Finding open source projects to contribute to is usually harder than people make it sound. Most articles give the same standard advice which tells you to search for “good first issues” and filter by labels. In reality, this does not always work because maintainers often forget to label issues. Many of the “good first issues” you find belong to old or inactive projects, so you end up wasting time trying to contribute to something no one maintains anymore.
From my experience, there are much more effective ways to find active work.
Follow Active Contributors
A better approach is to follow active open source people rather than just staring at repositories. When you follow contributors and maintainers you trust, your GitHub feed becomes a powerful tool. You start seeing the pull requests they open, the issues they interact with, and the new projects they star.
This gives you visibility into living projects instead of abandoned ones. It is much easier to join projects this way because you are walking into a space that already has activity around it.
Contribute by Testing, Not Just Coding
Most people overlook the fact that contributing is not limited to opening pull requests. For my first year in open source, I mostly contributed by testing projects. I would run the project locally, use the features, and actively look for problems.
These problems could be anything from an accessibility issue or a broken UI on mobile screens to small performance lags or grammar errors in the documentation. All of these details matter. When you find them, open an issue. You can take on a few of them yourself or leave them for other beginners to tackle. This helps maintainers more than you think, and it gets you familiar with the codebase at the same time.
Use Curated Discovery Channels
Another reliable way to find active projects is through trusted Twitter accounts that share open source opportunities. These are the verified accounts I follow:
-GitHub Projects
-Open Source Projects
-Meta Open Source
-Tom Doerr
They post a wide range of projects with different tech stacks, so you can choose something that matches your current skill level or interests.
Don't Ignore Small Projects
I always tell beginners not to ignore small projects. Many people only want to contribute to popular repositories with thousands of stars, but those projects started small too.
Smaller projects are usually more open to beginners and have maintainers who respond faster. You often learn the most in places where you are not competing with hundreds of other contributors. Start small to build your experience, and then move into larger communities when you feel ready.
Finding projects is not always straightforward, but there are better ways than relying on labels. Follow active contributors, test real projects, open issues, and do not overlook the smaller repos. This approach keeps you in the flow of active work and leads to more meaningful contributions.
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