It's ffmpeg all the way down. I can't imagine what the internet would be if there weren't such a marvelous piece of software.
starkparker 3 days ago [-]
I get to be one of the lucky few to learn today that ffmpeg was ported (well, transpiled) to WASM. This is more specifically built on that port: https://github.com/ffmpegwasm/ffmpeg.wasm
This also means that despite being a locally hosted ffmpeg frontend, it's still slower than native ffmpeg and bound to WASM limits like file size (still a generous 2GB for images and audio, but not as viable for big video conversions).
Still weird that this project doesn't seem to acknowledge that anywhere.
TheSmiddy 2 days ago [-]
they may have updated the website since the numerous comments here but the about section acknowledges all the libraries they use
Libraries
A big thanks to FFmpeg (audio, video), libvips (images) and Pandoc (documents) for maintaining such excellent libraries for so many years. VERT relies on them to provide you with your conversions.
xnx 2 days ago [-]
Looks like that was added in the last day from what I can tell. Glad to see it, but still weird that they aren't links.
That's a whole true, creator Mr Fabrice Bellard, a 1000x developer, also create Qemu, another essential gem of software.
darknavi 3 days ago [-]
It really is crazy how true the 1000x statement is.
We use QuickJS (the JavaScript runtime he authored) in Minecraft (Bedrock) where even more developers use it to mod Minecraft. It's a huge pyramid of developers!
Checking out Bellard's website is a great high level list of works: https://bellard.org/
LoganDark 2 days ago [-]
i would hope that one day bedrock edition will support macos just like education edition does (which runs on the exact same engine), but i fear that microsoft might have bought mojang expressly to prevent that from happening
6yyyyyy 2 days ago [-]
You have your timeline confused. When Microsoft bought Mojang, the only version of Minecraft on PC was Java Edition. It wasn't under the next year that they released the Windows 10 Edition (which is what became Bedrock on PC).
LoganDark 22 hours ago [-]
I don't think that was a confusion of mine? Microsoft may well have bought Mojang to develop Windows 10 Edition and then once Bedrock Edition became sooo cross-platform they just. Happened to miss macOS. By total mistake. (A port even exists as part of Education Edition and they're not selling it as part of Bedrock Edition.)
darknavi 2 days ago [-]
Hopefully one day! It does seem like a hole in our line up.
pestaa 3 days ago [-]
WHAT!? Unbelievable productivity. I'm in awe (and a renewed impostor syndrome).
VTimofeenko 3 days ago [-]
That's kinda like being into sports (maybe even professionally) and comparing oneself to an Olympic champion. It's great to be inspired by them, but it's very important not to be discouraged by what they achieved. We are all standing on the shoulders of giants.
cortesoft 3 days ago [-]
Seems strange to me to feel imposter syndrome for not matching up to an elite talent… did you feel prior to this that you were the best in the world at programming, and now realize you aren’t? Is everyone who isn’t the very top of the top an imposter?
npodbielski 2 days ago [-]
Maybe he is smart and could do it but he is just very lazy and prefers to lie in bad playing games. That would cause him to feel that way when he realises that he could do more ;)
satvikpendem 3 days ago [-]
People use that term casually, don't read too much into the implications.
stavros 3 days ago [-]
And TinyC, and the Bellard formula for calculating pi.
mschuster91 3 days ago [-]
... and a fully working SDR implementation of the LTE phone standard.
The dude can wrap his head around literally anything. Him and Torvalds are truly exceptionally capable people.
miki123211 2 days ago [-]
Okay, here's a crazy idea.
The things he built are:
ffmpeg, which basically implements a bunch of specs for codecs
Qemu, which basically implement a bunch of specs for CPUs
TinyC / QuickJS, which basically implement a bunch of specs, mainly those for C and JS.
That LTE thing, which, surprise surprise, implements a bunch of specs.
