I Got Tired Of Crappy Tool Sites, So I Built My Own (120+ Free Dev Tools)
Source: Dev.to
If you write code all day, you probably know this dance.
You’re in the middle of something, you just need:
- Decode a JWT
- Pretty‑print some awful JSON
- Test a regex
- Convert a Unix timestamp
- Encode or decode a URL / Base64 string
So you Google it, click the first result… and suddenly you’re dealing with cookie banners, newsletter pop‑ups, “create an account to continue”, and ads before you even see an input box. By the time the page settles down, you’ve forgotten what you were doing.
After running into that one too many times, I built Tool Vault – a bundle of 120+ small tools that stay out of your way.
👉 No signup. No onboarding. Just paste, get what you need, and bail.
Why I Bothered Building This
This started as a “weekend thing” and quietly snowballed. I kept noticing the same problems:
- Simple tools felt heavy
- Everything wanted my email
- Half the sites fell apart on mobile
- Many shipped data to a backend for no good reason
So I gave myself a few rules:
- Keep it fast. Pages should feel instant, even on bad Wi‑Fi.
- Do as much as possible in the browser. If it can run locally, it does.
- No accounts. One more login isn’t needed.
- Make it usable on a phone. Production issues don’t wait until you’re at your desk.
Once I had a couple of tools I actually used, it was hard to stop.
Some Of The Tools Developers Seem To Use Most
🔐 JWT Decoder
Paste a token, see what’s inside:
- Header and payload decoded
- Claims laid out clearly
All done in the browser, so you’re not sending tokens to a random server. Great for “why is this request unauthorized?” moments.
🧾 JSON Formatter & Validator
For when your logs or API responses are a single giant line:
- Formats JSON nicely
- Points out syntax errors
- Makes it easier to spot the weird field that’s breaking everything
🔤 HTML Entity Converter
Useful when you’re:
- Copying content between a CMS and templates
- Dealing with “ and
&everywhere - Cleaning up double‑escaped text
Convert entities ↔ clean text.
🧪 Regex Tester
Paste sample text, try a pattern, see matches instantly. Handy for:
- Log scraping
- Input validation
- Quick “does this pattern make sense?” checks
🔁 Base64 Encode / Decode
For when APIs Base64 everything:
- Encode text for headers / payloads
- Decode blobs to see what’s actually going on
Simple, quick, predictable.
🆔 UUID Generator
Click a button, get UUIDs. Handy for seed data, test IDs, or anywhere you need “random enough” identifiers.
⏰ Unix Timestamp Converter
Turn 1705075200 into a real date, and back again. Useful for sanity‑checking logs, schedules, or “seconds vs. milliseconds” mysteries.
🧮 Hash Generator
Generate MD5 / SHA‑1 / SHA‑256 / SHA‑512 hashes:
- Quick file / string checks
- Integrity verification when moving data
Runs client‑side, so nothing leaves your browser.
📅 Cron Expression Helper
Drop in a cron expression, and it tells you in plain language when it will actually run. Prevent accidental 3 AM job fires.
What I’m Trying To Do Differently
Plenty of sites offer similar tools. The point here isn’t uniqueness of the tools, but how they behave.
- Low friction – No login wall, no “sign up to see your result”, no “create a project first”. Most pages auto‑focus the input box so you can paste and go.
- Local first – Whenever it’s safe (JWTs, hashing, encoding/decoding, formatting), everything happens in your browser. No sensitive strings are sent to a backend.
- Ads that don’t punch you in the face – Ads exist (servers aren’t free) but they never cover the tool, never sit between input and output, and never break the mobile experience.
Real Situations Where It Helps
- You’re on‑call, someone pastes a JWT or timestamp into Slack, and you need to check it on your phone.
- A third‑party API double‑encodes things and you need to untangle Base64 + HTML entities + weird JSON.
- You’re working with data you’d rather not send to a random server.
- You just want to check a cron string or hash and get back to your editor.
These aren’t glamorous tasks, but they’re the glue that keeps everything else moving.
Want To Try It?
If you want a new set of “oh yeah, that site” tools to keep in your back pocket:
👉 Tool Vault — 120+ Free Tools & Calculators
Pick a tool, see if it fits into your workflow. If it saves you a few tabs and a bit of frustration, it’s doing its job.
I’d Genuinely Love Feedback
If you give it a spin, I’d be interested in:
- Which tools you’d actually bookmark
- Anything annoying or confusing in the UI
- Tools you wish existed that aren’t there yet
I’m treating this as a long‑term side project, so honest feedback from other devs is far more useful than guessing in a vacuum.
Thanks for reading—and if Tool Vault quietly saves you 30 seconds some night while you’re debugging something annoying, that’s pretty much the whole point.