# MiniMax Converter — User Guide

> Everything you need to know about MiniMax Converter. Step-by-step instructions for every feature.

Back to [home](https://minimax-converter.com/index.md).

## Getting started

1. Drag and drop one or more files onto the application window.
2. Choose an action: **Convert** to change file formats, or **Compress** to create an archive.
3. Select your target format from the available options.
4. Adjust quality settings if needed, then start the conversion.
5. Once complete, choose to keep or delete the original files.

## Image conversion

Convert between 60+ image formats including JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, SVG, RAW, and more.

**Supported formats**: JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, WebP, HEIC, AVIF, SVG, ICO, PSD, EPS, and 50+ RAW camera formats (CR2, CR3, DNG, NEF, ARW, …).

- **Quality** — use the quality slider to balance file size and image quality.
- **Compress** — reduce file size without converting.
- **Resize** — change image dimensions while maintaining aspect ratio.
- **Icons** — create favicons, PC icons (.ico) and Mac icons (.icns) from any image.

## Document conversion

Convert between office documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and data formats.

- **Office**: DOC, DOCX, ODT, RTF, TXT, HTML, EPUB.
- **Spreadsheets**: XLS, XLSX, ODS, CSV.
- **Presentations**: PPT, PPTX, ODP.
- **Data formats**: JSON, XML, CSV.

## PDF tools

A complete PDF toolkit for editing, converting, and managing PDF files.

- **Merge** — combine multiple PDF files into one. Drag and drop to reorder pages.
- **Split** — extract specific pages or split into separate files.
- **Rotate** — rotate individual pages 90° left or right.
- **Crop** — crop pages by setting margins or drawing a selection area.
- **Rearrange** — drag and drop to reorder pages within a PDF.
- **Watermark** — add text or image watermarks with adjustable rotation and opacity, OR remove existing text watermarks by search.
- **Redact** — black out sensitive content permanently.
- **Sign** — add digital signatures to PDF documents.
- **Compress** — reduce PDF file size while maintaining quality.
- **Lock/Unlock** — add or remove password protection (AES-256).
- **Metadata** — view and edit PDF properties.
- **OCR** — convert scanned PDFs to searchable text via Tesseract.
- **Page numbers** — add page numbers to your PDF.
- **Extract images** — pull all embedded images from a PDF.
- **PDF → Word** — convert PDF to DOCX via Visual, Clean, Hybrid, or Extract methods.

## Audio conversion

Convert between 20+ audio formats.

**Supported formats**: MP3, WAV, FLAC, AAC, OGG, M4A, WMA, OPUS, AIFF, APE, and more.

- Adjust bitrate (8–320 kbps) to balance quality and file size.
- For FLAC, choose compression level (0–8).
- Drop a `.cue` file to split an album into tagged tracks, or convert the whole album as one file.
- Drop multiple audio files and conversions run in parallel across CPU cores (leaving 2 free), with a "completed/total" progress counter and a Cancel button.

## Audio Restore (cassette / vinyl / field-recording cleanup)

Drop one or more audio files, click **Restore audio** (also available from Tools → Convert & Format → Audio Restore). Pick a preset:

- **Cassette** — strong hiss reduction, gentle high-end shelf.
- **Vinyl** — mild hiss + click reduction, neutral EQ.
- **Field recording** — wind/rumble filter + light noise gate.
- **Voice** — noise reduction tuned for spoken word; optionally routes through DeepFilterNet for stronger isolation when the model is installed.
- **Custom** — full slider control over noise-reduction strength, EQ, low-cut, high-cut.

A live preview is available for the Custom preset so you can A/B before committing.

## Video conversion

Convert between 15+ video formats with quality control.