He seems to be a God of turning specs into working code, not necessarily a GOd of programming in general.
mschuster91 2 days ago [-]
Yup, but you need to involve yourself deep into quite the diverse range of programming, computer science, math and physics questions to be able to even read the specs, much less implement them. Codecs involve highly arcane math, an emulator not only needs to take care about the CPU but a whole bunch of side chips and associated timings, compilers are an entire field of academic study, and to work with LTE or anything RF in general you need a solid background in RF hardware electrical engineering, RF propagation, antenna theory and god knows what else, just to be able to have a "testbed" that works with your test device but doesn't shut off service to everyone in a few hundred meters around you.
This kind of mental flexibility is what I really admire.
angra_mainyu 2 days ago [-]
It's just the average thing you learn going through EE or CompE, plus a knack for turning specs to code.
Don't get me wrong, I find him to be an elite dev, but more for the incredible ability to hold a spec in his head in sufficient detail - and do that multiple times.
Reading that list of projects is quite humbling. I've always wanted to make stuff like that.
thatcat 2 days ago [-]
Never heard of him, thanks for pointing this out.
hypercube33 3 days ago [-]
It just needs pandoc to do document conversions and we are golden
ukuina 3 days ago [-]
pandoc-wasm?
sergiotapia 3 days ago [-]
It is one of the wonders of the world. Such a gift that we get to use it for free, from end users like us to large corporations like Netflix.
metadat 3 days ago [-]
Actually, ffmpeg exists thanks to the legendary Fabrice Bellard. He's the rarest kind of programmer, stunningly capable and on a totally different wavelength of existence in terms of breadth of achievements. He made ffmpeg, incepted QEMU, and is a mobile / cellular communications guru.
I could tell from the list of file formats that it had to be a front-end for ffmpeg. Kind of disappointed, since I can already do that easily enough. What I was hoping for was a converter for 3D model formats, which is a real pain sometimes.
haswell 3 days ago [-]
With the recent findings [0] that some of the “free file converter” websites in the wild were actually injecting malware into the results as the first stage of various attacks, I’ve wanted to stand something like this up on a server for my family.
This looks like exactly what I’ve been looking for.
I'll hijack this to plug Stirling PDF[0], I have it running on a Raspberry Pi with docker compose and from time to time it's incredible helpfull to edit PDFs without sending them to a third party.
Wow, the FBI has some great tips to protect yourself from scams including:
> Take a breath, slow down and think.
ryandrake 3 days ago [-]
Honestly, I'm not sure why you need a web interface on top of ffmpeg. It just seems to be an easy avenue for malware.
haswell 2 days ago [-]
My 70+ non technical parents are not going to have much success with ffmpeg.
genewitch 2 days ago [-]
While I have 68 fewer parents, minimum, than you, I also have technical issues with ffmpeg and I pitched a transcoding setup to a F50 company - so I've used it.
oceanhaiyang 2 days ago [-]
So you have plus > x > parents?
immibis 2 days ago [-]
Nerds don't. Normal people do. Normal people also won't download and self-host some open source software just to convert one file...
maccard 2 days ago [-]
Nerd here. I somewhat regularly need to use ffmpeh to convert between formats and re encode (we get 16 tracks of 16 bit wav audio out of a mixer, and I re encode them to send them to someone else who does a rough mix, about once a month).
I still use ChatGPT for the command lines regularly like - “ want to combine these two tracks into a single stereo track with A on left, and B on right” which is super helpful for putting stuff in an SPD.
phito 2 days ago [-]
Phone
metadat 3 days ago [-]
It's cool the source code really is open and available:
AGPL licensed, which seems perfect for this kind of product:
The AGPL (Affero General Public License) is a type of free software license developed by the Free Software Foundation. It is similar to the GPL (General Public License) but with one key difference:
Network Use Clause: If you modify AGPL-licensed software and use it over a network (like a web app or API), you must also release your source code to the users who interact with it.
In other words, with GPL, you have to share your code only when you distribute the software. With AGPL, you have to share your code even if users are just accessing it over the internet (like using a SaaS product). AGPL was created to close the "SaaS loophole" in the GPL.
Does writing a library that does an RPC to AGPL licensed software count? Even if you don’t modify the AGPL code in any way?
stavros 3 days ago [-]
As I understand the license, it doesn't apply to clients, just the service itself.
szundi 3 days ago [-]
[dead]
3 days ago [-]
xnx 3 days ago [-]
Would be even cooler if the website gave credit to what it is built on.
jangxx 2 days ago [-]
It does though? I you click on the (i) button, there's a "Libraries" section.
