Every Tiny Tool I Built to Fix Silent Failures That Break Real Work

I run a website called Ecovolts where I build very specific, very boring utility tools that solve problems most people don't even know they have until something breaks. These aren't glamorous products. They're the kind of tools you need at 11 PM when a client rejects your file, a platform silently drops your upload, or your carefully formatted document renders as garbage on someone else's screen. I built each one because I personally hit a wall, got frustrated, and couldn't find a simple solution that just worked in a browser without installing anything or signing up for some subscription service.

What follows is a walkthrough of every tool I've built, why it exists, and what specific real-world failure it prevents. These aren't theoretical problems. They're the kind of issues that cause silent rejections, broken workflows, and wasted hours.

Ultimate IQ Test - 30 Challenging Questions

I built this IQ test tool because I was tired of clickbait IQ tests that either collected your email before showing results or were so trivially easy that they were meaningless. I wanted something that actually tested logical reasoning, pattern recognition, and spatial thinking without the nonsense. This isn't about getting a certified score you can put on a resume. It's about having a legitimate self-assessment tool that gives you a baseline sense of where you stand on standardized cognitive challenges.

Most free IQ tests online are fundamentally broken. They're either designed to flatter you into sharing results on social media, or they're front-ends for data collection schemes. I wanted something clean: take the test, get a score, understand what it means, and move on. No registration, no upsell, no psychological manipulation to make you feel like a genius so you'll share it with your friends.

When I built this, I focused on the types of questions that actually appear in legitimate IQ assessments: numerical sequences, logical deduction, spatial rotation, and pattern completion. These are the question types that have been validated over decades of psychometric research. I personally calibrated the difficulty curve so that the test starts accessible but ramps up to genuinely challenging problems that require real thought.

The tool is useful for anyone preparing for cognitive assessments in job interviews, students practicing for standardized tests, or people who are just genuinely curious about how they perform on this type of reasoning challenge. I also built it because I believe these skills can be practiced and improved, and having a free, accessible benchmark helps people understand where to focus their practice efforts. The tool provides immediate feedback so you can see which question types you struggle with and which come naturally to you.

I've used it myself when I wanted to test whether my cognitive performance was being affected by poor sleep or stress. It's been a useful personal diagnostic tool. The key difference from other free tests is that this one doesn't try to sell you anything or harvest your data. It just does the one job it's supposed to do.

Free GIF Optimizer - Reduce Frames and File Size

The GIF optimizer exists because GIFs are wildly inefficient and most platforms have strict file size limits that silently reject your uploads. I ran into this constantly when trying to upload reaction GIFs or product demos to platforms that cap file sizes at 5MB or 10MB. The GIF would look fine on my computer but get rejected or fail to load when I tried to upload it. No error message, no explanation, just silent failure.

The core problem with GIFs is that they're often exported at unnecessarily high frame rates with full color palettes when they don't need to be. A reaction GIF doesn't need to be 60 frames per second. A product demo doesn't need 256 colors when 128 or even 64 colors would look nearly identical to the human eye. But most GIF creation tools default to maximum quality settings because they assume you want the highest fidelity output.

I built this tool to let you reduce the frame rate, strip out redundant frames, and optimize the color palette without having to install desktop software like Photoshop or GIMP. You drop in a GIF, set your target file size or quality level, and the tool does the compression in your browser. It's completely client-side, so your GIF never leaves your computer, which matters when you're working with client assets or sensitive content.

What I personally love about this tool is that it shows you a real-time preview of the optimized GIF so you can see exactly how much quality you're sacrificing for the file size reduction. Most compression tools are black boxes. You upload a file, get back a smaller file, and have no idea what got lost in the process. This tool lets you make informed trade-offs. If you can cut the file size by 70% and only lose 5% visual quality, that's a trade worth making.

I use this constantly when preparing GIFs for email newsletters, Slack channels, or social media where file size limits are strict and unpredictable. The tool has saved me hours of trial-and-error uploads and re-exports. It's also useful for developers who need to optimize animated assets for web applications where every kilobyte of payload matters for page load times.

Free Image Sharpness Checker - Image Quality Analyzer

I built the image sharpness checker after submitting what I thought was a perfectly good product photo to a marketplace, only to have it rejected for being "too blurry." The image looked fine on my screen. I had no idea what they were talking about. It turned out that when you view an image at a small preview size, blur is much harder to detect than when it's displayed at full resolution or zoomed in.

The problem is that human perception of sharpness is subjective and context-dependent. An image that looks sharp on a phone screen might look soft on a 4K monitor. An image that looks sharp when you're the one who took it might look blurry to a reviewer who's comparing it against hundreds of other submissions. I needed an objective metric that could tell me whether an image would pass quality control before I submitted it.

This tool analyzes edge definition and contrast gradients to calculate a sharpness score. It's looking for crisp transitions between different areas of the image, which is what our brains interpret as "sharpness." If an image has been heavily compressed, resized poorly, or was simply out of focus when captured, the sharpness score will be low. The tool doesn't care about the subject matter or composition. It's purely measuring technical image quality.

I use this before submitting photos to stock image sites, before uploading product images to e-commerce platforms, and before sending client deliverables. It's saved me from multiple rejections and re-shoot requests. The tool is particularly useful if you're batch processing images and want to quickly identify which ones need to be replaced or re-edited. You can check dozens of images in a few minutes and immediately see which ones fall below acceptable sharpness thresholds.

