The best Home Manager alternatives
3 tools that do a similar job to Home Manager, 3 of them open source. Each entry says what it does and who it suits, so you can pick the one that fits instead of the most famous.
You're replacing
Home ManagerManages your user-level packages and dotfiles declaratively, using the Nix package manager.
- 1
chezmoi
Open source · MIT · ★ 22.1k
Manages your config dotfiles across multiple machines, with secrets kept safe.
Best for: People who use more than one computer and want their settings to match; Developers who keep shell, editor, and git configs under version control
- 2
dotfiles
Open source · MIT · ★ 31.5k
Mathias Bynens's personal macOS shell config files and setup scripts, shared as a starting point.
Best for: Developers on macOS who want to see how someone else sets up their shell; People setting up a new Mac who want a template to copy from and adapt
- 3
Oh my tmux!
Open source · MIT · ★ 25.5k
A ready-made, pretty tmux configuration file you drop in and customize.
Best for: Developers who already use tmux and want a better-looking, feature-rich starting config; People new to tmux who want a sensible default setup without writing their own
How we pick: tools in the same category that solve the same problem, projects that name each other as alternatives, and open-source projects that describe themselves as an alternative to Home Manager. We don't take payment for placement.