better-env
A Secure, Developer-Friendly Alternative to .env
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I’ve always hated how archaic .env files feel. Plaintext, easy to leak, and once they hit git history… you’re cooked. After accidentally committing secrets a few too many times, I finally asked myself: why don't we encrypt secrets just like passwords?So I built better-env: a local, encrypted way to manage secrets without exposing plaintext all over your machine. One place for secrets, nothing sensitive in git, your secrets get directly loaded at runtime, project-wise.It’s early, local-first, and still rough around the edges, but it already removed a whole category of stress from my workflow. I’d love feedback on whether this feels useful beyond solo devs, and what you’d want for team/CI setups.It's open source too! (https://github.com/HarishChandran3304/better-env)
HN · launched Nov 23, 2025 · 6 upvotes (top 73%) · 0 views
Niche: software deployment and configuration tools · 165 launches, 6 in the last 7 days ▼ -68% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Dev tools
- Developer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 165 launches in software deployment and configuration tools →
Could you build this?
Yes It is a local CLI developer tool for encrypted environment secret storage using OpenPGP and child process execution.
Discussion
3 comments analyzed.
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 395 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #317 of 396 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 22 days after the earliest competitor.
- I just fixed .env once and for all · hn · 2025-11-23 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.85
- Lockenv · hn · 2025-12-08 · 105 upvotes · similarity 0.69
- KeyEnv · hn · 2026-01-18 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.57
- omerta · ph · 2026-10-26 · 86 upvotes · similarity 0.56
- omerta · github · 2026-10-25 · 13 upvotes · similarity 0.55
- Git-agecrypt · hn · 2026-04-27 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.54
- Capy · hn · 2026-08-05 · 13 upvotes · similarity 0.54
- SnapEnv · ph · 2026-09-14 · 3 upvotes · similarity 0.53
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