When Scott suggested I cover a new open-source app for Linux on the basis it is “like Microsoft PowerToys for developers,” I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d be writing about — or why.
But after reading the website for DevToys, which describes the app as a “Swiss Army knife for developers,” things made a lot more sense.
It’s basically a grab-bag of common developer tools baked into a single, offline-friendly utility.
DevToys includes 30 time-saving tools
Indeed, DevToys includes 30 tools in total, each aiming to “help with daily development tasks”. They should help developers save time, effort, and the frustration of having to bounce between a myriad of individual apps, tools, and websites.
Plus, a number of the tools provided could prove handy to non-developers too, e.g., comparing text, case converting, re-ordering lists alphabetically, generating placeholder text, compressing JPEG and PNG images, etc.
DevToys 2.0 offers 30 tools, including: –
- Converters for JSON <> YAML, date, number bases
- Encoders/Decoders for HTML, JWT, Base64, GZip, QR codes
- Formatters for JSON, SQL, XML
- Generators including hash, checksum, Lorem Ipsum, passwords
- Graphics tools like a colour blindness simulator, image compression/conversion
- Testers for JSONPath, RegEx, and XML
- Text helpers to preview markdown, compare text, change case, reorder
DevToys also boasts ‘smart detection’ to suggest the best tool(s) to use based on current clipboard contents, offers a separate CLI version, and is extensible – anyone can build their own tools and make them available for others of the app to install.
A well-stocked Settings panel supports customizing appearance, behaviors, and fine-tuning the text editor, e.g., set the font, show/hide line numbers, line highlight, word wrapping, etc.
The developer has written about the journey from Windows-only UWP app to cross-platform tool, touching on the challenges, compromises, and considerations involved in building a cross-platform .NET app that works on macOS and Linux in addition to Windows.
While the DevToys Linux app uses a custom-built GTK wrapper, the core UI itself is not built in GTK. Don’t expect a seamless match with your other GTK apps, nor a UX that follows the GNOME HIG.
System integration apparently includes automatic light/dark mode detection but, on my Ubuntu 24.04 LTS install, that doesn’t work. Helpfully, a manual theme mode setting is included.
Download DevToys for Linux
Testing DevToy’s text tweaking tools
Others, grab the latest build from the DevToys Github releases page or website download page.
There’s a choice of DEB installer or binary build for Ubuntu users, but note that the 2.x series is badged as ‘pre-release’ software for the moment.
Don’t want to install an app for this? Someone loved the idea of DevToys but not the form, so built a web-based fork named WebToys. It works in most modern web browsers and provides most (not yet all) of the utilities and helpers present in DevToys.