I Built a Browser App Store That Fetches GitHub Releases

#opensource #github #react #typescript

GitHub has thousands of open-source apps with binary releases — but finding and downloading the right one is painful. Release pages are buried, and you're left squinting at filenames like app-1.2.3-linux-x86_64.tar.gz guessing which one is yours.

So I built GHFrog — a browser-based app store on top of the GitHub API. No install, no account needed.

Live: ghfrog.pages.dev · Source: github.com/iamovi/ghfrog

Features

Browse trending, popular, and recently updated repos with binary releases
Search by keyword, language, or platform (Windows / macOS / Linux / Android)
Auto-detects your OS and highlights the correct download
Bookmark favorites locally
Sign in with GitHub (Supabase OAuth) to raise the API rate limit from 60 → 5,000 req/hr

Smart download picking

Every release asset is scored against a weighted rule table (.exe → Windows, .dmg → macOS, .apk → Android, etc.), then matched to your detected OS. Apple Silicon and universal macOS builds get an extra boost on arm64. One click, right file.

Caching

API responses are cached in localStorage with TTL + ETag support. Stale cache is used as a graceful fallback when rate-limited. Capped at 4MB with automatic LRU eviction.