I built a macOS menu bar app that converts files without installing anything

Peter Chiu — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 02:31:26 +0000

Every week I'd end up on some random website to turn a HEIC photo into a JPG, a Word file into a PDF, or to open a ZIP someone sent with a password. Uploading private files to a stranger's server for a two-second job always felt wrong.

The thing is, macOS already ships with almost everything you need to do these conversions locally. So I built Flip: a small menu bar app that converts files on your Mac using only what's built into macOS. No LibreOffice, no ffmpeg, no uploads.

Drag it to the menu bar

When you drag a file near Flip's menu bar icon, a little island grows out of it and "swallows" the file. Let go, and it's converted into the format you picked, saved right next to the original.

You can also drop several files at once and choose a format for each one:

It handles images (including HEIC, WebP, AVIF), PDF, Word, Excel, CSV, JSON, YAML, Markdown, audio, video, and most archive formats.

The feature I'm proudest of: PowerPoint animations

If you've ever exported a PowerPoint with animations to PDF, you know the problem. Every animated object ends up stacked on the same page, so the chart that appears on click 2 sits on top of the text from click 1.

Flip reads the animation timeline inside the .pptx, works out which objects actually overlap, and splits only those slides into one page per click. Slides without overlapping animations stay as a single page.

Archives you can look inside

Drop a ZIP, 7z, RAR or tar file and Flip opens a browser window. Preview any file, check the ones you want, and extract them, or merge them straight into one PDF. You can also drag new files into the window to add them to the archive.

If an archive needs a password, Flip first tries the passwords you've used before. They're stored in the macOS Keychain, so you never have to dig through old messages for that password someone sent you.

A few more things

Turn a video into a GIF, or a GIF into an MP4
Merge files into one PDF, Excel workbook or animated GIF
Encrypt files as AES-256 ZIP, password-protected PDF or encrypted disk image
English, Traditional Chinese and Japanese interface

How it's built

For the curious:

Swift and SwiftUI, with AppKit for the menu bar (NSStatusItem) and the drop-zone panel. The island follows a global mouse monitor and watches the drag pasteboard, so it can react before you even reach the icon.
Conversions use system frameworks: ImageIO for images, PDFKit for PDFs, WebKit to lay out Markdown and HTML as PDF, AVFoundation for video, afconvert for audio, and bsdtar for archives.
Excel files are read and written directly as XML, no library needed.
Office files: if Microsoft Office is installed, Flip drives Word, Excel and PowerPoint through AppleScript for a pixel-perfect PDF. Without Office, Word documents still convert using the text engine built into macOS.
No Xcode project. It's built with swiftc and a shell script.

Try it

Flip is free to download, with a full 14-day trial: Download Flip

Screenshots, the user guide and release notes are all on GitHub. If you like it, a star would mean a lot:

yakiniku35 / Flip-releases

Downloads for Flip, a menu bar file converter for macOS (app builds only, no source code)

Flip

A file converter that lives in your Mac's menu bar.
Download · Website · User Guide

Drag a file to the menu bar icon, pick a format, and Flip converts it right on your Mac with tools built into macOS. Nothing is uploaded, and there is nothing else to install.

Images, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, data, audio and video: convert between dozens of formats
PowerPoint to PDF without animations piling up on one page
Archives: preview what's inside, extract only what you need, or merge files into one PDF
Password vault: saved passwords are tried automatically on protected archives
Animated GIFs: video to GIF, GIF to video, or merge images into an animation
Merge, compress and encrypt files in one click

Screenshots


Drop several files, pick a format for each, and convert them in one go.	Choose where files are saved, convert on drop, and auto-extract

…

View on GitHub

After the trial, everyday conversion, extraction and compression stay free. Pro licenses, which unlock merging, encryption, the password vault and PowerPoint splitting, are coming soon.

It needs macOS 14 or later and runs on both Apple silicon and Intel Macs. Flip isn't notarized by Apple yet, so the first time you open it, go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway. The user guide walks through it.

I'd love your feedback. What file conversion do you find yourself searching for most often?

DEV Community: Peter Chiu