternatives. It’s curl UI wrapper with secrets* management! Why do we all need enterprise licenses??

*and the secrets were all exposed in logs!!

That is true of many software companies these days.

Enshittification, happens to every venture or private equity backed business