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File Converter for Linux & macOS

Linux and macOS port of File Converter by Tichau. Right-click files in your file manager, pick a format, convert.

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Quick Start

Linux — download the release tarball

  1. Grab fileconverter-vX.Y.Z-linux-x86_64.tar.gz from the Releases page.
  2. Open a terminal in your downloads folder and run:
tar -xzf fileconverter-v*-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
cd fileconverter-v*
./install.sh

The installer detects your file manager and sets up the right-click "File Converter" submenu. The bare fileconverter binary is also attached to each release for power users who want to manage placement themselves (chmod +x fileconverter && ./fileconverter).

Linux — run from source

git clone https://github.com/AlexDevFlow/Media-Converter.git
cd Media-Converter
./install.sh

Requires Python 3.9+ and PyYAML (python3-yaml on most distros).

macOS (beta)

macOS support is new as of v1.4.0. It's tested and CI runs the full suite on a macOS runner, but it hasn't seen nearly as much real-world use as the Linux side yet, so treat it as beta and please report anything odd.

git clone https://github.com/AlexDevFlow/Media-Converter.git
cd Media-Converter
./install.sh

The installer puts the tool in ~/.local/share/fileconverter in its own venv (no PyInstaller binary, so no Gatekeeper headaches), installs the media tools with Homebrew if you don't have them, and builds a Finder Sync extension that adds a real submenu to the right-click menu, just like the Dolphin/Nemo submenu on Linux:

Right-click video.mkv >
  File Converter
  ├── To Mp4
  ├── To Mp4 (low quality)
  ├── To Gif
  ├── To Mp3
  ├── ...
  └── Configure presets...

The submenu only shows presets that work for every file you selected. If you don't have the Swift toolchain, it falls back to one Quick Action per preset instead (same conversions, just a flatter menu).

Conversions open a native progress window (per-file progress, ETA, cancel), built by the installer with a tkinter fallback. Settings are native too: double-click File Converter.app in ~/Applications, or run fileconverter --settings. Video encoding can use Apple's VideoToolbox hardware acceleration if you turn on "Auto-detect" under GPU accel.

You'll need macOS 13 or newer, the Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install, which give you Python 3.9+ and the Swift compiler), and Homebrew for the media tools. If the submenu doesn't show up right away, restart Finder with killall Finder, or check that the extension is enabled in System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions. One gotcha with the tkinter fallback: the Tk that ships with macOS is ancient and draws blank windows, so brew install python-tk if you end up needing it. Uninstall with fileconverter --uninstall.

How It Works

Right-click files in your file manager. A File Converter submenu shows conversion options filtered to the selected file types.

Right-click video.mkv >
  File Converter
  ├── To Mp4
  ├── To Mp4 (low quality)
  ├── To Mkv
  ├── To Webm
  ├── To Gif
  ├── To Mp3
  ├── To Ogg
  ├── ...
  └── Configure presets...

A progress window shows conversion status with estimated time remaining. Multiple files convert in parallel.

Supported Formats

Input (85 formats)

Category Formats
Video 3gp, 3gpp, avi, bik, f4v, flv, m2ts, m4v, mkv, mov, mp4, mts, mxf, mpg, mpeg, ogv, qt, rm, ts, vob, webm, wmv
Audio aac, aif, aiff, ape, dff, dsf, flac, m4a, m4b, mka, mp3, mpc, oga, ogg, opus, wav, wma, wv
Image arw, avif, bmp, cr2, dds, dng, exr, gif, heic, ico, jfif, jp2, jpg, jpeg, nef, pbm, pgm, png, ppm, psd, raf, svg, tga, tif, tiff, webp, xcf
Document csv, doc, docx, epub, html, key, numbers, odp, ods, odt, pages, pdf, ppt, pptx, rtf, txt, xls, xlsx

Output (38 formats)

Category Formats
Video MP4, MKV, MOV, WebM, OGV, AVI
Video codecs H.264 (default), H.265/HEVC, AV1, ProRes — selectable per preset for MP4/MKV/MOV (see Video codecs)
Audio MP3, AAC, M4A (AAC or ALAC), AIFF, OGG, OPUS, FLAC, WAV, WMA, AC3
Image PNG, JPG, WebP, AVIF, JP2, TIFF, BMP, TGA, ICO, GIF
Document PDF, DOCX, ODT, RTF, TXT, HTML, EPUB, XLSX, ODS, CSV, PPTX, ODP

Note: not every input/output combination is meaningful (e.g. csv → pptx), and exotic codecs depend on what your local ffmpeg/imagemagick build supports. If a conversion fails, please open an issue with the source file type and target format.

