Who Is Etienne Baudoux and What Is His Connection to DevToys?
Etienne Baudoux is one of the two creators of DevToys, a free, open-source, cross-platform desktop toolbox for developers. He built it together with Benjamin Titeux — the two are credited on the project's site as working from Seattle, WA and Paris, France respectively. If you arrived at the name "etienne" while looking into DevToys, the short answer is: he is a co-author of the app, not a separate tool or product.
What DevToys actually is
DevToys describes itself as a "Swiss Army knife for developers" — a desktop app that handles small, repetitive daily tasks so you don't have to paste sensitive data into random websites. The site states it is free, open source, and privacy-focused, running on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
The core pitch is offline utility: instead of sending a JWT, a chunk of JSON, or a Base64 string to an unknown web service, you process it locally.
What ships with it
The default install includes around 30 offline tools. The site groups them as follows:
| Category | Examples |
|---|---|
| Converters | JSON ↔ YAML, number base, cron parser, date, JSON array to table/CSV |
| Encoders / Decoders | Base64 (text and image), certificate, GZIP, HTML, JWT, QR code, URL |
| Formatters | JSON, SQL, XML |
| Generators | Hash/checksum, Lorem Ipsum, password, UUID |
| Testers | JSONPath, regular expression, XML/XSD |
| Graphic | Color blind simulator, image converter |
| Analyzer & utilities | Markdown preview, text comparer, list comparer |
Beyond the defaults, more tools are available through the community, and the app is extensible via an SDK so you can build your own.
Two features worth knowing about
Smart Detection. DevToys can detect the best tool for whatever is on your clipboard and shows a lightbulb icon for matching tools. If exactly one tool matches, the clipboard content is pasted into it automatically. The site notes this behavior can be customized in settings.
Command-line use. A separate CLI app exists alongside the GUI, aimed at scenarios like continuous integration. Most tools that make sense on a command line are available there, and both the GUI and CLI are extensible.
How to decide if it fits your workflow
DevToys is a reasonable choice if you:
- Regularly convert between formats like JSON and YAML, or encode/decode Base64 and JWTs
- Want that work done offline rather than through browser-based tools
- Use more than one OS and want the same toolset across them
- Want to automate some of these tasks in a pipeline via the CLI
It is less relevant if you need a hosted or team-shared service, or if you only ever need one single converter — a dedicated tool may be simpler.
To get started, download the app from the DevToys site for your platform, or grab the CLI separately if you want terminal and CI usage. From there, the fastest way to learn it is to copy something you'd normally paste into a website — a JWT, a JSON blob — and watch Smart Detection suggest the right tool.