**Supported formats**: MP4, MKV, AVI, MOV, WMV, FLV, WebM, GIF, 3GP, TS, M2TS, MXF, DV, and more.

- Use the quality slider to set the output quality (CRF or target bitrate).
- A progress bar with percentage shows real-time conversion progress.
- Optional hardware H.264 encoding via NVENC / AMF / QSV / VAAPI / VideoToolbox, with auto-fallback to libx264 if the GPU encoder fails.
- Extract text-based subtitles to sidecar `.srt` files per language without re-encoding.
- Cancel button stops an in-progress conversion.

## Subtitles & Lyrics (Whisper, offline)

The same offline Whisper engine handles two use cases:

- **Video → subtitles**: drop a video, click **Transcribe**, pick "Add timestamps" mode. Produces a standard SubRip (`.srt`) file next to the source.
- **Audio → lyrics**: drop an audio file, click **Transcribe**, pick "Lyrics form" mode. Produces a `.txt` with one line per spoken/sung segment and a blank line wherever silence between segments is longer than 2 seconds — exactly where verse breaks fall in songs.

Hardware-aware: on first transcribe the app detects what's available and downloads the matching whisper.cpp build — Core ML on Apple Silicon, CUDA on NVIDIA, Vulkan on AMD/Intel/older NVIDIA, CPU elsewhere. 99 languages with auto-detection. 142 MB base model downloads once on first use, cached locally.

## Email drop screen

Drop one or more `.eml` or `.msg` files. A small chooser screen appears with:

- **.pdf** / **.docx** / **.odt** — convert the email body to that format. The body is rendered with proper Croatian / Polish / Cyrillic etc. font support (DejaVu Sans is bundled). Attachments are embedded both inside the document package AND saved to a sibling `<filename>_attachments/` folder. The visible Attachments section at the end of the body lists every attachment with its size.
- **Extract** — the original behaviour: body and attachments dumped to a sibling folder.
- **Cancel**.

Multi-file drops apply the chosen action to every email in bulk.

`.pst`, `.ost` (Outlook) and `.olm` (Outlook for Mac) mailbox archives also extract to per-message folders.

## URL download (1800+ sites via yt-dlp)

Open System → Tools → Convert & Format → URL download, or just drop a URL on the app.

1. Paste a video URL (any of 1800+ supported video and audio platforms).
2. Pick an output folder.
3. Tick **Treat as playlist** if you want to download an entire playlist; leave it unchecked (default) for just the one video the link points at — even if the URL carries a `&list=…` parameter.
4. Click **Audio** or **Video** — the download runs, then routes the file into the standard audio or video conversion screen so you pick the actual output format there.

## Archive & compression

- **Supported formats**: ZIP, 7Z, TAR, GZ, BZ2, XZ, RAR (read), ISO, DEB, RPM, MSG, EML, OLM, PST, OST, and more.
- **Create**: select files, choose **Compress**, pick ZIP / 7Z / TAR / TAR.GZ / TAR.BZ2.
- **Extract**: drop any archive file and choose **Convert** to extract its contents.
- **Password protection**: 7Z supports filename encryption.

## Strip metadata (one click)

Whenever you drop one or more files whose format supports metadata removal — images (including RAW), audio, video, PDF, Word / Excel / PowerPoint, OpenDocument, EPUB — a **Strip metadata** button appears on the drop screen.

Click it, confirm the prompt, and every supported file in the drop has its EXIF / IPTC / XMP / ID3 / track / author / company / GPS fields wiped in place. Office Open XML and OpenDocument files also get a deep zip-rewrite pass so internal docProps and meta.xml fields are cleared, not just the surface exiftool-visible tags.

Files in formats without supported metadata are silently skipped.

## More screens — ~70 specialised per-format tools

Every drop screen has a **More…** button that opens a screen with extra format-specific tools.

