Yesterday's Top Launches: 5 Tools from January 9, 2026 | productdirs

Every January brings a wave of new releases as developers push their projects into the wild, and yesterday, January 9, was no exception. The slate of new developer tools and productivity apps that dropped showcases a clear trend: making complex tasks accessible through smarter interfaces. From turning chat conversations into working apps to giving your favorite web services a fresh coat of paint, here’s a look at what just launched.

Projly

If you've ever been stalled at the stage between a brilliant app idea and the mountain of code required to build it, Projly aims to be the bridge. The concept is straightforward—you describe what you want in a chat interface, and its AI builds a functional application in real time. As you type, a preview pane updates live, showing you exactly what your app will look like. When you're happy with it, you can install a version directly to your mobile device without ever touching a code editor.

This is obviously targeting entrepreneurs, product managers, or anyone with a non-technical background who needs a quick prototype. The freemium model makes it easy to try, though the real test will be how well it handles more complex logic beyond simple CRUD apps. It feels like a step toward a future where the initial prototyping phase is almost instantaneous.

Dessix

Dessix enters the crowded space of visual workspaces, but with a specific angle: it’s designed to be a thinking partner. It’s not just another digital whiteboard; it focuses on building what the creators call a "shared understanding" between you and the AI. You can capture notes, images, and links, and the tool helps dynamically organize this context. The AI then uses that organized information to assist you in creating new content, whether that's drafting text, generating ideas, or mapping out processes.

For teams that rely heavily on brainstorming and synthesis, Dessix could be intriguing. It seems best suited for consultants, researchers, or writers who need to corral disparate pieces of information and then actively collaborate with an AI to produce something coherent. Being web-based and freemium lowers the barrier to experimentation, letting you see if its particular flavor of AI collaboration resonates with your workflow.

Gridfy.io

For anyone who has built a complex database in Airtable, Notion, or Google Sheets only to hit a wall when trying to display that data publicly, Gridfy.io is a direct solution. It takes the information from those platforms and turns it into live, embeddable website widgets. You can create sortable and filterable grids, customize the styling to match your site, and know that any changes in your source sheet will reflect automatically on the live widget.

This is a classic no-code tool that saves a significant amount of custom development work. Small business owners, marketers, or community managers who maintain directories, event lists, or product catalogs in these tools will find immediate value. It effectively decouples the data management—which might be done in a comfortable spreadsheet environment—from the front-end presentation, which can now be handled with a few clicks.

Graysky

Bluesky has been gaining traction as an alternative social platform, and with that growth comes demand for better clients. Graysky is a third-party mobile app that offers all the standard Bluesky features but piles on a bunch of quality-of-life improvements. The headline features include inline translations for posts in other languages and native GIF support, which are both common pain points on the official app.

This launch is a sign of a healthy ecosystem. Graysky isn't trying to reinvent the wheel; it’s refining the experience for power users who spend a lot of time on the platform. If you're active on Bluesky and have wished for a smoother, more feature-rich mobile experience, this freemium app is definitely worth a download. Its success will hinge on how quickly it can adapt as the core Bluesky protocol evolves.

Droppy

Droppy takes a different approach by focusing on consolidating desktop utilities. It’s an all-in-one macOS application that bundles several tools into a single menu bar resident. Its features include a "Notch Shelf" for quick-access items, a "Floating Basket" for dragging and dropping files, a clipboard manager, a media player, and custom HUDs for system information.

The appeal here is reducing clutter. Instead of having five separate apps each managing one of these functions, Droppy tries to bring them under one roof. Being completely free is a strong incentive. However, the risk with multipurpose tools is that they can become a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. It will be interesting to see if users prefer this integrated approach over best-in-class standalone utilities, especially power users who are very particular about their workflow.

Yesterday's launches highlight a continued push toward abstraction and integration. Tools like Projly abstract away coding, while Droppy integrates disparate functions. Whether you're looking to build, organize, display, communicate, or streamline, there's likely something new to test.