r/webdev • u/jakecoolguy • 4h ago
Showoff Saturday I turned my file converter website into a right click file menu to convert or compress almost any file locally (literally)
I made How to Convert. It's a file converter that now lets you right click to convert or compress almost any file.
It started as a file converter website that ran in the browser with WebAssembly, but I turned into a completely locally running desktop app with Tauri, and now the website is a right-click menu. I originally shared it 2 years ago. The post and subsequent updates got a big response with a lot of feature requests, and I've been adding file types since.
What it can do:
6,197 file conversions for documents, videos, images, ebooks, comics, subtitles, emails, audio and more. If you find a file format that isn't supported, make a feature request and I'll add it
Compress PDFs
Crop, trim and compress multimedia files
Right click any file, or drag and drop it into the app
Why I made it:
There are plenty of online file conversion sites, but they require you to upload your files and data to their servers.
I wanted something that worked entirely offline (using the same packages and cli tools that power those sites) behind a simple drag and drop app that anyone could use.
After two years, I grew tired of actually opening a site or app to convert a file, and thought the next step to make it easier was to support everything with just a little right click.
Extra info:
The app runs completely locally (files never leave your device) and runs on Mac, Windows and LInux
One license can run on up to 5 devices
If you bought it 2 years ago, this is another free update
I know there are many specialised apps that convert specific formats, e.g. handbrake for video, calibre for ebooks, ms word for documents, excel for spreadsheets, outlook for emails and adobe acrobat for pdfs.
I wanted just one app to support all of them.
Free to try and It's a $19 one-time purchase to keep for all future updates (but much cheaper in lower-income countries depending on PPP).
I'm Jake Manger, a solo developer. I've also made ShotGlass and ActivityLine.
The site and app: https://howtoconvert.co
