active-forks: find the most active GitHub forks of a repository
Find active github forks of a repo https://git.io/vSnrC
At a glance
- What is it?
- A static web tool, bookmarklet and Manifest V3 browser extension that ranks a repository's forks so you can tell which ones are actually moving. Useful when the upstream project has gone quiet, but it only reports what the GitHub API exposes.
- Who is it for?
- Use active-forks when you need to know which fork of a stalled repository is still receiving commits, and you want that answer without cloning anything or installing a server. Skip it if you need fork history beyond what the GitHub API returns, or if you want a hosted service with an SLA; this is a static page, a bookmarklet and an extension maintained by whoever picks up the maintainer request in the README.
- Can I use it commercially?
- Yes. Apache-2.0 is a permissive licence: you can use, modify and sell software built on it, as long as you keep its copyright and licence notices.
- Is it still maintained?
- Yes. The repository last received commits 10 days ago.
- What is it written in?
- Mainly JavaScript, according to GitHub's language statistics.
Answers come from the project's GitHub data, last synced on October 2, 2026, and from our analysis. They are not legal advice.
Editorial analysis
The problem active-forks solves for people evaluating a stalled repository
GitHub lists forks in an order that has nothing to do with whether anyone is still committing to them. A repository with four hundred forks gives you a flat list, and the fork that has absorbed two years of fixes may sit on page nine. For anyone deciding whether to adopt a project, that list is close to useless: you cannot tell a dead copy from a maintained one without opening each fork and reading its commit graph.
active-forks exists to answer one question: of all the forks of this repository, which ones show recent activity? The README states the goal plainly, that the project "allows you to find the most active forks of a repository." It is aimed at engineers who are evaluating an abandoned or slow-moving dependency and want to know whether the community has effectively moved elsewhere. It is not a general GitHub analytics tool, and it does not try to be.
How the ranking works: a static page reading api.github.com
The repository is a static site. The top level holds index.html, style.css, favicon.ico and a js/ directory, which is what GitHub Pages serves at techgaun.github.io/active-forks. There is no backend in the tree, so the page must call the GitHub API directly from the browser and sort the response client side. That is consistent with the extension's stated behaviour: the README says the extension "talks solely to api.github.com" and needs only the activeTab and contextMenus permissions, which would be unnecessary if a server sat in between.
The extension adds two entry points on top of the same data. A toolbar button appears on GitHub repository pages and opens a popup with the repository's top 10 forks, sortable by stars or creation date, plus a link to the full view. A context menu item, labelled "Find active forks", works on a repository page or on any link to a GitHub repository and opens the full view directly. The bookmarklet takes a different route: it reads the current pathname, splits it into owner and repository, URL-encodes the pair, and opens the hosted page with that value in the fragment, which is why the hosted URL carries a #owner/repo suffix. Because the fragment is client side, the ranking is computed in your browser under your own API rate limit, not on a shared server.
Installing active-forks as an extension, a bookmarklet or a plain page
The quickest path is the hosted page. Open https://techgaun.github.io/active-forks/index.html and supply the repository you care about; nothing is installed and no account is involved.
If you want the toolbar button and context menu, the README points at the Chrome Web Store listing for Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers. The extension/ directory in the repository is the source for that build, described as cross-browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Manifest V3). To load it unpacked in Chrome or Edge, open the extensions page, enable Developer mode, choose Load unpacked, and select the extension/ directory:
# Chrome/Edge: open chrome://extensions, enable Developer mode,
# click "Load unpacked", select the extension/ directoryFor Firefox the README gives a different route, loading the manifest as a temporary add-on:
# Firefox: open about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox,
# click "Load Temporary Add-on...", select extension/manifest.jsonThe bookmarklet avoids both stores. Create a new bookmark with Ctrl+D and paste the README's javascript: URL into the Location field. On a GitHub repository page, clicking it opens the hosted view for that repository. On any other page it alerts that this is not a valid GitHub page, which is the expected behaviour rather than a bug.