The tool also helps when you're comparing different export settings or compression levels. You can export the same image at different quality settings, check the sharpness score for each version, and pick the smallest file size that maintains acceptable sharpness. This is invaluable for web performance optimization where you want images to load fast but still look professional.

Free Screenshot DPI Checker - Verify Screenshot Resolution

The screenshot DPI checker exists because I submitted a batch of screenshots to a print-on-demand service and they came back pixelated and unusable. I had taken the screenshots on a retina display and assumed they would print fine. They didn't. The issue was that screenshots are typically captured at screen resolution, which is 72 DPI, but print requires 300 DPI or higher to avoid visible pixelation.

This is an invisible problem until you try to use the image in a context that requires higher resolution. Screenshots look perfect on screens because screens are low-DPI devices. But the moment you try to print them, embed them in a PDF that will be printed, or use them in professional design work, the low resolution becomes glaringly obvious. I had no way to verify the DPI of my screenshots before submitting them, so I kept running into this problem repeatedly.

I built this tool to check the effective DPI of any screenshot or image file. It reads the embedded DPI metadata and also calculates the effective DPI based on pixel dimensions. This matters because some screenshots don't have accurate DPI metadata embedded in the file. They might claim to be 72 DPI but actually have enough pixel density to be used at higher resolutions, or vice versa.

The tool is particularly useful when you're preparing screenshots for documentation, presentations, or marketing materials that will be printed. You can verify that your screenshots will print clearly before you send files to a printer or submit them to a client. I've also used it when preparing images for academic papers or conference posters where image quality requirements are strict and rejections are common.

What I appreciate about this tool is that it gives you actionable information. It doesn't just tell you the DPI is too low. It tells you what DPI you have and what DPI you need for your intended use case, so you know whether you need to retake the screenshot at a higher resolution, upscale the image, or use a different source file entirely. It's saved me from multiple print jobs that would have come out unusable.

Free Screen Glare Analyzer - Detect Glare in Images

I built the screen glare analyzer after taking a photo of a computer screen that looked fine to me but was rejected by a client for having "too much glare." I couldn't see the glare in the photo. It looked like a clean screenshot to me. But when I looked at it on a different monitor in different lighting conditions, the glare was obvious. This taught me that glare is often invisible to the person who took the photo because they've already adjusted to it mentally.

Glare happens when light reflects off a glossy screen surface and creates bright spots or washed-out areas in a photo. It's especially common when photographing screens in bright environments or when the screen is positioned near windows or overhead lights. The problem is that glare is hard to see in real-time when you're taking the photo because your eyes automatically compensate for it. You only notice it later when you review the image or someone else points it out.

This tool analyzes images for bright spots, overexposed regions, and reflections that indicate glare. It highlights problem areas so you can see exactly where the glare is occurring and how severe it is. This is incredibly useful when you're taking photos of screens for documentation, tutorials, or product demos and you need to ensure the screen content is clearly visible without distracting reflections.

I use this tool before submitting any photo that includes a screen or display. It's caught glare issues I would have completely missed and saved me from having to retake photos or re-edit submissions. The tool is also useful for photographers who do product photography for tech devices and need to ensure screens are captured without reflections or glare that would make the product look unprofessional.

The tool works by detecting localized brightness spikes that don't correspond to actual screen content. It's looking for areas that are significantly brighter than the surrounding pixels in a way that suggests reflection rather than intentional display brightness. This helps distinguish between a legitimately bright UI element and a glare artifact. The analysis is fast and runs entirely in your browser, so you can check images immediately after taking them and retake the shot if needed.

Free HDR Overprocessing Detector - Spot Over-Edited Images

The HDR overprocessing detector came out of frustration with seeing beautiful photos ruined by excessive HDR processing that creates halos, crushed shadows, and unnatural color saturation. I was editing photos for a client project and applying what I thought were subtle HDR adjustments, but when I showed the results to the client, they immediately flagged several images as looking "over-processed" and "fake." I couldn't see it. I had been staring at the images too long and had lost objectivity.

HDR processing is supposed to expand the dynamic range of an image so you can see detail in both shadows and highlights. But it's very easy to push it too far, creating images that have unnatural halos around high-contrast edges, overly saturated colors, or a flat, artificial tone-mapped look that screams "I was edited badly." The problem is that when you're the one doing the editing, you become blind to these artifacts because you introduce them gradually.

This tool analyzes images for telltale signs of HDR overprocessing: edge halos, unnatural color shifts, shadow compression, and excessive local contrast. It gives you an objective score that tells you whether you've crossed the line from "enhanced" to "overdone." This is invaluable when you're editing your own work and need a reality check before you send it to a client or publish it.

I use this tool as a final check before exporting any image that I've applied HDR or tone-mapping effects to. It's caught multiple cases where I thought the image looked great but the tool flagged it as overprocessed. When I went back and dialed down the adjustments, the image always looked better. The tool has trained my eye to recognize overprocessing earlier in the editing workflow, which has improved my overall editing quality.

The tool is also useful for evaluating work from other photographers or designers. If you're hiring a photographer and reviewing their portfolio, you can quickly check whether their editing style leans toward natural or heavily processed. This helps you make informed decisions about whether their aesthetic matches your needs. It's a simple quality control step that prevents bad edits from making it into final deliverables.

