Dinky

A small macOS utility that compresses images, videos, and PDFs. Drop files in, get smaller ones back.

For images: supports JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, HEIC/HEIF, TIFF, and BMP. Outputs WebP, AVIF, lossless PNG, or HEIC depending on your preference.

For video: export to MP4 with H.264 or HEVC and quality presets.

For PDFs: flatten pages (default) for reliable smaller files on most scans and image-heavy documents, or preserve text and links for a best-effort stream rewrite when size is secondary. Scan-like PDFs can optionally run Vision OCR first (on-device) to lay down a text layer, then your chosen flatten or preserve pass — born-digital PDFs skip OCR. Strips metadata (where applicable), respects max dimensions and file size targets for images, and saves next to the original by default.

Releases

1.x (from 1.0 on) was images only. 2.0 added videos and PDFs alongside images. Older 1.x DMGs and ZIPs stay on GitHub Releases for anyone who needs them; use the latest release for full format support.

About the developer

Hey! I'm Derek Castelli, a full-time freelance web designer working primarily in Webflow and Figma (and now more in Cursor and Claude). Image compression is a constant part of the job — every site build involves optimizing photos for fast load times, and doing that by hand in a browser or through a bloated app gets old fast. Dinky came out of that frustration.

Features

• Drag and drop — drop images, videos, or PDFs onto the window, the Dock icon, or the file picker
• Clipboard compress — paste a copied image straight into Dinky with ⌘⇧V; the hotkey works system-wide, even when Dinky isn't focused
• Compress from a URL — drop or paste a direct http(s) link to an image, video, or PDF; Dinky downloads it (max 500 MB) into a temp folder, compresses, and cleans up after itself
• Format conversion (images) — Auto, WebP, AVIF, lossless PNG, or HEIC; Auto picks WebP or AVIF per image
• PDF compression — flatten (default) or preserve text and links (qpdf + PDFKit); optional Vision OCR on scan-like documents for searchability before flatten or preserve
• Video compression — export to MP4 with H.264 or HEVC and quality presets
• Compression presets — save named presets with format, quality, limits, destination, watch folder, and filename settings; apply in one click
• Before & after preview — side-by-side or slider view to compare original and compressed (images)
• Watch folder — point Dinky at a folder and new supported files are compressed automatically; global or per-preset with its own folder
• Batch speed — cap parallel jobs: one at a time (Fast), up to three (Faster), or up to eight (Fastest)
• Batch order (optional) — start with the largest files first to finish the full batch sooner; default is smallest first for quicker early feedback
• Max width — resize on the way out with common web presets or a custo