DevToys

DevToys is a free, offline Swiss-army-knife utility for macOS that bundles dozens of everyday developer tools — JSON formatting, encoding, hashing, text diffing, code generation and more — into a single keyboard-driven app.

What is DevToys?

DevToys is a free native Mac application that replaces a sprawling collection of browser bookmarks and one-trick command-line utilities with a unified, searchable toolbox. Rather than tabbing between a Base64 decoder website, a regex tester, and a JWT inspector, you open one app and type what you need. It runs entirely on your machine — no network calls, no accounts, no ads.

The project started as a Windows Store app and arrived on macOS as an open-source port beloved by the developer community. It is actively maintained, and the tool list keeps growing with community contributions.

What does DevToys do best?

DevToys shines at the repetitive micro-tasks that interrupt your flow: pretty-printing a minified JSON blob, generating a random UUID, comparing two text snippets line-by-line, or converting a Unix timestamp to something a human can read.

• Formatters: JSON, XML, SQL, and more — paste and instantly get indented, readable output.
• Encoders / decoders: Base64, URL encoding, HTML entities, JWT inspector — round-trip in a click.
• Generators: UUIDs, Lorem Ipsum, hashes (MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-512), password strings.
• Converters: number-base converter, Unix time ↔ human date, color codes (HEX ↔ RGB ↔ HSL).
• Text tools: diff viewer, case converter, regex tester with live match highlighting.
• Graphic tools: image compression previews, PNG ↔ Base64 conversion.

The experience is snappy. Every tool opens in under a second, the search bar finds what you need before you finish typing, and results update live as you type into the input field. There is no "Run" button to click — the output panel just works.

Is DevToys free?

DevToys is completely free to download and use, with no paid tier, no feature gating, and no subscription. It is open-source software — you can inspect the code, file issues, or contribute new tools on GitHub. The only ask from the maintainers is a star on the repo.

Who should use DevToys?

Any developer who has ever pasted something into a random online tool — and then immediately worried about sending a JWT or an internal API response to an unknown third-party server — should install DevToys immediately. Everything runs locally, so sensitive payloads never leave your Mac.

It is particularly well-suited to full-stack engineers, DevOps practitioners, and QA engineers who bounce between JSON responses, encoded strings, and timestamp arithmetic throughout the day. Designers who work with color values and Base64-embedded images will also get genuine daily use out of it. That said, even a junior developer doing their first REST API integration will find the JWT decoder and JSON formatter alone worth the install.

If you work primarily in a GUI and rarely touch the terminal, you may not reach for DevToys as often — but it is still a calmer alternative to hunting for trustworthy online tools.

How does DevToys compare to alternatives?

The closest competitor in spirit is Boop, a macOS text-transformation tool with a scriptable plugin ecosystem. Boop is more extensible but has a narrower default feature set and a steeper learning curve for adding custom scripts. Raycast overlaps on a handful of tools (UUID generation, color pickers, base conversions) through its extension library, but you have to hunt and install each extension individually, and Raycast itself is a launcher first. iTerm2 combined with command-line utilities like jq, openssl, and xxd can do everything DevToys does — but requires memorising flags and switching windows constantly.

DevToys wins on focus: it is the only app in this space designed exclusively around the micro-utility workflow, offline-first, with a consistent UI across all tools and zero configuration required to get started.

What are the limitations of DevToys?

DevToys is not a code editor, a full regex engine with PCRE2 support, or a network inspection proxy — do not uninstall Proxyman or Paw on its behalf. The diff viewer handles text well but will not render a Git-style side-by-side diff with syntax highlighting the way a dedicated tool like Kaleidoscope does. A handful of tools that shipped on Windows have not yet landed on the Mac build, so if you used DevToys on a PC first you may notice a few gaps. These are papercuts rather than deal-breakers, and the pace of releases suggests they close over time.