Free Screenshot Aspect Ratio Validator

I built the screenshot aspect ratio validator after submitting screenshots to an app store that required specific aspect ratios for different device categories. My screenshots were rejected because they were 16:10 instead of 16:9, or 4:3 instead of the required 3:2. The differences were subtle enough that I couldn't tell by eye, but the automated validation system rejected them instantly.

Aspect ratio requirements are everywhere: app stores, video platforms, social media, print templates, presentation software. Every platform has its own requirements, and if your image doesn't match exactly, it either gets rejected, cropped incorrectly, or displayed with black bars or distortion. The problem is that it's very difficult to verify aspect ratios by eye. A 16:9 image and a 16:10 image look almost identical when viewed side-by-side, but one will pass validation and the other won't.

This tool tells you the exact aspect ratio of any screenshot or image file. It calculates the ratio from the pixel dimensions and compares it against common standard ratios like 16:9, 4:3, 1:1, 21:9, and so on. It also tells you how far off you are from the nearest standard ratio, which helps you decide whether to crop, resize, or retake the screenshot. This is critical when preparing assets for platforms with strict aspect ratio requirements.

I use this tool before uploading screenshots to app stores, before creating social media graphics, and before embedding images in presentation templates. It's prevented countless rejections and reformatting headaches. The tool is especially useful when you're working with screenshots from different devices or screen sizes and need to ensure they all conform to the same aspect ratio for consistency.

The tool also helps when you're cropping images and want to maintain a specific aspect ratio without doing mental math. You can check the aspect ratio after each crop, see if it matches your target, and adjust if needed. This is much faster and more accurate than trying to eyeball it or manually calculate pixel dimensions. It's a small quality control step that ensures your assets will work correctly the first time you submit them.

Free Screenshot File Size Optimizer

The screenshot file size optimizer exists because screenshots are often saved in inefficient formats with unnecessarily large file sizes. I was preparing a batch of screenshots for a web tutorial and discovered that each PNG file was 3-5 MB, which would make the page load incredibly slowly. The screenshots were simple UI captures that didn't need lossless PNG compression. They could have been saved as JPEGs at 10% of the file size with no visible quality loss.

Most screenshot tools default to PNG format because it's lossless and preserves every pixel perfectly. But for web use, email attachments, or document embedding, PNG is usually overkill. The file sizes are enormous compared to what you actually need for the image to look good on screen. This creates slow load times, storage bloat, and upload failures when platforms have file size limits.

This tool optimizes screenshots by converting them to efficient formats, reducing color depth when possible, and applying smart compression that preserves visual quality while dramatically reducing file size. It analyzes the screenshot content to determine whether lossy compression is acceptable or whether lossless is truly necessary. For most UI screenshots, you can achieve 70-90% file size reduction with zero perceptible quality loss.

I use this tool whenever I'm preparing screenshots for web publication, email, or document embedding. It's cut my screenshot file sizes by an average of 80% without any visible degradation. This makes pages load faster, emails send quicker, and documents stay under file size limits. The tool is also useful when you're working with constrained storage or bandwidth and need to minimize the size of your asset library.

What makes this tool valuable is that it's intelligent about compression. It doesn't just blindly convert everything to JPEG. It analyzes whether the screenshot contains text, gradients, photographs, or solid colors, and chooses the optimal format and compression level accordingly. This ensures you get maximum file size reduction without introducing compression artifacts that would make text blurry or UI elements look muddy. It's the kind of optimization that would normally require manual analysis and decision-making, automated into a single-click tool.

Free PDF Font Checker - Detect Missing or Embedded Fonts

I built the PDF font checker after sending a beautifully designed PDF to a print shop, only to have it come back with random system fonts substituted for my carefully chosen typography. The PDF looked perfect on my computer because I had all the fonts installed. But when the print shop opened it on their system, the fonts weren't embedded, so their software substituted Arial and Times New Roman for everything. The printed piece looked terrible.

This is one of the most common and most invisible PDF problems. If fonts aren't properly embedded in a PDF, the file will display differently on different computers depending on what fonts are installed. Your recipient might see completely different typefaces than what you intended, breaking your layout and destroying your design. The worst part is that the PDF might look fine when you preview it locally because your system has the fonts, so you have no idea there's a problem until someone else opens the file.

This tool analyzes PDF files and tells you which fonts are used and whether they're properly embedded. It flags any fonts that are referenced but not embedded, which means they'll cause substitution issues on other systems. This is critical before sending PDFs to printers, clients, or collaborators. You need to know that what they see will match what you see, and that only happens when fonts are embedded correctly.

I use this tool before submitting any PDF that contains custom typography or branding elements. It's caught dozens of cases where I thought fonts were embedded but they weren't. Most PDF export tools have an "embed fonts" option, but it doesn't always work correctly, especially with certain font licenses or complex font families. This tool verifies that the embedding actually happened so you can fix the problem before it causes issues downstream.

The tool is also useful when you receive PDFs from others and want to verify that they'll display correctly on your system or will print correctly. If you're a print shop or design agency, you can use this to validate client-supplied PDFs before you put them into production. It's a simple preflight check that prevents expensive reprints and angry clients when fonts don't render as expected.

