Changelog

Video conversion and compression are faster, especially on powerful Macs with lots of cores. Picmal now runs a few video encodes side by side instead of…

Two new audio formats you can convert to and compress: EAC3 (Dolby Digital Plus) and MKA (Matroska audio). You can also open many more audio files to convert…

Large and animated WebPs convert and compress much faster again. They no longer fail with an out of memory error or stall for minutes — a single big file now…

Fixed audio and video conversion in the picmal cli command line tool. It used to hang forever when run directly in a Terminal; now those jobs run and finish…

Picmal now has a command line tool. Convert and compress images, audio, and video straight from the Terminal, using the same engines as the app. Run picmal…

Embed album art into audio automatically. Turn on "Embed cover art from the source folder" in Settings → Audio and Picmal looks for a cover image next to each…

See an estimate of a video's compressed size before you run it, so you know roughly how much space you'll save.

Watermarks were sometimes skipped on a few files in a batch. Fixed. Every image gets the watermark now.

MOD camcorder videos now convert

Added support for converting MOD camcorder videos (JVC, Canon, Panasonic) to MP4, MOV, AVI, MKV, MPG, and GIF.

Fixed a crash on Intel Macs

Fixed the crash some Intel Mac users were hitting on launch. If 1.5.5 wouldn't open for you, this build should.

Save your own custom compression presets for images, audio, and video. Tweak the settings you like, hit "Save as preset", give it a name, and it shows up…

Save outputs in a subfolder beside each source file. Turn it on in Settings → Output, type a name (e.g. "compressed"), and every conversion or compression for…

Watched folders now use native macOS notifications

The notch progress overlay is gone. Watched folder activity now comes through as regular macOS notifications, and they all collapse into one entry in…

Fixed larger WebP files failing to convert to GIF. Animated and high resolution WebPs now get a 5 minute conversion ceiling instead of being killed at 2…

The menu bar now includes quick controls: open a file picker with ⇧⌘O, and adjust clipboard behavior inline. On Copy mode (Compress / Convert / Compress &…

Redesigned Settings window

The Settings window has been rebuilt from the ground up for a cleaner, more native macOS feel.

You can now rename output files using EXIF metadata. Set a pattern in Settings → Output and Picmal fills in the tokens from each file's metadata as it…

The watermark section got a proper pass. The visual glitches that snuck in with 1.4.7 are gone, alignment behaves, and the presets UI no longer fights you…

There's a new film icon next to every video. Click it, drop in an SRT or VTT, and the subtitles get baked right into the output. No sidecar file, no player…

Settings got a redesign. Things are where you'd expect now, and a few toggles nobody was using quietly left the building.

Batch conversions could hang forever, stuck at 99% or 0%, if you threw enough files at them. Fixed. Your fans should also stop spinning after conversions…

You can now convert audio files to the same format they're already in. Sounds pointless, but it's how you resample: FLAC to FLAC at a different sample rate,…

Converting MP4 to GIF fixed

MP4 to GIF conversions could produce broken or half finished output, especially with variable frame rates or weird encodings. Fixed.

Corrupted video files (missing moov atom, truncated streams) now get a clear error message instead of silently failing. The error UI has been cleaned up too.

JPEG compression was silently producing truncated output. Fixed. Also killed the high idle CPU usage, which turned out to be a pile up of aggressive clipboard…

Click the screen icon on any processed file to open a before/after slider. Useful for checking whether your quality settings are too aggressive or too…

Picmal now remembers your last output format per input type. If you always go HEIC to JPG, it stops asking.

WebP to GIF now preserves every frame in animated files, and static WebP conversions no longer fail randomly.

Minor fixes and improved licence handling

Small maintenance release. Licence activation handles edge cases better, plus a few minor bug fixes.

Three metadata modes: strip everything, keep essentials (orientation, colour profile, copyright), or preserve all. Handy when you want privacy without losing…

Drop files and folders straight into the menu bar icon to convert without opening the main window. Fastest way to handle a few files.

Picmal could freeze on corrupted or unusually complex files. It now skips them and moves on to the next file in the queue.

Crash detection with Sentry

Sentry is now integrated for automatic crash and error detection. When something breaks, we know about it immediately.

Improved PNG and SVG compression, macOS 14 crash fixes

PNG and SVG compression produces smaller files now, with no visible quality loss. If you use these for web assets or icons, you'll notice.

Better compression across all formats. Smaller files, same visual quality.

Watched folders: pick a folder, set your rules, and anything you drop in gets converted or compressed automatically. Set it and forget it.

Drag files onto the dock icon to start converting without opening the window. Files now persist when you switch between Convert and Compress tabs.

Audio and video conversion presets: save your settings, reuse them with one click. HEIC to WebP is now supported, and metadata stripping works across images,…

Sharper PDF output. You can now open files via File Open or Command+O.

Colour space conversion: sRGB, Display P3, Adobe RGB, ProPhoto RGB, Rec. 709, or Rec. 2020, with proper ICC profile embedding. Click the icon in the Size…

EPS to SVG and AI to SVG conversion

EPS to SVG and AI to SVG conversion. For when you need to get vector files out of Illustrator's proprietary formats.

Video and audio files now show conversion speed and estimated time remaining. Video conversions are faster and lighter on memory, especially for long files.

Multi-select fix and compression savings accuracy

Fixed a bug where multi select was broken for audio and video files — the format dropdown now populates correctly when selecting media files via checkbox.…

Advanced mode checkbox works again, and Advanced mode is now available in both Conversion and Compression. Tab bar text truncates properly.

Batch image resize with five modes: percentage, fixed dimensions, max dimensions, width only, or height only.

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A big format expansion. 18 new formats now support conversion: JP2, PICT, QTIF, SGI, TGA, JXL, DDS, EXR, PBM, PGM, PPM, PNM, PCX, XBM, XPM, QOI and PSD.

Small fixes

A quick patch with small bug fixes.

Drag-and-drop crash fix

Fixed a crash that occurred when using the drag and drop view.

Small fixes

A quick patch with small bug fixes.

SVG compression is here, and PDFs now convert every page instead of just the first. Drag and drop crash fixed. General performance improvements.

Conversion and compression performance boost

Faster conversion and compression across all formats.

Licence activation required

Starting from this version, you'll need to activate your licence within the app. Retrieve your licence key from app.lemonsqueezy.com/my orders and activate it…

Small fixes and performance improvements

Minor bug fixes and performance improvements.

Auto compress mode (Preferences Files): drop files and they start compressing immediately. No buttons.

Compress mode

Dedicated compress mode. Shrink JPG, WebP, PNG, GIF, TIFF, AVIF, and PDF files without converting them to anything else.

Default format fix and stability improvements

Default format settings weren't sticking in some cases. Fixed, along with other small reliability improvements.

Batch format selection and conversion notifications

Select multiple files and apply one output format to all of them at once. No more setting each file individually.

Default output formats and dark mode

Set your preferred output formats once in settings and Picmal applies them automatically on every drop.

Built in updates. No more manual downloads from Gumroad. Preferences Check for Updates.

Custom prefixes and suffixes for converted filenames. Handy for organising batches or adding timestamps. Set them in conversion settings.

Metadata removal, better window resizing and AVIF fix

Metadata removal during conversion: EXIF, GPS coordinates, ICC profiles, XMP, and IPTC. Strip it all before sharing photos.

SVG input support. Convert vector icons and illustrations to PNG, JPEG, or other raster formats.