Dependencies

The installer checks for these and tells you what to install.

Tool Used for Required?
FFmpeg Video and audio conversion Yes
ImageMagick Image conversion, PDF to image Yes
Ghostscript PDF processing Recommended
LibreOffice Office documents (docx, xlsx, pptx) Optional

Install commands by platform

macOS (Homebrew):

brew install ffmpeg imagemagick ghostscript
brew install --cask libreoffice   # optional, for document presets

Ubuntu / Debian:

sudo apt install ffmpeg imagemagick ghostscript libreoffice

Fedora:

# ffmpeg-free lacks H.264/H.265 encoders. For video presets, install the full
# ffmpeg from RPM Fusion (https://rpmfusion.org/Configuration) instead:
sudo dnf install ffmpeg ImageMagick ghostscript libreoffice-writer libreoffice-calc libreoffice-impress

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S ffmpeg imagemagick ghostscript libreoffice-still

openSUSE:

sudo zypper install ffmpeg ImageMagick ghostscript libreoffice

For the Nautilus right-click menu (GNOME/Ubuntu), you also need:

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install python3-nautilus

# Fedora
sudo dnf install nautilus-python

# Arch
sudo pacman -S python-nautilus

Usage

Context menu

Right-click files in your file manager. The submenu only shows presets compatible with the selected files.

Supported file managers:

  • Nautilus (GNOME/Ubuntu)
  • Nemo (Cinnamon/Linux Mint)
  • Dolphin (KDE)
  • Thunar (XFCE)
  • PCManFM (LXDE/LXQt)

Terminal

# Convert a single file
fileconverter --conversion-preset "To Mp4" video.mkv

# Convert multiple files
fileconverter --conversion-preset "To Mp3" *.wav

# Use a file list
fileconverter --conversion-preset "To Jpg" --input-files list.txt

# Open settings
fileconverter --settings

# Re-run setup
fileconverter --install

# Remove everything
fileconverter --uninstall

Default Presets

Preset Output Notes
To Mp4 MP4 H.264, quality 30, AAC audio
To Mp4 (low quality) MP4 H.264, quality 20, lower bitrate
To Mkv MKV H.264, quality 30, AAC audio
To Mov MOV H.264, quality 30, AAC audio
To Webm WebM VP9 codec
To Ogv OGV Theora codec
To Avi AVI MPEG-4/XviD
To Mp4 (H.265) MP4 H.265/HEVC, ~half the size of H.264
To Mkv (H.265) MKV H.265/HEVC
To Mp4 (AV1) MP4 AV1 via SVT-AV1, royalty-free
To Mov (ProRes) MOV ProRes HQ, edit-friendly mezzanine
To Gif GIF 15fps, palette-optimized
To Gif (low quality) GIF 10fps, 75% scale
To Mp3 MP3 VBR ~190kbps
To Mp3 (low quality) MP3 VBR ~100kbps
To Aac AAC VBR ~155kbps
To M4a M4A AAC in MP4 container, ~155kbps
To Ogg OGG Vorbis ~160kbps
To Opus Opus ~128kbps
To Flac FLAC Lossless, max compression
To Wav WAV 16-bit PCM
To Aiff AIFF Lossless 16-bit PCM (big-endian)
To M4a (Apple Lossless) M4A ALAC lossless, Apple ecosystem
To Wma WMA Windows Media Audio, ~160kbps
To Ac3 AC3 Dolby Digital, ~192kbps
To Png PNG Lossless
To Jpg JPG Quality 85
To Webp WebP Quality 85
To Avif AVIF Quality 80
To Tiff TIFF LZW lossless
To Bmp BMP Uncompressed
To Ico ICO Windows icon
To Jp2 JP2 JPEG 2000, quality 85
To Tga TGA Truevision Targa
To Pdf PDF From images or documents
To Docx DOCX Word format via LibreOffice
To Odt ODT OpenDocument Text
To Xlsx XLSX Excel format via LibreOffice
To Ods ODS OpenDocument Spreadsheet
To Pptx PPTX PowerPoint format via LibreOffice
To Odp ODP OpenDocument Presentation
To Epub EPUB Ebook (EPUB) via LibreOffice
To Rtf RTF Rich Text Format via LibreOffice
To Txt TXT Plain text via LibreOffice
To Html HTML HTML via LibreOffice
To Csv CSV From spreadsheets via LibreOffice

All presets are customizable in the settings window or directly in ~/.config/fileconverter/settings.yaml. When upgrading from an older version, missing default presets are added automatically on next launch (your customisations are preserved).

Settings

fileconverter --settings

Or from the context menu: File Converter > Configure presets...

