Changelog

🎉 Consul 2.0 is here! The biggest update ever. Consul no longer just converts your files... it can now transform them, too!

• ✨ Transformations – Resize, crop, rotate, flip, trim, speed up, mute, strip metadata and so much more. Rename video.mov to video.mp4+1080p+mute and Consul does the rest
• 🌍 More Languages – Use Consul in German, Spanish, or French, with fully translated menus, settings, and messages
• 🖱️ Finder Integration – Right-click any file to convert it, or apply one-click transforms without renaming
• 🎙️ Speech Transcription – Turn audio & video into text or subtitles by renaming them to TXT, SRT or VTT
• 🪄 Background Removal – Add +nobg to remove an image's background with on-device AI
• 🎯 Smart Crop – Crop images to any aspect ratio while automatically keeping the subject in frame
• 🗜️ Shrink Files – Add +min to compress images, videos, audio and PDFs, or hit an exact size with +2mb
• 🎬 Video Poster Frames – Rename a video to an image format to grab a poster frame, or pick the exact moment with +at1m30
• 📄 PDF Page Extraction – Extract pages from a PDF with +page2-5
• 🔊 Audio Tools – Normalize loudness, downmix to mono, reverse audio & video, and choose audio codecs
• ⏪ Undo From The Menu Bar – Recent conversions now appear right in the menu bar app, ready to undo with a single click
• 📊 Size Estimates – The confirmation pop-up now shows the estimated output size for supported formats before you convert
• 📦 Compress Folders – Rename any folder to Folder.zip and it's automatically compressed
• 📚 Comic Book Support – Convert CBZ, CBR and CBT comic archives from & to PDF
• 🗂️ More Than a Dozen New Formats – Adobe Illustrator, SQLite, Parquet, TGA, Animated PNG (APNG), more RAW camera formats, RTFD rich text, and more
• Improved onboarding experience
• A lot of UI improvements for a better user experience
• Several stability and performance improvements

Consul remains as simple as ever if you need it to be, keeping Rename to Convert as its foundation. For power users, the new transformations unlock a variety of new workflows. Consul features a bespoke and easy-to-learn filename grammar that allows you to do so much more than what fits into this changelog. You can find an overview of all available operations at getconsul.app/transformations. ✨

Last but not least, I'd like to thank everyone who's helped shape this and previous releases through their amazing feedback, whether on the feedback board or elsewhere, and everyone who's supported Consul on its path. What was once a novel party trick has evolved into the best file conversion (and now transformation) utility for macOS. And it's all thanks to you! Over the coming weeks and months, there's even more planned. Stay tuned!

• Fixed a bug causing embedded cover art to be removed during audio conversions

• Fixed a bug causing trials to instantly expire
• Fixed a bug causing macOS 14 users to not receive any app updates

• 🎵 New Audio Formats – Convert from & to WMA, Sun Audio (AU), True Audio (TTA) and WavPack
• 📹 New Video Formats – Convert videos to WMV, MPEG, MPEG-TS, M2TS and VOB
• 🎬 Audio to Video – Rename audio files to video formats like MP4 or MKV to wrap them in a video container
• 🌐 OCR Language Selection – Choose which language to use when extracting text
• 📄 More Document Formats – Convert from & to Org-mode, Jupyter Notebook, OPML, MediaWiki, AsciiDoc, Typst and man documents
• 🖼️ SVGZ Support – Convert compressed SVGs from & to other image formats
• Converted images are now smaller by default
• Several stability and performance improvements

• 🖼️ JPEG XL Converter – Convert JXL images to and from other image formats
• ⚡ Reduced App Size – Several converters were fully rewritten to a bespoke solution, making Consul 50-70% smaller
• Fixed a bug causing broken files when converting MOV videos
• Several stability and performance improvements

• Fixed an issue causing crashes during conversions on macOS 14

• Watched folders are now being tracked across renames
• Fixed an issue breaking multi-extension conversions for some users
• Slightly reduced app bundle size
• Made some UX improvements to onboarding

• 📝 Font Support: Convert between TTF, OTF, WOFF and WOFF2 font formats
• 🎞️ Subtitle Support: Convert between SubRip, SubViewer, WebVTT, MicroDVD and more subtitle formats
• 🎥 Extract Video Subtitles: Rename video files to subtitle formats to extract subtitle tracks
• 📦 3D Model Support: Convert between OBJ, STL, glTF, GLB, FLX, PLY and more 3D model formats
• Fixed an issue where global rules couldn't be overridden on a per-conversion basis
• Fixed an issue where renaming a file to an incompatible format would still prompt for a conversion