Free PDF Color Contrast Tester - Ensure Readability

The PDF color contrast tester came out of a frustrating experience where I designed a PDF presentation with what I thought was a sophisticated color scheme, only to have audience members complain that they couldn't read the text. The contrast between my text color and background color was too low, making it difficult to read on certain screens or in certain lighting conditions. What looked elegant on my calibrated monitor looked washed out and illegible on a cheap projector.

Color contrast is one of those things that designers often get wrong because they're working on high-quality displays in controlled lighting. Low contrast text might look sophisticated and minimal on your screen, but it fails completely when viewed on different devices, printed on different paper stocks, or viewed by people with any degree of visual impairment. Accessibility guidelines require minimum contrast ratios for a reason, but most designers don't check their work against these standards.

This tool analyzes PDFs for color contrast issues between text and backgrounds. It checks against WCAG accessibility standards and flags any text that falls below the minimum recommended contrast ratios. This is essential for ensuring your PDFs are readable by the widest possible audience, including people with low vision or color blindness. It's also important for ensuring your documents remain readable when printed on low-quality printers or viewed on dim screens.

I use this tool on every PDF I create that will be viewed by others. It's identified contrast problems I would never have noticed on my own screen, especially with subtle color combinations or light-on-light designs that look stylish but fail accessibility requirements. Fixing these issues early prevents complaints, accessibility violations, and the need to redesign and redistribute documents after they've already been published.

The tool is particularly valuable for anyone creating educational materials, legal documents, medical information, or public-facing forms where readability is legally required or ethically essential. It's a simple automated check that ensures you're meeting basic accessibility standards without having to manually evaluate every color combination in your document. It's the kind of quality control that should be standard practice but usually gets skipped in the rush to publish.

Free PDF File Integrity Validator

I built the PDF file integrity validator after downloading a PDF from an email attachment that appeared to open correctly but was actually corrupted in subtle ways. Some pages were missing, some images weren't displaying, and the file would crash when I tried to print it. There was no obvious error message when I opened it. It just silently failed in ways that only became apparent when I tried to use specific features or view specific pages.

PDF corruption is surprisingly common, especially when files are transferred through email systems, compressed in ZIP archives, or stored on failing hard drives. The corruption might not be severe enough to prevent the file from opening, but it can break internal links, corrupt embedded images, damage fonts, or make certain pages unreadable. The problem is that most PDF readers will try to display the file anyway, hiding the errors until you encounter them during actual use.

This tool performs a deep validation of PDF file structure, checking for corruption in the file header, cross-reference tables, object streams, and embedded resources. It detects problems that won't necessarily prevent the file from opening but will cause issues when you try to print, extract text, or view specific pages. This is critical when you're working with important documents where data integrity matters, like contracts, reports, or archival records.

I use this tool whenever I download a PDF from an untrusted source or when I've transferred a PDF through multiple systems and want to verify it hasn't been corrupted in transit. It's caught corrupted files that would have caused problems if I had tried to print them or share them with clients. The tool is also useful for validating PDFs before archiving them long-term, ensuring that the files you're storing for future use are actually intact and usable.

The tool provides detailed diagnostics about what's wrong with a corrupted PDF, which helps you decide whether the file can be repaired or whether you need to request a fresh copy from the source. This is much better than discovering corruption only when you try to print 100 copies of a document or when you need to extract data from a file during a critical deadline. It's preventive quality control that saves you from downstream failures.

Image Format Converter - Free Online Tool

The image format converter exists because I constantly run into situations where I have an image in the wrong format for the platform I'm trying to upload it to. A website requires JPEG but I have PNG. An app requires WebP but I have JPEG. A print shop requires TIFF but I have PNG. Every platform has arbitrary format requirements, and manually converting files in desktop software is tedious and time-consuming.

The problem is that most image editing software is overkill for simple format conversion. Opening Photoshop just to convert a PNG to JPEG is ridiculous. You need a simple, fast tool that does one thing well: take an image in format A and output it in format B without degrading quality or adding unnecessary complexity. Most online converters either have file size limits, add watermarks, require registration, or inject tracking scripts. I wanted something clean and simple.

This tool converts images between all common formats: JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP, TIFF. It runs entirely in your browser, so your images never leave your computer. You upload an image, select the output format, and download the converted file. No compression, no quality loss, no file size limits, no tracking. It's the simplest possible implementation of a task that should be simple but is usually buried in complicated software or shady online services.

I use this tool multiple times per week when preparing images for different platforms or clients. It's saved me from having to install and launch heavy desktop software just to do basic format conversion. The tool is especially useful when you're working on a computer where you don't have admin rights to install software, or when you're working remotely and don't have access to your usual tools. It's always available in a browser tab.

The tool also preserves image metadata during conversion, which is important when you're working with photographs that have EXIF data or images that have embedded color profiles. Many online converters strip this metadata, which can cause color shifts or loss of important information about when and how the image was created. This tool keeps everything intact unless you explicitly choose to strip metadata for privacy reasons.

Free PDF Compressor Tool - Reduce PDF File Size

I built the PDF compressor tool because I was constantly hitting email attachment size limits when trying to send PDFs to clients. The PDF would be 25 MB when it only needed to be 5 MB. The extra size came from uncompressed images, redundant embedded fonts, and bloated metadata that didn't contribute anything to the actual content. Most PDF creation tools don't optimize for file size by default, so you end up with massive files that are slow to upload, slow to download, and fail to send through email.

