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EnglishWhat Is File Converter and How Do You Convert or Compress Files With It?
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File Converter is a free, open-source Windows utility that adds convert and compress actions to the Windows Explorer right-click menu. You select one or more files, right-click, and pick a conversion preset — the app handles the rest without opening a separate window. It's a good fit if you regularly convert audio, video, images, or documents on Windows and want to skip drag-and-drop web tools. It is not a web app, so it won't help on macOS, Linux, or mobile.
What File Converter actually does
The tool integrates directly into Windows Explorer's context menu. Instead of launching an application, importing files, choosing settings, and exporting, you work from the file list you already have open. The interface is deliberately minimal — the developer describes it as "as light as possible to keep the application easy to use."
Key characteristics from the project's own description:
- Open source under GPL v3
- Free, with no ads and no data collection
- Context-menu driven — conversions happen from the right-click menu
- Batch capable — works on one or several files at once
- Customizable — you can add, remove, or edit conversion presets
How to convert or compress files
The workflow is intentionally short. The project markets it as "Convert & compress everything in 2 clicks."
- Install the app from the Downloads section of file-converter.io (or build it from the GitHub source).
- Select your files in Windows Explorer — one file or a multi-selection.
- Right-click to open the context menu.
- Choose a conversion preset from the File Converter submenu. The preset defines the output format and options.
- Wait for the conversion to finish. The output appears alongside your source files (or wherever the preset is configured to write).
To compress rather than convert, you pick a preset configured for compression — for example, a video preset that re-encodes to a smaller size. The mechanism is the same; only the preset's options differ.
Supported formats
The app supports a wide range of input and output formats across four categories. Output formats are what you can convert to; compatible input formats are what the app can read.
| Category | Output formats | Compatible input formats |
|---|---|---|
| Audio | flac, aac, ogg, mp3, wav | 3gp, 3gpp, aac, aiff, ape, avi, bik, cda, flac, flv, gif, m4v, mkv, mp4, m4a, m4b, mp3, mpg, mpeg, mov, oga, ogg, ogv, opus, rm, ts, vob, wav, webm, wma, wmv |
| Video | webm, mkv, mp4, ogv, avi, gif | 3gp, 3gpp, avi, bik, flv, gif, m4v, mkv, mp4, mpg, mpeg, mov, ogv, rm, ts, vob, webm, wmv |
| Image | png, jpg, ico, webp, avif | arw, avif, bmp, cr2, dds, dns, exr, heic, ico, jfif, jpg, jpeg, nef, png, psd, raf, svg, tif, tiff, tga, webp, pdf, doc*, docx*, odt*, odp*, ods*, ppt*, pptx*, xls*, xlsx* |
| Document | doc*, docx*, odt*, odp*, ods*, ppt*, pptx*, xls*, xlsx*, arw, bmp, cr2, dds, dns, exr, heic, ico, jfif, jpg, jpeg, nef, png, psd, raf, svg, tif, tiff, tga, webp |
Important caveat: Office document conversion (the formats marked with *) requires Microsoft Office to be installed and activated on the same machine. Without it, those conversions won't work.
Customizing presets
The context menu isn't fixed. You can heavily customize the application to:
- Add new conversion presets to the right-click menu
- Remove presets you don't use
- Edit existing presets to change conversion options
This is where the tool becomes more than a one-trick converter — you can shape the menu around the conversions you actually perform. The project points to its documentation for details on the features offered.
Troubleshooting and downloads
The site has dedicated Troubleshooting and Downloads sections, plus a link to the GitHub repository where the source lives. If a conversion fails, the most common causes to check first are:
- Office document conversions failing — confirm Microsoft Office is installed and activated.
- A format not appearing — verify it's listed as a supported output format above; input support is broader than output support.
- Preset behaving unexpectedly — edit or recreate the preset, since presets control the actual conversion options.
Who it's for
File Converter suits Windows users who want fast, repeatable conversions without a browser tab or a heavyweight editor. It's less suitable if you need fine-grained control over every encoding parameter, if you work across operating systems, or if you need Office document conversion on a machine without Office installed. For straightforward format changes and compression on Windows, the context-menu approach removes most of the friction.