What's New

We want to create an online course — and we haven’t decided yet what it should be about. So we’re asking you.

There’s probably something you’ve been meaning to learn for a long time: English, Korean, Arabic — or a subject you’d finally like to understand. You look at courses and find high prices, programs stretched over six months, and schedules you have to rearrange your life around.

We’re offering something different. Tell us what you want to learn, and we’ll build a course around you. For you, it will be free — whether you have Premium or not. Later the course may open to others too, either paid or for Premium members. But the person who suggested the topic won’t pay.

Age doesn’t matter, whether you’re still in school or retired. Need to learn more slowly, more simply, or with larger text? Tell us, and we’ll take it all into account.

We’re not doing this to make money. Helping people is our most important goal.

Email us at moc.acirbmet@troppus — we’ll reply and work out all the details together.

This week we’re building tools for drivers. After the digital service book, two more are now open.

The Fuel Consumption Calculator works out your mileage from a single fill-up or from a fill-up log using the full-tank method, the cost of a trip and each passenger’s share, how many times you’ll need to stop for gas on the way, and how far your tank will take you.

When to Change Tires shows which tires the law allows where you are today and, from the forecast and the last ten seasons, when the daily mean temperature will steadily cross 45 °F (7 °C). Legal dates and fines come with links to the laws, and you can add a reminder to your calendar.

Both take your car from My Garage: units and currency follow the country where the car is registered, and the tire rules follow its location. A fill-up or a tire change goes into the car’s log with one click, so you never have to enter the same thing twice.

Missing something? Write to us at moc.acirbmet@troppus or in the support chat if you have Premium.

We’ve built a digital service book for your car — a helper for anyone who owns one. It’s handy whether you keep track of every last detail or only think about your car when a warning light comes on.

Add your car — make, model, year, and mileage — and the log tells you what’s due and when, based on the manufacturer’s maintenance schedule: when to change the oil and filters, when to book a service, when to check the brake pads, and when to replace the fluids and the timing belt. Mark what you’ve already replaced and at what mileage, and it works out the next replacement on its own. It also keeps a log of fill-ups, repairs, and expenses, reminds you about insurance and tire changes according to your country’s rules, and turns it all into a PDF service book you can print for the shop to fill in or show to a buyer.

The schedule itself, by mileage and with the manufacturer’s document cited on every row, also has its own page: Maintenance Schedule. It shows which market’s schedule you’re looking at, and you can switch markets where a model has more than one.

If you add the car to your profile, the site’s other car tools fill in its details right away, so you never have to type the same thing twice.

The tool is new, so some models, schedules, or details that matter to you may not be there yet. We built it for ourselves — and we want it to work well for you too. Tell us what’s missing at moc.acirbmet@troppus or in the support chat if you have Premium, and we’ll talk it over and add it.

This week we’re building tools for drivers — stay tuned.

Open any feed and ask yourself: what here was made by a person, and what by a neural network? Not long ago, that was a question for philosophers. Today, it is a legal one.

We build tools so that anyone can work within the law — without a lawyer looking over their shoulder and without the fear of getting it wrong.

Some online services strip AI labels from files that really were created by a neural network. In our view, that is deception: people who watch and listen have a right to know what is in front of them.

We are not against AI. Neural networks often create truly high-quality work. But in the EU, China and Korea, labeling such content is already required by law. And people at large companies and government organizations need transparency and peace of mind: no fines and no doubts about what they have published.

That is why our AI Content Label tool doesn’t remove labels — it adds them. A visible notice and a metadata record, following the rules of the country you need, for photos, video and audio, in batches. And it checks the files you receive: whether they carry a label, who signed the Content Credentials, and whether the file was changed after signing.

Technology can help tell the truth. We choose that side.

A few years ago I owned a recording studio. People rented expensive equipment for an hour or two to record songs, jingles, beats and commercials. Afterwards they often asked for small changes: a bit quieter here, a slightly different sound there. We helped, but we wanted to take on new projects, not rework finished ones. So we built our first online tools to let people adjust a recording themselves.

Soon they were used even by people who had never recorded with us. We sold the studio and put the money into this site.

At first there were no limits. As more people came, our costs grew with them. That is how daily limits and Premium came about.

What you should know about Premium:
— it is not a subscription: one payment for 3, 6 or 12 months, and nothing is ever charged automatically;
— payments are handled by Polar, our Merchant of Record: it takes the payment, issues the invoice and handles local taxes. You enter your card on Polar’s checkout page, and we never see or store your card details;
— if you change your mind, we refund the unused part of your term.

With Premium you get higher limits, your jobs on our servers go first in the queue, there are no ads, and you can chat with support. Without Premium the site keeps working, just with daily limits.