The problem with large PDFs is that they create friction in every workflow. Email servers reject them. Upload forms time out. Recipients wait forever for them to download. Mobile users on limited data plans can't open them. Cloud storage quotas fill up faster. It's all unnecessary because in most cases, you can reduce PDF file size by 60-80% without any visible quality loss. You just need to apply proper compression to images, remove duplicate resources, and strip unnecessary metadata.

This tool compresses PDFs by optimizing embedded images, removing redundant data, and applying intelligent compression that preserves visual quality while dramatically reducing file size. It analyzes the PDF content to determine what can be compressed aggressively and what needs to be preserved. For example, photographs can handle lossy compression while vector graphics and text should remain lossless. The tool makes these decisions automatically so you don't have to think about it.

I use this tool before sending any PDF via email or uploading it to a platform with file size restrictions. It's gotten my PDFs under size limits that would have otherwise required splitting the file into multiple parts or using file transfer services. The tool is also useful when you're archiving PDFs and want to minimize storage costs without sacrificing content quality. Every megabyte saved adds up when you're storing thousands of documents.

What I appreciate about this tool is that it gives you control over the compression level. You can choose aggressive compression if file size is critical, or conservative compression if quality is more important. The tool shows you a preview of the file size reduction before you commit, so you can make informed decisions about the trade-off. It's much better than blindly running PDFs through compression and hoping they still look acceptable afterward.

Free Micro Font Contrast Checker - Ensure Readability

The micro font contrast checker exists because I designed a website with tiny footer text that looked fine on my desktop monitor but was completely illegible on mobile devices. The font size was small, and the contrast between the text and background was marginal. On a large monitor in good lighting, it was readable. On a phone screen in sunlight, it was invisible. This taught me that small text requires higher contrast than large text to remain legible.

The physics of this are straightforward: when text is small, the individual letter shapes are harder to distinguish, so you need stronger contrast to make them stand out from the background. But most designers treat contrast as a uniform requirement regardless of font size, which leads to readability failures on small text. Legal disclaimers, footnotes, captions, and form field labels are often set in small sizes with inadequate contrast, making them hard or impossible to read for anyone with less than perfect vision.

This tool specifically checks the contrast of small text (under 14px typically) against stricter accessibility standards that account for the additional readability challenges of small font sizes. It flags text that might pass general contrast requirements but fails the higher standards needed for small text. This is critical for ensuring your fine print is actually readable by real users in real conditions.

I use this tool when designing website footers, form labels, captions, and any interface element that uses small text. It's caught numerous cases where I thought the contrast was adequate but it actually failed accessibility standards for small text. Fixing these issues early prevents user complaints and accessibility violations. The tool is especially important for anyone designing interfaces that will be used on mobile devices or in challenging lighting conditions.

The tool also helps when you're choosing color palettes for UI design. You can test different text and background color combinations at small sizes to see which ones provide adequate contrast. This is more reliable than trying to judge readability by eye, especially when you're working on a high-quality monitor that makes everything look more readable than it actually is on typical consumer devices. It's a simple check that ensures your small text is genuinely accessible to all users.

Favicon Multi-Device Preview - Check Your Icon Across Platforms

I built the favicon multi-device preview tool after designing a favicon that looked great on desktop browsers but was completely illegible when displayed in mobile browser tabs or as iOS home screen icons. The problem was that I had designed the icon at a comfortable size on my monitor, but favicons need to work at multiple sizes ranging from 16x16 pixels up to 512x512 pixels, and they need to remain recognizable at every size.

Most favicon designs fail because designers don't test them at the actual sizes they'll be displayed. An icon that looks sharp and detailed at 256x256 pixels turns into an unrecognizable blob at 16x16 pixels. Fine details disappear, colors blend together, and the icon loses all meaning. But you don't discover this until you've already deployed the icon and users start seeing it on their devices. By then, you've already committed to a design that doesn't work.

This tool shows you exactly how your favicon will appear across different devices and contexts: desktop browser tabs, mobile browser tabs, iOS home screen icons, Android home screen icons, Windows tiles, and macOS Dock icons. It renders your icon at the actual pixel sizes used by each platform so you can see exactly what users will see. This lets you catch readability problems before deployment and iterate on the design until it works at every size.

I use this tool every time I design a favicon or update an existing one. It's revealed design problems I would never have caught otherwise, like icons that are too detailed for small sizes or color combinations that don't have enough contrast at tiny resolutions. The tool has saved me from deploying favicons that look unprofessional or illegible on certain platforms. It's a critical quality check for any website or web application.

The tool is especially useful when you're working with brand assets that were designed for print or large-format use and need to be adapted to favicon sizes. Corporate logos often have too much detail or too many colors to work well as favicons. This tool helps you evaluate different simplification strategies and see which one maintains brand recognition while working at small sizes. It's an essential step in responsive icon design that most people skip because they don't have an easy way to preview the results.

Free Hidden Link Finder - Detect Invisible Links

The hidden link finder exists because I was reviewing a website for SEO issues and discovered dozens of hidden links that were invisible to users but visible to search engines. These links were styled to match the background color or positioned off-screen using CSS tricks. They were there to manipulate search rankings, but they also created a terrible user experience because users would accidentally click on invisible elements and get navigated to unexpected pages.