What you can configure

Global: max simultaneous conversions, auto-close window, hardware acceleration (Off / Auto / NVENC / VAAPI), UI language.

Per-preset: output format, video codec (H.264/H.265/AV1/ProRes), input file types, video quality/encoding speed/scale/rotation, audio bitrate/VBR/CBR/channels, image quality/scale/rotation, output filename template, post-conversion action, custom FFmpeg command override.

Config file

Settings are stored in YAML at ~/.config/fileconverter/settings.yaml. Example preset:

presets:
  - name: "Video/To Mp4 (720p)"
    output_type: mp4
    input_types: [avi, mkv, mov, mp4, webm, wmv]
    output_template: "(p)(f)"
    input_post_action: none
    settings:
      enable_audio: true
      video_quality: 28
      video_encoding_speed: medium
      video_scale: 0.5
      audio_bitrate: 128

Output filename templates

Variable Meaning
(p) or (path) Parent directory of input file
(f) or (filename) Input filename without extension
(F) Input filename uppercase
(o) or (outputext) Output extension
(i) or (inputext) Input extension
(p:d) ~/Documents/
(p:m) ~/Music/
(p:v) ~/Videos/
(p:p) ~/Pictures/
(d0), (d1) Directory hierarchy levels
(n:i) File number in batch
(n:c) Total files in batch
(d:FORMAT) Current date/time

Default template is (p)(f) (same folder, same name, new extension). If the output file already exists, a number is appended automatically: file (2).mp4.

Languages

The UI is available in 29 languages. On first launch it picks your system language automatically; you can override it from Settings → Language (the setting is saved in ~/.config/fileconverter/settings.yaml and the window rebuilds instantly in the new language).

Shipped locales: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified & Traditional), Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil & Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Serbian (Cyrillic & Latin), Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese.

To add or update a translation, edit locales/build.py and run python3 locales/build.py. That regenerates each .po and compiles .mo catalogs into locales/<lang>/LC_MESSAGES/.

Video codecs

MP4, MKV and MOV are containers — the codec inside is chosen per preset via the video_codec setting (or the Video Codec dropdown in settings):

Codec Setting Notes
H.264 h264 (default) Universal compatibility, hardware-accelerated
H.265 / HEVC hevc ~half the size at similar quality; hardware-accelerated; tagged hvc1 in MP4/MOV for Apple/QuickTime playback
AV1 av1 Royalty-free, smallest files; CPU-only (SVT-AV1)
ProRes prores Intra-frame editing mezzanine; keeps 10-bit 4:2:2; CPU-only. prores_profile 0–5 (3 = HQ) 
presets:
  - name: "To Mp4 (H.265)"
    output_type: mp4
    settings:
      video_codec: hevc
      video_quality: 28

H.264 and H.265 use the GPU when hardware acceleration is enabled; AV1 and ProRes always encode on the CPU.

Hardware Acceleration

GPU-accelerated video encoding for MP4 and MKV output:

Mode GPU Notes
Off None Software encoding (default, always works)
Auto Auto-detect Probes your system, picks the best available
NVENC NVIDIA Requires NVIDIA GPU + drivers
VAAPI AMD / Intel Works with Mesa drivers on most Linux systems 
hardware_acceleration: auto  # off | auto | nvenc | vaapi

If hardware encoding fails, the app falls back to software encoding automatically.

Building From Source

git clone https://github.com/AlexDevFlow/Media-Converter.git
cd Media-Converter
./install.sh

To build the standalone binary:

./build.sh

Produces dist/fileconverter, a standalone executable that bundles Python and all dependencies.

Uninstalling

fileconverter --uninstall

Removes context menu entries, desktop entry, launcher scripts, and config directory. Does not remove the binary itself.

Troubleshooting

The context menu doesn't appear after install. Restart your file manager: nautilus -q (for GNOME). Then reopen it.

"No compatible presets" when right-clicking. The file extension isn't in any preset's input list. Open settings and add it, or use the terminal.

Custom FFmpeg commands. In a preset's settings, set enable_ffmpeg_custom_command: true and ffmpeg_custom_command: "<your args>". The command is inserted between -i input and the output path.

Preset folders in the context menu. Use / in the preset name. Video/To Mp4 creates a "Video" submenu containing "To Mp4".

Wayland support. Yes. GTK 4 supports Wayland natively.

Credits

License

GPLv3. Same as the original File Converter.

About

A local media conversion tool that integrates directly into your Linux file manager.

Resources

Readme

License

GPL-3.0 license
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Releases 4

v1.4.0 Latest
Jul 16, 2026
+ 3 releases

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