Version 1.3 · 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.
192 MB · Apple Silicon · macOS 12 or later · 15-day free trial
Source files
Convert to · Common
This is the real thing rebuilt in the page — pick a category, pick a format, and watch what the app would offer you.
In motion
Each card plays its own idea the moment it comes up — and moves on by itself, unless you put a hand on it.
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.
Codecs
MOV is where ProRes lives and it is also where H.264 lives, and which one a file holds is a different question from what it is called. Most converters only ask the first question. Dancing Files asks both.
Proxy, 422 LT, 422, 422 HQ, 4444 and 4444 XQ — written with Apple's own vendor ID, because some editors read that field to decide whether a file is really ProRes. The audio comes out as PCM, which is what a timeline expects to find in a MOV.
Every codec can go through VideoToolbox on Apple Silicon or the reference encoder. Auto picks software for H.264 and HEVC, because x264 and x265 still win on quality per bit — and hardware for ProRes, where the profile fixes the data rate and there is nothing to lose.
The encoder's own scale, not a translation: 0–51 for H.264 and HEVC, 0–63 for VP9 and AV1. Leave it alone and the quality step decides. A second pass appears only when there is a size target to hit, because without one there is nothing for the first pass to learn.
Primaries, transfer, matrix and range are carried across rather than guessed, and a file that declares nothing keeps declaring nothing — a wrong tag is worse than none. Bit depth follows the source. Point an HDR file at H.264 and the app says so before it converts.
In the room where you work
Not a general converter that happens to handle video. The presets are named after the requirement they meet, because that is how the work actually arrives: a codec, a resolution, a loudness target, a limit.
Drop the camera card in and get ProRes 422 masters an editor can cut with, or ProRes Proxy at a fifth of the size that conforms back to the master frame for frame. Every audio track, subtitle and chapter travels across.
Edit — ProRes 422 · Edit — ProRes ProxyBounces to FLAC, WAV or AIFF with nothing thrown away, at the sample rate the session wants — 44.1, 48 or 96 kHz. Or straight to EBU R128: −14 LUFS for streaming, −16 for a podcast, −23 for broadcast, measured rather than guessed.
Master — lossless · Streaming − 14 LUFSReads CR2, NEF, ARW, DNG, RAF and ORF straight off the card. Exports to WebP or AVIF for the web at the width you name, to TIFF for print, or under a hard size cap when a client's upload form has one.
Web @2× · Under 5 MB · Archive masterRound-trips through ProRes 4444 when alpha has to survive, and HEVC 10-bit for delivery. HDR is carried across as HDR — the app refuses to flatten a grade quietly, and tells you which codec can hold it when the one you picked cannot.
ProRes 4444 · Delivery — HEVCA profile holds a list of steps per kind of file, each landing in a folder of its own — because doing a delivery as three separate runs is three chances to use the wrong settings on one of them.
Point a watch folder at the same profile and the whole delivery happens on its own, the moment a file lands in it.
The home screen
What you converted, what it saved you, what is set up and waiting — on screen the moment the app comes up, and one press from starting again.
Seven days, twenty-eight, or all time. Which formats you actually use, what each one saved, how long it took. Hover a bar and it says what is in it.
Every conversion, with both sizes, the settings used and where the file went. Reveal it in Finder, or run the same job again on something new.
First launch walks you through the four places that matter and stops at the only thing worth doing next: converting your first file.
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. Every one of them is in Dancing Files PRO — there is no sign-in and no upload dialog, and the fifteen-day trial is the whole app.
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.
A switch that reveals the encoder itself — CRF, profile, bit depth, sample rate, loudness target. Off, none of it is in your way.
Under 25 MB, under 5 MB, or a number you type. The app works backwards to the bitrate and takes a second pass to land on it.
A side-by-side comparison of the original and the result, so you can see what a quality setting actually cost before you commit.
Keyboard
The whole flow — adding files, choosing a category, starting a run and backing out of one — is reachable from the keyboard.
Pricing
Start with fifteen days of everything — no account, no email, no card. When they are up, one payment keeps it yours.
Dancing Files PRO
14EUR
Lifetime license
about $16 — charged in euro
Two Macs per licence. Secure checkout by Lemon Squeezy — VAT handled, receipt and licence key by email.
Download the app and it starts converting immediately. Nothing is locked, nothing is watermarked and nothing is uploaded — the fifteen days are the full app, offline included.
Lemon Squeezy emails your licence key. In the app, open Settings → Dancing Files PRO, paste the key and press Activate License. That is the whole setup.
A licence covers two Macs at a time. Deactivate This Mac in the same panel frees an activation for another one, as often as you like.
One download, one drag to Applications, and fifteen days of the whole app with nothing to sign up for — and it will tell you itself when a newer version lands here.
Download, drag to Applications, double-click. That is the whole of it — no warning to click through, no right-clicking, no trip into System Settings.
Dancing Files is signed with a Developer ID and notarised by Apple, which means macOS has checked it for malware and can prove the copy you downloaded is byte for byte the one that was signed. Change a single byte of it and your Mac will refuse to open it.
Nothing you convert leaves your Mac, with or without a connection. What the app does and does not send.