We put the money from Premium back into the project: into servers and new tools. That is why there are so many of them now.

If something isn’t working right, let us know. We read every message.

A neural network colors black-and-white video by guessing what color the sky, grass or a face usually is. It cannot know what color a tunic, a flag or a streetcar actually was. Now you can tell it.

The Video Colorizer has a new “Object colors from a reference” block. Tap an object in the frame or draw a box around it, then set its color: from the palette, as a HEX code, or from a color photo of the same kind of object. Faces caught in the selection along with the uniform are taken out on their own, and anything else extra goes with the “Remove extra” button. Then press “Track through the video”, and the object is found in the rest of the frames on its own. The film’s own light and shade stay, so the color doesn’t look like a sticker.

Before After

Drag the handle: on the left, a 1945 newsreel frame as it is; on the right, the tool’s result. The cross’s color was set in “Object colors from a reference”; the neural network colored the rest.

The coloring model is new too: it was fine-tuned on photographs from 1909–1945, so old newsreels stay gray less often. Object tracking works in Chrome and Edge on a computer. To see a finished clip, check the examples on the tool page. For photos, the same job is done by Object Color Changer for Photos.

We built tools for people who go fishing and hunting.

Fishing Forecast: hour by hour and for each species separately, with the reasons: pressure, water, wind, moon.
Lake Ice Thickness: how much ice may have grown from frost and snow; the model is checked against 12,000 real measurements.
Fishing Knots in 3D: tying step by step; turn the knot, slow it down and watch it cinch.
Ballistic Calculator: bullet drop and scope clicks for your conditions, with the weather at your location.
Shooting Targets: true-scale printable targets, and a photo of a shot target turns into group size and scope clicks.
More in Hunting & fishing.

This is part of a bigger effort: we're tuning tools for hobbies. Your profile now has a Hobbies field, so mark yours. That shows us which hobbies are popular and which tools to build next, and over time maybe something useful made just for you.

You know how this site gets built: I make things, you try them and tell me what’s wrong. That’s how it grew to more than 950 tools. We’re building a section where you can earn money the same way — Experts.

The idea is simple: anyone who knows their field can advise people by video, audio or chat and get paid for it. A Korean teacher, a psychologist, a yoga instructor, a mechanic people call for a second opinion — each gets their own page, schedule, bookings and reviews.

To be honest, the section is still rough. For the first couple of years there won’t be many clients, and that’s fine. What matters now is making it convenient, and we can only do that together with you. We want to know:
— what’s awkward when you fill in your page;
— which buttons and settings are missing;
— what you like on other platforms that isn’t here;
— what annoys you, even if it seems minor.

We don’t take a commission — at least not until we’ve gotten everything right. We’re not chasing money: what matters to us is that you earn here.

Create your expert page, walk through the site as a client, and tell us in the comments under this post what to fix. I’ll read every note.

At work while your baby is home with a grandparent or a nanny? An old phone, tablet or laptop in the nursery becomes a baby monitor, and your phone becomes the parent unit. Nothing to install, and any internet connection will do.

Sound and video travel between your devices encrypted: even when a relay carries them, it sees only ciphertext. Neither we nor anyone else can watch or listen to the nursery, and we don’t record sound or video. Up to three devices can listen, say both parents’ phones and a tablet in the kitchen. They join with a code before you start; after that no new device gets in, even with a forwarded link.

With a night-light on, the camera switches to night mode by itself: the picture turns a clean black and white. Crying raises an alert, and if the connection drops, the phone sounds an alarm and reconnects on its own.

Premium adds My baby monitor: a permanent link your family’s phones join with one tap, no code, from anywhere. Alerts reach your phone even with its browser closed; the nursery laptop carries on by itself after a browser restart, and in the morning you get a night report as a PDF: when it was noisy and when the connection dropped.

When you're bored, training your brain beats scrolling a feed. We built three brain games, and each one teaches you to think rather than guess.

Sudoku: five levels graded by solving technique; a hint doesn't reveal the digit, it explains the move. There's a daily puzzle and printable sheets.
Minesweeper: boards are solved by logic from the very first click, with no 50/50 guesses, and after a loss you can see where the safe move was.
Solitaire: Klondike, Spider and FreeCell; above the table you can see whether this deal can still be won.
All three work on a phone, a tablet and a big screen, including full screen.

And to argue less at home about who didn't do what, there's the Chore Chart. Add chores, rotate them or give them to one person, and tick off what's done: everyone sees their chores for today, and kids don't need an email. You can now add your relatives to Family in your profile on the site and invite them to the shared chart with one tap. An old tablet in the kitchen becomes a shared board.

