Version 1.0 · macOS · Apple Silicon
Dancing Files reads every file you drop and offers only the formats it can actually become. Images, video, audio, documents, spreadsheets — converted right on your Mac, in parallel, with nothing to install alongside it.
Source files
Convert to · Common
Audio
Drop in a recording and it lands in its own tab, next to the images and the video. Sixteen formats in, eight out — and the compressed and lossless choices are kept apart, so you never shrink a master by accident.
Press play on the file card before you convert anything. The thumb turns into an equalizer while it runs, driven by the sound itself, and a hairline of progress crosses the bottom. Nothing is uploaded to hear it — the file plays from where it already sits.
Source files
Convert to · Compressed
How it works
No settings to learn first. The app inspects what you dropped and narrows the choices down to the ones that make sense.
01
As many files as you like, of as many kinds as you like. Each one is read on arrival — dimensions, duration, frame rate, page count.
02
Mixed types split into category tabs. Every tile carries its own symbol, colour and a line telling you what the format is good for.
03
Finished files land in the panel on the right with the size change in percent. Drag one straight into Finder, or double-click to open it.
Smart Convert
Every file is inspected the moment it lands — resolution, duration, frame rate, page count, codec, colour space, bit depth, channels, sample rate. That reading is what the rest of the app thinks with, which is why it can suggest something specific instead of offering you everything.
Where the app can say something useful, one preset is promoted to a Recommended card carrying the estimate — 11.5 MB → ~378 kB. The rules are deliberately quiet: a master file is never offered a lossy step, a WAV is offered FLAC rather than MP3, and a suggestion that would make the file bigger is not made at all.
Click the line above the controls and Dancing Files converts one copy with exactly the settings Convert would use, then puts it under a comparison handle. The size underneath is therefore the size, not a guess. Formats with nothing to look at say so rather than pretending.
Off, −50%, −75%, or a number you type, worked out per file — half of one photo is not half of the next. Audio and video are arithmetic, so the encoder is simply told the bitrate; stills are a short search that corrects itself against what the encoder actually produced. It aims just under and reports what it landed on.
Formats
Dancing Files never offers a conversion it cannot do well — combinations that would throw away the thing that mattered are simply not shown.
Features
Almost everything below is on the moment you open it. The Finder Quick Action, your own presets, profiles and watch folders are the things you set up yourself, and Settings is where the last three live. There is no pro tier, no sign-in and no upload dialog.
Every conversion runs locally. No server, no account, no queue — and it works with the Wi-Fi off.
Two to four files at a time, depending on how heavy the format is, with a progress bar per file and a batch bar for the whole run.
ffmpeg, ImageMagick, pandoc and poppler ship inside the app bundle. Drag it to Applications and it converts out of the box.
Files are inspected on arrival, so the format grid never offers a conversion that would fail or quietly throw away your content.
Max width, resolution, frame rate, bitrate, page size, dpi — plus High, Balanced and Small file quality steps and a size to aim at. Metadata is kept or removed as you choose, and removing it still keeps the colour profile. Settings decide where output lands, how files are named, and whether the window is light or dark.
The History view lists what you converted, from what, how the size changed and when — newest first, a heading per day. Search it by name, or filter by category, format and date, and it totals what the whole lot saved. A row reveals the file in Finder, and the log clears in one click.
Drop files on the icon at the top of the screen and they convert with the format the app would have recommended — no window, no clicks. The panel keeps your last five conversions within reach.
Turn it on and Convert with Dancing Files appears in the right-click menu. Select as many files as you like and they arrive in the app together.
The app asks the site now and then whether a newer version exists, and says so in a banner you can dismiss. Nothing installs itself, and nothing about you is sent along with the question.
A row above the format grid — Web, Email, Social, High quality, Small file — tailored to the category in hand. One click sets the format, the quality step and the options together. + Create preset saves whatever is set right now under a name of your own; yours wear a Yours badge and can be renamed, re-saved or deleted.
A profile is one answer per category: images this way, video that way, documents the other. Choose one and Convert stops being about the category on screen — 43 JPGs, 12 MP4s and 6 documents go in one press.
Point a rule at a folder and anything you drop in it is converted the way you said, unattended. A file has to stop changing before it counts, so a half-copied video never reaches an encoder — and a rule cannot eat its own output. Nothing is uploaded; it is your Mac watching a folder.
The window, the menu bar panel, the Finder Quick Action and watch folders all convert through the same queue, which is what makes pause, resume, cancel and retry work the same wherever a file came from. It groups into Processing, Waiting, Failed and Completed, and tells you why something failed. One failure never stops the rest.
The info button on any file opens what it carries — and for a photograph that includes the camera, lens, exposure and where it was taken. That reading only happens when you ask for it, so a hundred files do not each pay for it.
Pull a finished file straight from the results panel into Finder, Mail or anywhere else. Double-click to open it instead.
Keyboard
The whole flow — adding files, choosing a category, starting a run and backing out of one — is reachable from the keyboard.
One download, one drag to Applications. Free to use, and yours to keep — and the app will tell you itself when a newer version lands here.
Dancing Files is not signed with an Apple Developer ID, so the first time you open it macOS says:
“Apple could not verify Dancing Files is free of malware that may harm your Mac or compromise your privacy.”
That is what macOS says about every app that has not been through Apple's paid notarisation — it is not a finding about this app. Getting past it takes three clicks, once:
The app opens, and never asks again. A shortcut that also works: right-click the app in Applications and choose Open instead of double-clicking it — same dialog, but with an Open button in it.
The same holds for every update, since each download is a new file to macOS. More detail on the support page.