• Improved positioning of the menubar app when hiding the icon through a menubar manager
• License keys are now sanitized during activation to prevent copy/paste mistakes
• Fixed an issue with license key activation during onboarding when all licensed devices are already occupied

• 📝 PDF to Markdown Converter: PDF documents can now be directly converted to Markdown, preserving formatting
• 🎨 EPS ↔ SVG Converter: Convert EPS vector files from and to SVG files
• Improved Markdown to PDF/HTML converters including table support
• Fixed an issue with converting from and to AAC and FLAC audio files

• 📹 Additional Video & Audio Codecs – Use ProRes, H.265 (HEVC), AV1, VP9, FFV1, AC3 and EAC3 for encoding video and audio
• 📊 PowerPoint Support – Convert PPTX files from and to PDF using Consul's native converter or LibreOffice (if installed)
• Revamped PDF to DOCX converter for increased performance and decreased app size
• Excel converters can now use LibreOffice as well
• Some performance, stability & app size improvements

• You can now convert images directly to text files with automatic OCR
• Fixed a bug with converting XML files with nested dictionaries to CSV
• Fixed missing logs from conversion processes

• 🎨 SVG Support – Rasterize SVGs to images and vectorize images to SVGs
• 🔍 OCR – Optionally extract text from images and scanned PDFs, fully on-device
• ✨ Improved Architecture – Converters now run in their own process for better performance & instant cancelations
• 📝 Revamped DOCX → PDF Converter – New DOCX → PDF native engine with massive improvements over the old one
• 🖼️ Additional Icon Converters – Convert from and to .icns icons, and decode icons created with Icon Composer.app
• 📄 XML Support – Convert .xml files to other config formats and spreadsheets
• Revamped ebook converter, improving performance, stability and EPUB layout/compatibility
• Improved archive converter performance and stability
• Improved and faster file format detection
• Fixed flaky detection of some RAW image formats
• Fixed an issue with update sizes (the next update will be smaller again!)

• Confirmation pop-ups now show file previews for images and videos
• Reduced CPU usage in "Watch whole system" mode
• Fixes incorrect "Low disk space" warning when converting files on external volumes
• Minor layout improvements

• 📊 Excel Support – Convert XLS and XLSX files from & to CSV, TSV, JSON and more
•  macOS 14 Support – Consul now also supports macOS 14
• Original files can now optionally be preserved next to the converted one
• The confirmation pop-up now has "Show in Finder" and "Exclude this folder" actions
• System and cache files are now ignored in "Watch whole system" mode
• Fixed an issue with converting files on external volumes
• Fixed an issue causing the app not to detect file renames directly after onboarding
• Fixed "Watch whole system" toggle being unresponsive or stuck for some users
• Fixed cancelation of image conversions
• Fixed an issue with the onboarding layout
• Several stability improvements throughout the app
• Improved logging

• 📨 E-Mail Support – Convert between EML, EMLX, MSG and convert them to document formats
• Added logging, available through Window → Logs in the menubar after opening Settings
• Made plaintext format detection more stable (e.g. JSON, Markdown, TXT, etc.)
• Added support for the M4B extension for the M4A encoder/decoder

• 📝 Markdown Support – Convert Markdown files to and from HTML, PDF, and DOCX
• 🌐 HTML Support – Convert HTML files to and from PDF, Markdown, RTF, DOC, DOCX, and ODT
• 📚 E-Book ↔ Document Conversion – Convert EPUB files to HTML, PDF, and Markdown; convert HTML files to EPUB
• 📄 Plain Text, LaTeX & RST Support – Convert TXT, LaTeX, and RST files to and from HTML, Markdown, DOCX, PDF, and more
• 📝 New DOCX → PDF Engine – LibreOffice can now be used for improved DOCX → PDF conversions, if it's installed on the system.
• Improved multi-conversion UX
• Improved stability & layout of DOCX to PDF conversions using the Native engine
• Fixed an issue with restoring backups (undo)

🎉 Consul 1.0 is here! A lot of new features, quality-of-life improvements and more, including Conversion Settings, History and more.

