Tools that run in your browser

Find it by symptom

Which tool you need usually follows from the symptom in front of you. Pick the closest one.

• I opened a CSV in Excel and the names came out as ë³´ê³ ì„œ

  The file itself is almost certainly fine. It was saved as UTF-8 without the marker that says so, and Excel fell back to a legacy code page. Adding that marker, a BOM, and downloading again makes it open correctly.

  When a CSV comes out garbled in Excel

• I unzipped an archive and only the filenames are garbled. The contents are fine

  A zip stores names and contents separately. An older archiver left the flag that says the names are UTF-8 empty, so your computer read them with a different table. The compressed data was never touched, so only the names need rewriting.

  When filenames inside a zip are garbled

• I want to paste garbled text out of an email and get it back on the spot

  Paste it in and the tool works out which tables were mismatched, then lays out the candidates. Nothing to upload, and no need to know the encoding beforehand.

  Mojibake Fixer

• I want to understand why this keeps happening in the first place

  Latin letters keep almost the same number in every table, but Korean and Japanese characters differ in both number and byte length. Pick the wrong table and even the character count stops lining up.

  UTF-8 and legacy encodings, explained

• I have dozens of photos to shrink for a blog post and convert to WebP

  Set size, format and quality on one screen, run them all at once, and take the results as a zip. There is no upload, so no cap on file size or count.

  Bulk Image Resizer

• I want to settle who pays or who presents first, in front of everyone

  Type in names and a race decides the order. Weights show up as boosters you can watch rather than hidden odds, and a result everyone watched lands better than being told the computer picked.

  Race Roulette

• My files are buried in deep folders and I want to open them from one place

  Keep the ones you open often in a single list and double-click to launch the original. Nothing is moved or copied. This one is a Windows program you download and install.

  VFilemanage

Reading

For when you would rather understand the cause before opening a tool. A fair number of these turn out not to need the tool at all. See all reading

• UTF-8 and legacy encodings, explained

  Starts from how computers store letters as numbers and works up to why a mismatch produces shapes like ¾È³çÇϼ¼¿ä. Written to be readable without knowing what an encoding is.

• When a CSV comes out garbled in Excel

  Why the same file looks fine in a text editor, what those three BOM bytes actually do, and what to do in the opposite case where the file really is in a legacy encoding.

• When filenames inside a zip are garbled

  Why the names break while the contents do not, why it often shows up only on a Mac or a differently localized Windows, and how to rewrite the names without unpacking the archive.

• What size should you resize to — blog, thumbnail, OG image

  Recommended dimensions per use and where those numbers come from. The rule is twice the displayed width, and the OG image is the one exception.

• How to run a draw people will accept

  Where ladder lotteries, spinning wheels and random-pick buttons hold up and where they fall apart, plus the arithmetic for applying weights honestly.

• Organizing files without moving them

  Shortcuts, Windows libraries, symbolic links and search compared, with the limits of each. It starts with what moving a file quietly breaks.

• Saved as UTF-8 in Notepad and it still came out garbled

  Why picking the right option was not enough. What ANSI actually means, when the default changed, and when a BOM helps versus breaks things.

• What quality setting should you use — why 0.8 is the default

  What the slider actually discards, why the returns bend at 0.8, and where photos, screenshots and noisy images each diverge.

• When you need more than one pick — groups and running order

  Picking one name and settling an order are different problems. Drawing without repeats, two ways to split groups, and what to do past twelve people.

• Organizing is not backing up

  Where the feeling that organized means safe breaks down. Why sync is not a backup, the 3-2-1 rule, and how to run both together.

Common questions

Is it really free? Do I need an account?

Everything is free, with no account and no sign-in. There are no usage limits and nothing turns paid later. Domain and hosting costs are covered by ads.

Do my files get sent to a server?

They do not. That is less a promise than a matter of structure, since there is no server here to receive them. If you want to check, open your browser's network tab and run a file through. Nothing goes out.

Is there a limit on file size or count?

None is set. The caps free tools usually put up, 50MB and the like, come from server costs, and nothing here passes through someone else's server. The real limit is your device's memory.

Do these work on a phone?

Every browser-based tool here works on a phone. The processing power comes from your device, though, so large jobs like hundreds of photos finish faster on a computer. VFilemanage is the exception, being a Windows program.

Do they work without an internet connection?

Once a page is open it keeps working if the connection drops, because nothing is handed to a server. You will need a connection again after a refresh or once the tab is closed.

What if the result is wrong?

These tools make an informed guess. Very short pieces of garbled text give them little to go on, and that is where they fail most often. Each tool page spells out where it stops working. Keep an original copy of anything important, and reporting a wrong result genuinely helps.