Hidden links are sometimes created maliciously for black-hat SEO, but they're also sometimes created accidentally through poor CSS implementation or template bugs. You might have a link that's styled with white text on a white background, or a link that's positioned using negative margins that push it outside the visible viewport. Users can't see these links, but screen readers and search engine crawlers can, which creates accessibility problems and potential SEO penalties.

This tool scans web pages and identifies links that are hidden through CSS styling, positioning tricks, or opacity adjustments. It flags links where the text color matches the background color, links that are positioned off-screen, links with zero opacity, and links that are covered by other elements. This helps you find unintentional hidden links that are breaking accessibility or intentional hidden links that might be harming your SEO.

I use this tool when auditing websites for accessibility compliance and SEO health. It's found hidden links in WordPress themes, third-party plugins, and custom templates that were causing problems I didn't know existed. The tool is especially useful when you inherit a website from another developer and need to understand what's actually in the codebase. Hidden links are often overlooked during manual review but can cause significant problems if left unaddressed.

The tool also helps when you're implementing new CSS styles and want to verify you haven't accidentally hidden any important links. It's easy to change a background color or adjust z-index values and inadvertently make links invisible. This tool catches those mistakes before they go live and confuse users or trigger search engine penalties. It's a simple automated check that should be part of any website QA process.

Free Filename Invisible Character Detector

I built the filename invisible character detector after spending an hour trying to figure out why a file wouldn't upload to a server. The filename looked completely normal. It was "report.pdf" as far as I could see. But the server kept rejecting it with a vague error message about invalid characters. It turned out there was a zero-width space character embedded in the filename that was invisible in my file browser but was being interpreted as an invalid character by the upload script.

Invisible characters in filenames are surprisingly common. They get introduced when you copy-paste filenames from certain applications, when you rename files using text that contains formatting marks, or when files are created programmatically with string handling bugs. These characters are genuinely invisible. You can't see them in file browsers, text editors, or terminal windows. But they're there, and they break file operations in unpredictable ways.

This tool analyzes filenames and detects invisible characters like zero-width spaces, zero-width joiners, soft hyphens, and various Unicode control characters that shouldn't be in filenames. It highlights exactly where these characters are located and what type they are, so you can remove them and fix the filename. This is critical when files are being rejected by upload systems, backup scripts, or automated workflows for reasons you can't see.

I use this tool whenever I encounter mysterious file operation failures that don't have obvious causes. It's found invisible characters in filenames dozens of times, saving hours of debugging. The tool is also useful when you're batch-processing files and want to ensure all filenames are clean before you pass them to scripts or upload systems. It's a simple sanity check that prevents invisible problems from breaking visible workflows.

The tool is particularly valuable when working with files that have been transferred across different operating systems or created by different applications. Mac, Windows, and Linux all handle filenames slightly differently, and invisible characters that are tolerated on one system might cause failures on another. This tool normalizes filenames and ensures they'll work correctly regardless of where they're used. It's the kind of utility that you don't need often, but when you need it, nothing else will solve the problem.

Free Text Mirror Reverser - Convert Text to Mirror Image

The text mirror reverser exists because I needed to create mirror-reversed text for a design project where text needed to be readable when reflected in a mirror or through a window. This is a surprisingly specific requirement that comes up in signage, t-shirt designs, vehicle graphics, and creative typography projects. You can't just flip text horizontally in an image editor if you need actual selectable, searchable reversed text.

The challenge with mirror-reversing text is that you need to reverse the character order while also using Unicode characters that are horizontally flipped versions of the original characters. Simply reversing "hello" to "olleh" doesn't create mirror text. You need to reverse it and also replace each character with its mirrored equivalent if one exists. This requires Unicode knowledge and character mapping that most people don't have memorized.

This tool takes normal text and converts it to properly mirrored text by reversing the character order and substituting mirrored Unicode equivalents where they exist. The result is text that appears correctly when viewed in a mirror or reversed. This is useful for creating designs that are meant to be viewed through reflective surfaces, for creating ambigrams, or for creative typography effects where you want text to read differently when flipped.

I've used this tool for designing window decals where text needs to be readable from both inside and outside a window, for creating t-shirt designs with mirror effects, and for generating creative social media graphics with reversed text elements. It's a niche tool, but when you need it, there's no simple alternative. You can't achieve this effect with standard text editors or word processors. You need specialized character mapping.

The tool also handles mixed scripts and special characters correctly, which matters when you're working with non-Latin alphabets or text that includes symbols and punctuation. It's smarter than just reversing strings. It understands character directionality and applies the correct transformations to create genuinely mirrored text that will display correctly across different platforms and devices. It's the kind of specialized utility that solves a very specific problem that most general-purpose tools ignore.

Free Invisible Space Detector - Find Zero-Width Characters

I built the invisible space detector after debugging a form submission that kept failing validation even though the input looked completely empty. The user was trying to submit a blank field, but the validation script kept saying the field wasn't empty. It turned out there were multiple zero-width space characters in the field that were invisible but counted as content. The user couldn't see them, I couldn't see them, but the validation code could see them.

Zero-width spaces and other invisible Unicode characters are pernicious. They get introduced when text is copied from certain websites, PDFs, or messaging apps that use them for formatting or line-break hints. When this text is pasted into forms, text editors, or code files, the invisible characters come along and cause problems. Form validations fail, string comparisons break, searches don't find matches, and no one can figure out why because the characters are literally invisible.