- **Audio More** — Normalize, Trim, Concat, Fade, Pitch, Tempo, FX chain (reverb / echo / compressor / EQ), Loudness analyzer, Channel manipulator, Reverse, Resample, Silence split, Waveform render, Vinyl declick, Cassette EQ, A/B compare, J-card template, Album metadata batch, Audiobook chapterize.
- **Video More** — Trim, Concat, GIF export, WebP export, Extract frame, Screenshots grid, Crop, Rotate, Watermark, Reverse, Speed change, Boomerang, Side-by-side, Burn subtitles, Color grade, Stabilization, Timelapse from a photo folder, Slideshow with optional soundtrack.
- **Image More** — Strip-all metadata, Strip-GPS, EXIF rename, Geotag, Palette extract, ASCII art, Collage, Drop shadow, Vectorize, HDR merge, PNG → multi-resolution ICO, Lyric / quote card, Album art template, Perspective correction (four-point), Annotate, Steganography hide/extract (LSB), Focus stack, Copy metadata file→file, SVG optimise, PDF page → editable SVG.
- **Document More** — filters by file type so you only see what applies. Tools include OCR PDF, PDF tables → CSV, DOCX tables → CSV, PPTX text extract, Mail merge, Flatten DOCX changes, iCal viewer, vCard ↔ CSV, MSG → EML / attachments, MSG → PDF, Excel formula audit, DICOM viewer + PNG export, DOCX semantic (paragraph-level) diff.

## Background removal & AI upscaling

- **Background removal**: drop an image, click **Remove BG**, get a transparent PNG. Powered by rembg's U2Net pipeline; ~176 MB model auto-downloads on first run.
- **AI image upscaling**: drop an image, pick 2× / 3× / 4×, tick "Use AI". Two presets: photo (RRDB-23 weights) and anime (illustration weights). GPU via Real-ESRGAN-ncnn-vulkan when a Vulkan-capable GPU is available; CPU fallback otherwise.

## Tools menu — 70+ built-in tools, 8 alphabetised submenus

Open System → Tools.

- **Analyze & Inspect** — Regex, Text stats, File magic, Strings, Diff, Compare folders, Folder size, Duplicate finder, Aspect ratio, Age, Tip calculator.
- **Certificates** — Inspect / Convert / Generate sub-cascades, Verify chain, Local CA (mkcert-style).
- **Convert & Format** — 3D meshes ›, Fonts ›, Audio Restore, Base64, URL encoder, URL download, Case, JSON, SQL, Measurements, Timestamp, Epoch batch.
- **Create & Generate** — QR codes › (generator + WiFi/vCard/Email/Geo templates), Barcode, UUID, Color picker, Lorem Ipsum, Random data, Slug.
- **Files & Folders** — Bulk rename, Lock finder, Secure delete, Watch folder.
- **Network** — LAN discovery, DNS, TLS inspector, Public IP, HTTP headers, Wake-on-LAN, WHOIS, Local interfaces, Email headers, Port tester, HTTP file share, Ports reference.
- **Security & Cryptography** — Hash, HMAC, Password generator, Password hasher, Keypair, JWT, File encrypt/decrypt, Integrity monitor, OTP/2FA.
- **System** — Crontab, Linux permissions, Stopwatch.

The menu sorts alphabetically by the *translated* label, so the order tracks the current UI language.

### Favorites and Permissions

- **Favorites** (System → Settings → Favorites): pick any tools to surface as a top-level ★ menu shortcut.
- **Permissions** (System → Settings → Permissions, password-gated): hide individual tools or whole submenus from the Tools menu. The Tools menu itself disappears if every group is disabled.

## Settings

Customize MiniMax Converter to your preferences.

- **Dark / Light mode** — toggle between themes.
- **Language** — choose from 16. The interface updates instantly.
- **Resizable window** — toggle whether the app window can be resized.
- **Close to minimise** — make the close button minimise to the system tray instead of quitting.

## Related markdown

- [Changelog](https://minimax-converter.com/changelog/index.md)
- [System requirements](https://minimax-converter.com/requirements/index.md)
- [Landing page](https://minimax-converter.com/index.md)