3 days ago [-]
dr_kiszonka 3 days ago [-]
It is wonderful and useful and all that BUT the auto opt-in analytics information should be on the main page.
I appreciate you are using Plausible (good) and it is perfectly understandable and justifiable that you want to know how vert is used, but why hide it at the bottom of the settings screen? It just makes me trust you less. Yes, I could audit the source code for other surprises. That is not the point.
Please treat my comment as a suggestion / feedback. Otherwise, congratulations on an enormously useful and easy to use project!
api 3 days ago [-]
Why do such things need to be hosted at all?
I've got a few file converter apps on my laptop. They're faster and better and you don't need to stream the data off somewhere just to process and stream back, which is silly.
liotier 3 days ago [-]
A relevant audience are the corporate computing inmates, who cannot install anything locally... They are happy to find utilities wrapped behind some web front.
graemep 3 days ago [-]
There are already lots of online convertors. This is FOSS and a bit more trustworthy but very few people in corporate environments will care about that
api 3 days ago [-]
Ahh good point.
An often missed driver for the cloud-ification of everything is that it offers a way to escape corporate IT. Sending a 20mb file 2000 miles away to do something trivial to it and send it back is easier than getting permission to install an app.
maccard 2 days ago [-]
It really is. At a previous job, the approval process for a tool involved a questionnaire that rivalled a census, and a wait time of 4-6 weeks for approval. I literally never had any software refused via this process - most people just didn’t bother filling it in.
PeterStuer 3 days ago [-]
It doesn't send the file though.
Trufa 3 days ago [-]
What a silly take.
> Why do such things need to be hosted at all?
because: corporate computing inmates, who cannot install anything locally
Basically, denying or not seeing the practicality factor of web hosted solutions is either trying to be edgy or worryingly myopic.
liotier 2 days ago [-]
> Basically, denying or not seeing the practicality factor of web hosted solutions is either trying to be edgy or worryingly myopic
Are you unsatisfied with the myriad of Imagemagick, FFMPEG, sox or Ghostscript GUI front-ends ? What does a web deployment offer ? Even not taking privacy concerns in consideration, the local solution if better - I guess a one-off conversion might wish to eschew local installation, but such bread-and-butter operations are rarely one-off.
Or should we consider the market for a zip/7zip/rar/tar.gz file compression web front-end ?
palmy 3 days ago [-]
The reality is also that not everyone isn't technical enough to deal with `ffmpeg` directly. At some point I basically hosted hacked-together website which simply used `ffmpeg` under the hood so that my dad, who's not as technically literate, could easily convert his files. Now I don't have to do this anymore because I can just host a vert.sh instance:)
doubled112 3 days ago [-]
This isn't true for me.
My most powerful machine tends to be the home server, and some of my laptops are terrible.
XorNot 3 days ago [-]
I run a selection of things like this on my home network for my wife to use. It's handy to have their just be tools living on the network to use, particularly if you're setting up a new machine or using a work laptop off the guest network or the like.
barbs 3 days ago [-]
The conversion for this one happens all client-side - no streaming data to a server required.
If you're happy using your existing apps, you probably wouldn't see much use in this. But I can definitely see how the UI/UX would appeal to a lot of people.
imoreno 3 days ago [-]
Probably harder to monetize traffic and upsell subscription extras. I agree, if it's all done on the client anyway, it should just be a local app.
AnyTimeTraveler 3 days ago [-]
My common sense tells me: "If you aren't paying for the product, you are the product."
Am I the only one who finds it a bit weird, that they are hosting a the video conversion part of server with graphics cards etc. for free?
I see no way to support that long term, unless they are doing something more than the data gathering with Plausible that they have on their page.
Anything I missed, that explains this?
2 days ago [-]
handwarmers 3 days ago [-]
It's a great UI to ffmpeg - I wish they gave it some credit on their landing page.
franciscop 3 days ago [-]
At least they do in the Settings:
"The vertd project is a server wrapper for FFmpeg [...]"
mubou 3 days ago [-]
I wish it were more common for open source licenses to have an attribution clause, like Apache does with its (optional) NOTICE files. When you put years of effort into a work, you deserve credit for it.
