Building an app that saves me 10k+ seconds

In my work, I often need to convert or compress image files.

Until recently, I would just google "image to webp", each time.

However, I needed to navigate ads, pop-ups, and clunky UX to get my final files.

I had a solution to my problem, just not a very good one…

That is when I decided to build Cradle: a local-only, superfast image conversion tool, built for macOS.

No auth, no popups, no paywalls. Just a streamlined utility tool.

It only took me about 6 hours (~21,600 seconds) to build Cradle.

I estimate that in any typical 7-day period, I used to average up to 30 seconds in wasted time per day navigating those clunky online image conversion sites.

That equals 10,950 seconds over the course of a full year.

Cradle will be ROI positive to me in less than 2 years.

Hopefully, if other designers use Cradle to save time too, the reduction in wasted human seconds could scale by orders of magnitude.

Regardless, this was a fun experiment in building a mac app for the first time.

You can download Cradle for Mac for free.