This tool scans text for all types of invisible whitespace and control characters: zero-width spaces, zero-width joiners, zero-width non-joiners, soft hyphens, byte order marks, and various Unicode formatting marks. It highlights where these characters appear so you can see what's actually in your text. This is essential for debugging text-related bugs, cleaning up copied content, and ensuring form inputs are genuinely empty when they appear empty.

I use this tool constantly when working with user-generated content or when debugging mysterious string handling bugs. It's revealed invisible characters in database content, API responses, form inputs, and code comments that were breaking functionality in subtle ways. The tool is especially valuable when you're dealing with internationalized text or content that's been processed through multiple systems, each of which might have added invisible formatting characters.

The tool also helps when you're preparing text for systems that don't handle Unicode control characters correctly. Some legacy systems, email parsers, or database fields can't handle zero-width characters and will either reject the input or corrupt it. This tool lets you identify and remove these characters before you send text to systems that might choke on them. It's preventive debugging that saves you from mysterious failures in production.

Free Soft Hyphen Fixer - Remove Hidden Hyphens

The soft hyphen fixer came out of frustration with text copied from PDFs that contained invisible soft hyphens that broke word searches and copy-paste operations. I copied what looked like the word "documentation" from a PDF, but when I searched for it later, it didn't match because the PDF had inserted soft hyphens that split the word into "docu-mentation" at the character level, even though the hyphen wasn't visible on screen.

Soft hyphens are special Unicode characters (U+00AD) that indicate where a word can be broken for line wrapping, but they don't display as visible hyphens unless the word is actually broken across lines. They're useful for typesetting, but they're a nightmare for text processing because they're invisible but still present in the character data. When you copy text containing soft hyphens and paste it into another context, the soft hyphens come along and break searches, comparisons, and sorting.

This tool detects and removes soft hyphens from text, cleaning up copied content so it behaves like normal text without invisible formatting characters. It's particularly useful when you're extracting text from PDFs, ebooks, or professionally typeset documents that use soft hyphens for justification. Without this tool, you have to manually find and remove invisible characters that you can't see but that are breaking your text operations.

I use this tool whenever I copy significant amounts of text from PDFs or formatted documents and need to use that text in plain text contexts like code, database fields, or search queries. It's saved me from countless mysterious search failures where I was searching for text that was present but didn't match because of invisible soft hyphens. The tool is also useful when preparing text for machine learning training data or natural language processing where soft hyphens would introduce noise.

The tool preserves actual visible hyphens while removing only the soft hyphens, which is important when you're working with hyphenated compound words or ranges that use real hyphens. It's smart enough to distinguish between formatting marks that should be removed and actual content characters that should be preserved. This makes it safe to use on mixed content without worrying about accidentally removing legitimate punctuation.

Free Mirrored Punctuation Fixer - Convert Reversed Punctuation

I built the mirrored punctuation fixer after receiving text from a right-to-left language context where punctuation marks were mirrored versions of their normal forms. Parentheses, brackets, and quotation marks were flipped, which looked correct in the original context but looked wrong when the text was pasted into left-to-right contexts. The text would have closing parentheses where opening ones should be, and vice versa.

This problem occurs when text is copied from applications or systems that use bidirectional text rendering for languages like Arabic or Hebrew. The punctuation marks get mirrored to match the reading direction, but these mirrored characters are stored as distinct Unicode characters. When you copy this text into a left-to-right context, you end up with backward punctuation that looks broken and confusing.

This tool detects mirrored punctuation marks and converts them back to their standard left-to-right equivalents. It handles parentheses, brackets, braces, quotation marks, and other paired punctuation that can appear in mirrored forms. This is essential when you're working with multilingual content or when you're copying text between systems that have different text directionality settings.

I use this tool when processing user-generated content from international users or when copying text from PDFs or documents that were created in right-to-left language environments. It's fixed countless cases of backward punctuation that would have looked unprofessional or confusing to readers. The tool is particularly valuable for content management systems or publishing workflows where text from multiple language contexts needs to be normalized into a consistent format.

The tool is smart about preserving intentional punctuation while fixing only the mirrored versions that are artifacts of bidirectional text rendering. It doesn't blindly flip all punctuation. It identifies which marks are mirrored Unicode characters and corrects only those. This ensures you don't accidentally corrupt text that legitimately uses unusual punctuation for stylistic or linguistic reasons. It's precise automated cleanup that would be tedious and error-prone to do manually.

Free Tiny Typo Finder

The tiny typo finder exists because standard spellcheckers miss a category of errors that I call "tiny typos" – errors that are technically valid words but are clearly wrong in context. Things like "manger" instead of "manager," "pubic" instead of "public," or "form" instead of "from." These are real words, so spellcheck doesn't flag them, but they're embarrassing mistakes that make you look careless or incompetent.

I created this tool after sending a professional email with the word "manger" instead of "manager" in the subject line. Spellcheck didn't catch it because "manger" is a real word (a feeding trough for animals). But in the context of a business email, it was obviously wrong. The recipient pointed it out, and I felt like an idiot. I realized I needed a tool that understood context, not just spelling.

This tool uses pattern matching and contextual analysis to find words that are spelled correctly but are statistically unlikely in the given context. It looks for common substitution errors, adjacency-based typos where you hit the wrong key, and words that are frequently confused with each other. It's not perfect, but it catches a category of errors that standard spellcheckers completely ignore.