What active-forks cannot tell you
The tool reports fork activity. It does not tell you whether a fork is good. A fork with recent commits may be a personal branch that rebased once and diverged in ways you do not want; a fork with no recent commits may be the one that already merged everything upstream. The README makes no claim about code quality, test coverage or release readiness, and the ranking fields it exposes (stars and creation date in the popup, per the README) are proxies for attention, not evidence of correctness.
There is also a hard dependency on the GitHub API. The static page and the extension both read api.github.com from your browser, so an unauthenticated visitor is subject to GitHub's rate limits, and any change to the API's fork response shape breaks the page until someone updates the js/ directory. The README does not document caching, retry behaviour or error handling, so treat a slow or empty result as a possibility rather than an exception.
Finally, the project is candid about its own maintenance. The README opens with a note asking for maintainers, saying the author "can not spend as much time on this repo" and inviting anyone interested to file an issue. No releases are listed for the repository. If you adopt this as an internal tool, budget for the possibility that you are the one fixing it.
active-forks compared with Gitpop3 and manual fork browsing
Gitpop3 is the closest thing to a peer in the related searches, and the difference is in scope rather than in ranking logic. Gitpop3 is a hosted service: you point a browser at it, it does the API work server side, and you get a ranked list. active-forks ships the ranking to the client. That matters in two ways. First, the hosted page and the extension run under your own API quota and your own network, so there is no third-party server seeing which repositories you inspect. Second, there is no service to be down, but also no server-side cache: every visit re-queries GitHub.
The other alternative is simply opening the forks tab on GitHub and sorting by stars. That is free and always available, but it sorts by popularity, not recency, and it gives you no way to jump straight from a repository page to a ranked list. The extension's context menu is the smallest version of that jump: right-click a repository link anywhere and open the ranked view. For a one-off check, the manual route is fine. For repeated evaluation across many repositories, the bookmarklet or the context menu saves real time.
Licence, upgrade cost and the maintainer question
The repository is dual licensed. The README states it is available under either the Apache License version 2.0 or, at your option, the European Union Public License version 1.2, and the SPDX line in the README reads `SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0 OR EUPL-1.2`. Both licence texts are present in the tree as LICENSE and LICENSE-ALT. For most users this changes nothing: you are loading a page or an extension, not redistributing code. It matters if you fork the extension and ship it, because you must pick one of the two and carry its terms. This is not legal advice; read both files if redistribution is on your roadmap.
Upgrade cost is low by construction. There is no package to install, no server to patch and no database to migrate. The extension is distributed through the Chrome Web Store, and the README points to extension/PUBLISHING.md for the automated store release process. The risk is not upgrade effort but abandonment: with no releases listed and an open request for maintainers in the README, a breaking change in the GitHub API could leave the hosted page and the store build stale until someone volunteers. If that risk is unacceptable, the bookmarklet is the safest artifact to depend on, because it is a single line of JavaScript you can read and edit yourself.
Editorial conclusion
Use active-forks when you need to know which fork of a stalled repository is still receiving commits, and you want that answer without cloning anything or installing a server. Skip it if you need fork history beyond what the GitHub API returns, or if you want a hosted service with an SLA; this is a static page, a bookmarklet and an extension maintained by whoever picks up the maintainer request in the README. Before relying on it, verify that api.github.com is reachable from your browser, confirm the top-ranked fork actually contains the changes you need, and read the dual licence files (LICENSE and LICENSE-ALT) if you plan to redistribute the code.
Frequently asked questions
Can I check who forked my repo with active-forks?
active-forks lists forks of a repository and ranks them by activity, so it shows you which forks exist and which look recently updated. It does not provide any additional identity information beyond what the GitHub API returns for those forks.
What do forks mean on GitHub, and how does active-forks use them?
A fork is a copy of a repository under another account. active-forks takes the forks of a given repository and surfaces the ones showing activity, so you can see whether a copy has moved ahead of the original.
Can someone see if you fork their repo?
The README does not address visibility of forks to repository owners. active-forks only reads fork data through api.github.com and does not change what GitHub itself displays.
Is it safe to delete a forked repo?
The README says nothing about deleting forks, and active-forks has no delete functionality. It only reads fork data from the GitHub API.
Official sources
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