Edit: Actually, using a library via a package manager would likely be considered "linking" and not a Derivative Work, so I don't think even Apache's clause would apply in many cases.
- ffmpeg (remote, via vertd): for video conversion, with an option for the hoster to use wasm ffmpeg instead with some limitations (performance, maximum file size, etc)
And from browsing the github, missing formats are usually caused by difficulties linking the libraries that handle those formats into the wasm libvps/ffmpeg
cbondurant 3 days ago [-]
This is definitely going in my bookmarks.
Though I think as long as video conversion requires uploading to a jobserver, you're probably better off just invoking ffmpeg directly. Would suffer a lot from upload and download times on files that large. Though I wouldn't be surprised if problems like that become minimal if/when the video conversions can also run pure out of WASM as well.
Tried a video, got "invalid digit found in string". I will stick with ffmpeg on termux I guess.
eniac111 3 days ago [-]
Really nice! I had this idea since years. A simple open source tool that may replace the random websites for file conversions in small and middle companies. The traffic from the search engine results may be redirected to an internsl tool with a proxy for example.
brontosaurusrex 3 days ago [-]
Is there a version of this that would support my custom presets for AVC/HEVC mp4 encoding with video filters like deinterlace/resize and similar (and/or audio filters like ebu R128)? (p.s. Also my usual input type is cinefrom/mov, which this one is not happy with for some reason)
androng 3 days ago [-]
please add HEIC: the default file format from iPhones
natebc 3 days ago [-]
This is just ffmpeg powered and it looks like some support was added fairly recently.
Another good option is to actually just use puppeteer (headless chrome)
dippi0 3 days ago [-]
If you need to perform one-off conversions interactively (like you'd do with Vert), I would suggest you to just print the page to PDF with any Chromium-based browser.
If you need to automate the conversion on a small scale, either Puppeteer or Playwright are excellent choices and are easy to self-host on any home server or VPS with enough resources to run a browser.
If you need to scale the automation or rely on it for business purposes, I'd suggest you to have a look at hosted services, there are plenty of them.
Shameless plug: I run https://yakpdf.com/, a hosted Puppeteer-based service. If you want to give it a spin, there’s a free plan on RapidAPI (https://rapidapi.com/yakpdf-yakpdf/api/yakpdf). It’s used in production by many and is one of the most trusted solutions on RapidAPI.
Happy to help if you have any questions!
Ametrin 3 days ago [-]
I can recommend https://pdfbolt.com. It is unfortunately not self-hosted but built with privacy in mind. I'm the founder.
koakuma-chan 3 days ago [-]
Nice view transitions!
cnych 3 days ago [-]
ffmpeg is so great~
nipperkinfeet 3 days ago [-]
HEIC nonsense from Apple supported?
blacktits69 2 days ago [-]
[dead]
virtualritz 3 days ago [-]
How is this different from image/graphics magick, ffmpeg, oiiotool etc?
Or: what am I missing here, why is this on the front page?
karamanolev 3 days ago [-]
As far as I can tell, what you're missing is the massive ease-of-use and approachability, especially for non-technical users, of a web-based graphical "convert X to Y" interface vs. facing command line ffmpeg, which they probably haven't heard of.
graemep 3 days ago [-]
There are already GUIs for ffmeg and most image editing applications can save in multiple formats so its still not clear to me what this adds
barbs 3 days ago [-]
I feel this is easier than those solutions in a lot of cases - mainly because you don't need to install anything. Just open website, drag and drop a file, pick target format, done.
graemep 3 days ago [-]
Which is only true if you are not interested in the “self-hostable” part and you installing an app is a significant difficulty.
Once an app is installed locally it is more convenient to use - that is why it is so common for apps to replicate (or just wrap) websites.
If you are not interested in the self-hostable part there are lots of online converters.
barbs 3 days ago [-]
Right, but those online ones are also usually covered in ads, don't run locally, and run the risk of infecting the output with malware.
titaphraz 3 days ago [-]
It's not clear to me why that's a problem?