I run this tool on every important email, document, or blog post before I send or publish it. It's caught embarrassing typos dozens of times, especially the kind of mistakes that make you look like you didn't proofread. The tool is particularly useful for formal writing where tiny errors have outsized consequences – job applications, client proposals, academic papers, or public-facing marketing content.

The tool works by maintaining a database of commonly confused word pairs and statistically improbable word combinations. When it finds a match, it flags the word and suggests the more likely alternative. You can accept or reject each suggestion, which keeps you in control while benefiting from automated detection. It's like having a second pair of eyes that's specifically watching for the sneaky errors that everyone else misses.

Free Trailing Space Remover - Remove Unwanted Spaces

I built the trailing space remover because I kept running into code formatting issues where trailing spaces at the end of lines were breaking automated tests and causing git diffs to show changes where there was no meaningful difference. These spaces are invisible, so I couldn't see them in my text editor, but they were there, and they were causing problems.

Trailing spaces are spaces that appear at the end of a line of text before the line break. They serve no purpose in most contexts, but they get introduced accidentally when you're editing text, reformatting code, or copying content from other sources. Many coding style guides prohibit trailing spaces because they're visual noise in diffs and can cause inconsistencies in version control. But most text editors don't highlight them, so you don't know they're there.

This tool strips trailing spaces from every line in your text while preserving all other formatting and content. It's particularly useful for cleaning up code files before committing them to version control, for cleaning up copied text before pasting it into documents, or for normalizing text files that will be processed by automated systems that are sensitive to whitespace.

I use this tool constantly when working with code. It's become part of my workflow before every git commit. I paste my code through this tool to strip trailing spaces, then commit the cleaned version. This prevents noisy diffs and keeps my commits focused on actual changes rather than invisible whitespace modifications. The tool has saved me from countless code review comments about formatting inconsistencies.

The tool is also useful when you're working with text that will be processed by picky parsers or legacy systems that don't handle trailing whitespace gracefully. Some data formats and configuration files are sensitive to trailing spaces and will fail to parse correctly if they're present. This tool ensures your text is clean and compatible with even the most finicky processing systems. It's a simple cleanup step that prevents invisible characters from causing visible problems.

Free Tiny Font Rejection Detector - Find Font Size Issues

The tiny font rejection detector came out of an experience where I submitted a design to a client and they rejected it because some text was "too small to read." I had set the font size at 10 pixels, which looked fine on my screen. But on their screen, or when printed, it was illegibly small. I needed a tool that would flag text that was below minimum readable sizes before I sent work to clients.

The problem is that readability depends on viewing distance, screen resolution, and individual visual acuity. What's readable on a desktop monitor at arm's length might be unreadable on a phone held at the same distance. What's readable on a high-DPI retina display might be too small on a standard resolution screen. There's no absolute definition of "too small," but there are practical minimums below which most people will struggle to read text comfortably.

This tool analyzes documents and designs for text that falls below recommended minimum font sizes for different contexts: web, print, mobile, and accessibility standards. It flags any text that's smaller than the minimums and tells you what size it should be for comfortable readability. This is critical when designing interfaces, documents, or marketing materials where readability is essential but you're tempted to shrink text to fit more content.

I use this tool before finalizing any design that will be viewed by others. It's prevented multiple client rejections by catching text that I thought was readable but was actually too small for real-world use. The tool is especially valuable when designing for older audiences or for contexts where accessibility compliance is legally required. It's a simple automated check that ensures your text is genuinely readable, not just technically present.

The tool also helps when you're adapting designs across different mediums. A font size that works for web might not work for print, and vice versa. This tool evaluates your text against context-appropriate standards so you can ensure readability in whatever medium you're targeting. It's better to catch size problems during design than to discover them after production when fixes are expensive or impossible.

Free Tiny ASCII Art Checker - Convert 35 Characters or Less

I built the tiny ASCII art checker for situations where I needed to create simple ASCII representations of logos, icons, or graphics that would work in plain text contexts like terminal outputs, email signatures, or code comments. The challenge is that ASCII art needs to be recognizable at very small sizes, often 35 characters or less, which means you have to be extremely economical with your use of characters.

Creating effective tiny ASCII art is harder than it looks. You need to capture the essence of an image using only characters, and you need to do it in a very constrained space. Every character matters. Using the wrong character can break the shape or make it unrecognizable. You need to think about character density, how different characters appear at small sizes, and how to use whitespace effectively to create readable shapes.

This tool helps you convert images to tiny ASCII art by analyzing the image and selecting characters that match the brightness and density of different regions. It optimizes for recognizability at small sizes, which means it makes different character choices than a full-size ASCII art converter would. The tool also validates that the result fits within character limits for different contexts like Twitter bios, terminal width constraints, or comment block limits.

I've used this tool for creating ASCII logos for command-line tools, for generating text-based icons for documentation, and for creating simple graphics that can be embedded in plain text emails. It's a niche use case, but when you need to represent a visual element in a purely text context, there's no good alternative. You either make ASCII art or you don't include the visual at all.

The tool is particularly valuable when you're working with retro computing aesthetics, terminal-based interfaces, or contexts where images aren't supported but you still want some visual interest. It's also useful for accessibility purposes when you want to provide a text description of a logo or icon that can be read by screen readers. The tool generates compact, recognizable ASCII representations that work within the constraints of plain text while still conveying visual information.