SelfCertForge, manage root CAs and self-signed certs on macOS/Windows
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Hi, HN!I recently published SelfCertForge, an open source desktop app for creating and managing self-signed certificates on macOS and Windows:https://github.com/rbonestell/SelfCertForge/I know, I know... this isn't an earth-shattering invention. This came from a place of years of personal annoyance. I’ve been maintaining scripts that wrapped OpenSSL for local certificate workflows: create a long-lived root cert, add it to the trust store, then generate and sign child certificates for local services.The scripts work but the workflow was clunky. Used infrequently enough that it's easy to forget the flags, not much easier to explain to anyone than OpenSSL itself, and irritating to repeat across machines. Every time I'd share them with colleagues and friends there were always questions and feature requests, so I used Claude Code to amplify my UI/UX design skills (well, I can't amplify 0...) and turned the functionality into a cross-platform GUI.SelfCertForge can generate root CAs and add them to the system's trust store, generate and sign child certificates, and export DER, PEM, PFX, and P7B formats. It also supports common X.509 fields like Subject, SANs, and Key Usage.Very important caveat: this is not suitable for production environments or public-facing SSL/TLS.
HN · launched May 13, 2026 · 5 upvotes (top 89%) · 0 views
Niche: certificate and license management software · 65 launches, 6 in the last 7 days ▼ -14% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Security
- Dev tools
- Developer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 65 launches in certificate and license management software →
Could you build this?
Yes It is an open-source desktop utility wrapping standard cryptographic libraries (like OpenSSL or standard OS crypto APIs) to generate X.509 certificates and install them into macOS Keychain or Windows CertStore.
Discussion
1 comment analyzed.
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 117 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #107 of 118 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 174 days after the earliest competitor.
- I rewrote my 2012 self-signed cert generator in Go · hn · 2026-04-02 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.54
- PassTheCert-rs · github · 2026-09-09 · 37 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- TLS Certificate Management and PKI · hn · 2026-05-22 · 10 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- OSS Proof · ph · 2026-11-13 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- Let's Seal · hn · 2026-07-27 · 94 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- CertKit for automating SSL certs to Windows, JKS, and appliances · hn · 2026-04-08 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- Certo · hn · 2026-08-07 · 17 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- CertFlow · ph · 2026-10-09 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.40
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