There are now more than 950 tools on the site, and we try to make every one of them comfortable on any device: phones and tablets, laptops and desktops, TVs and even smartwatches.

But we missed one thing. On very large monitors — 32 inches and up — and on curved ultrawide ones, the tools use only part of the screen and the rest stays empty. The site works, but it isn’t designed for that width yet. A single setting won’t fix it: each tool has to be reworked by hand and tested on a screen like that. The first ones are done; hundreds are still ahead.

So we’re asking those of you who have such a monitor. If something feels awkward — a button covers something, a setting is missing, the workspace is too small, or we simply didn’t think something through — let us know. And please name the tool you use: we’ll rework that one first.

One more new screen: Apple has just introduced HomeView, a smart home display. We’ll work out how to adapt the design for it as well.

Not sure what monitor you have? Open What Is My Monitor: it shows your screen’s diagonal, resolution, refresh rate and model. Press “Copy report” and paste it into your message — that way we’ll see your screen right away.

How to reach us: if you have Premium, write straight to the support chat — the button is in the corner of the screen. If you don’t, email us at moc.acirbmet@troppus.

We promised games for people who can’t see the screen. Here they are, and anyone can play.

With a screen reader
• Battleship — every square announces itself: move with the arrow keys and fire with Enter.
• Chess and Checkers — the board is read square by square: arrow keys to move around, Enter to make your move.

By ear
• Guess the Country by Sound — a street, a market or a train station somewhere in the world; type the city or the country. On the same page: Guess the language.
• Musical Ear Trainer — intervals, major and minor, chords and a perfect pitch test on piano sounds.

Our site is running steadily, with no outages, and we do what we promise. We hurried to keep our word, so the games may still have bugs. If something doesn’t work right, write to us at moc.acirbmet@troppus — we’ll fix it. Ideas for new games are welcome there too.

We’ve launched an online e-book reader. Drag your books onto the shelf and they open right in the browser, on the page where you stopped last time.

What it can already do:
• EPUB, FB2, MOBI, AZW3, PDF, DjVu, CBZ and CBR comics, plus TXT, DOCX and RTF;
• bookmarks, color highlights and notes;
• day and night reading themes, fonts, margins and line spacing;
• reading aloud with the current sentence highlighted and a sleep timer;
• tap-to-translate for words and Wikipedia lookups;
• stats: minutes read, days in a row, a yearly goal;
• “What happened so far” — a short recap of what you’ve read, with no spoilers.

Your library is kept in your browser, and the Save library button moves it to another device along with your bookmarks and notes.

This is the first version, and we really need your help. If you read e-books, open one of yours in the reader and tell us what’s missing — a feature, a format or a setting. Write in the comments under this post or use the Share Your Idea button at the bottom of the reader’s page. We’ll be glad to add what you actually need.

Over the past two weeks we haven’t just been building new tools — we’ve also fixed a lot, including mistakes we made ourselves earlier. A few examples:

• Trim Audio: fades are now smooth, with no steps;
• Vocal Remover no longer leaves vocals in the instrumental;
• Archive Extractor now unpacks Windows ZIPs with accented or non-Latin file names;
• Video Editor no longer fails on videos made from cut clips.

Our tools get better every day, largely thanks to you. Thank you for reporting bugs! We read every message and try to fix things the same day. If something isn’t working right, click “Tool not working?” below the tool.

And so you don’t leave empty-handed, try our recent Animated Greeting Cards. Pick an occasion and type a name — the lettering appears in gold and shimmers, with snow, petals or confetti swirling around it. A greeting is suggested in one click, and you can add your own song or voice. Save the card as a video, GIF or picture for messengers and social media — or send a link: the recipient opens an envelope and the music starts.

Classic cartoons were drawn one frame at a time: sheet after sheet, the character nudged a little on each, then the drawings were shown in a row — and the picture came alive. Today a neural network assembles a clip in seconds, but the pleasure of drawing a line yourself and watching it move is still here.

For those who enjoy exactly that, we rebuilt the Frame by Frame Animation tool. Draw a frame, add the next one — the previous frame shows through like tracing paper, so you can see where the motion should go. There is a brush, an eraser, a fill bucket, shapes and a selection tool: move a part of the drawing, rotate it or carry it to another frame. The background is drawn once and stays under every frame, and each frame can have its own duration.

It works on a phone too: draw with a finger or a stylus, pinch to zoom. A finished cartoon is saved as a GIF or, where the browser can encode it, as an MP4 video; an unfinished one is kept for you to come back to.

Not sure where to start? Open the example — a bouncing ball in twelve frames, every animator’s first exercise. Give it a try: it may turn out to be your thing.