• 🔧 Conversion Settings – One of your most requested features: Fine-tune conversions by setting the codec, quality, resolution and more, either as a default or on a per-conversion basis
• 📝 History – Conversions are now logged into a History available in the settings and can be reviewed from there
• 🗃️ Backups (Undo) – The new History screen also provides undo functionality through a brand-new backup system configurable through the settings
• 📁 Improved File Watcher – Consul can now watch your whole system and has a new Excluded Folders list (or continue using the Watched Folders)
• ✨ Multi-Conversions – Rename "image.jpg" to "image.png,webp" and the file will automatically be converted to both formats
• 📹 Video to GIF Converter – Videos can now be converted to animated GIF and WebP files
• 📊 CSV ↔ JSON/YAML/Plist Converter – CSV files can now be converted to common config formats and vice-versa
• The menu bar icon now provides a progress indicator
• Converting new files with wrong extensions (e.g. downloads) is now an optional feature that can be disabled
• The conversion cancelation system has been revamped, improving its stability
• You can now manage your license, add seats and renew your license at a reduced rate via https://getconsul.app/license
• Improved format & conversion overview on https://getconsul.app/formats
• A lot of bug fixes and stability improvements

• Fixed full disk access permission pop-ups appearing for temporary or system files

• 🖼️ Animated WebP Support – Animated WebP ↔ GIF conversions now preserve animation.
• 🧩 ICO Support – Added ICO conversion with largest-frame decoding and multi-size encoding.
• 🔧 CPU Load Configuration – You can now choose between low/medium/high profiles to control the system load during conversions
• Improved canceling & queuing behavior

• ✨ Fully Rewritten Converter Architecture – More supported conversions and massively improved conversion stability
• 📝 Image ↔ Document Converter – Convert from any image format to PDF and vice versa
• 💽 Metadata Preservation – Metadata, such as artists, cover images and EXIF data, is now preserved whenever possible
• Fixed issues with AAC and ALAC decoders & encoders
• Fixed issues with AVIF encoder
• Fixed issues with converting some RAW image formats
• Fixed an issue with the "Show in Finder" notification button

• Fixed a bug causing crashes for some users

• Conversions to AAC are now hardware encoded and faster
• Minor bugfixes

• Fixed trial showing as expired for some users after restarting the app

🎉 Document Support has arrived! Your most requested feature from launch week: Rename a PDF to DOCX (or vice versa) and it just converts – no more online converters needed.

• 📝 Document Support – Convert between PDF, DOCX, DOC, RTF, ODT
• 📦 Archive Converter – Convert between ZIP, TAR, and TGZ archive formats
• 📹 More video decoders – Convert from MPEG, M2TS, VOB, WMV, FLV and TS to supported formats
• 🖼️ More image decoders – Convert from RAF, ORF, RW2, PEF and PSD to supported formats
• Delta updates – Updates will now download faster

• Fixed progress indicator not appearing automatically for some conversions
• Some UI improvements

• 📚 Ebook Converter – Convert Kindle books (MOBI, AZW, AZW3) to EPUB
• 📹 MXF Decoder – Convert professional broadcast videos (XDCAM, DNxHD, ProRes) to consumer formats
• Fixed "Ask first" mode only converting one file when renaming multiple files at once
• Fixed YAML, TOML, and Plist conversions not triggering in some cases
• Multi-device licensing is now supported (if you'd like to upgrade your existing license, please reach out to [email protected] to get a discount)
• Improved UX for granting notification permissions

• Fixed trial showing as expired immediately after starting

• Finishing onboarding, clicking the Dock icon or re-opening the app now shows the menu bar app

• 📄 Config File Converter – Convert between JSON, YAML, TOML, and Property List formats
• 🎵 ALAC Encoder – Convert audio files to Apple Lossless for seamless Apple Music and iTunes compatibility
• 🎵 WMA Decoder – Convert legacy Windows Media Audio files to modern formats
• 🎵 CAF Support – Convert Core Audio Format files from Logic Pro and GarageBand
• 📹 3GP Decoder – Convert old mobile phone videos to modern formats
• The app size has been reduced by ~75%
• Fixed semi-transparent images appearing darker after converting to WebP
• Fixed WebP color output being inconsistent across different Mac displays
• Fixed filename collisions when backing up original files to Trash

• 🖼️ AVIF Converter – Convert AVIF images to and from other image formats
• 🖼️ RAW Image Decoder – Convert RAW camera files (Canon CR2, Nikon NEF, Sony ARW, Adobe DNG) to other image formats
• 📹 GIF Decoder – Convert animated GIFs to available video and image formats
• ✨ Redesigned Rules UI – The Rules Settings are now clearer and look more native under macOS Tahoe
• Moved app info and acknowledgements to the native About window

• Added "Check for Updates..." button to the menu bar
• Allow downloading latest licensed version when update entitlement has expired
• Upgraded to Swift 5.10
• Minor UI improvements

• The app can now be installed with a more lightweight, native Intel/ARM binary
• Added Acknowledgements screen
• UI improvements