FusionX 3 days ago [-]
It's a web service that can be used on any device without installation. Think in terms of usability for old, non-technical folks.
nonrandomstring 3 days ago [-]
All of that. A couple more thoughts. As a project it brings together
energy to a task/configuration: namely that of making sure all those
disparate command-line tools or bits of lib code are brought together
for the specific purpose of serving file translations from some spot
in a transactional fashion. So that's some value.
Why on the front page? That question might also have a non-technical
answer. What's going on in news and events? Who's been setting up file
translators and then "Dude I have over 4,000 soundfiles, pictures,
address-books..." ... "Whoah? Like. howdy manage that one?"
... "People just submitted it. Zuck fucks"
bigstrat2003 3 days ago [-]
Yeah I also cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would want a web site that converts files. Just install a desktop app to do the same (GUI or otherwise) and it will be more pleasant to use, and more performant. The Web is not a good application platform no matter how much people try to shoehorn it into being one.
filmgirlcw 3 days ago [-]
Ok, but imagine you’re in a situation where you don’t have the ability to install apps, or you’re temporarily on a platform you’re unfamiliar with and so you don’t know what GUI tools exist. This is why people wind up using web-based converters, which as another commenter noted, can be hijacked for malware.
A WASM solution might not be the most performant but it will be an option.
As for the web not being a good application platform, that ship sailed 20+ years ago and at this point, it’s hard to find any “native” apps that don’t share at least some similarities or core components as web apps, even if it’s just for UI. Although I personally would rather have a good native Mac app than a mediocre web app, I’d rather have a well-written web app than a mediocre Mac Catalyst app, and in many cases, than running an iOS app on the Mac. And I often prefer a web app or app built with web technologies to “native” apps built with GTK or Qt.
hamburglar 3 days ago [-]
People value not having to install anything, for various reasons.
dmd 3 days ago [-]
yeah you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
hamburglar 3 days ago [-]
Underrated comment
bee_rider 3 days ago [-]
For some reason even technical and linux-savvy people, (I’ve seen this on zoom calls) will google up an image or video converter. I don’t get it either, but if this provides an alternative to those awful ad-infested sites I guess it is an improvement.
Rendered at 15:01:46 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
That project has an interactive playground that essentially describes and demonstrates how it works: https://ffmpegwasm.netlify.app/playground
This also means that despite being a locally hosted ffmpeg frontend, it's still slower than native ffmpeg and bound to WASM limits like file size (still a generous 2GB for images and audio, but not as viable for big video conversions).
Still weird that this project doesn't seem to acknowledge that anywhere.
Libraries
A big thanks to FFmpeg (audio, video), libvips (images) and Pandoc (documents) for maintaining such excellent libraries for so many years. VERT relies on them to provide you with your conversions.
https://github.com/VERT-sh/VERT/commit/8f8ea34483cab76e27204...
We use QuickJS (the JavaScript runtime he authored) in Minecraft (Bedrock) where even more developers use it to mod Minecraft. It's a huge pyramid of developers!
Checking out Bellard's website is a great high level list of works: https://bellard.org/
The dude can wrap his head around literally anything. Him and Torvalds are truly exceptionally capable people.
The things he built are:
ffmpeg, which basically implements a bunch of specs for codecs
Qemu, which basically implement a bunch of specs for CPUs
TinyC / QuickJS, which basically implement a bunch of specs, mainly those for C and JS.
That LTE thing, which, surprise surprise, implements a bunch of specs.
He seems to be a God of turning specs into working code, not necessarily a GOd of programming in general.
This kind of mental flexibility is what I really admire.
Don't get me wrong, I find him to be an elite dev, but more for the incredible ability to hold a spec in his head in sufficient detail - and do that multiple times.
Reading that list of projects is quite humbling. I've always wanted to make stuff like that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard
https://newbeelearn.com/tools/videoeditor/
and this one also outputs ffmpeg command as well.
This looks like exactly what I’ve been looking for.
- [0] https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/denver/news/fbi...
- [0] https://github.com/Stirling-Tools/Stirling-PDF
> Take a breath, slow down and think.
I still use ChatGPT for the command lines regularly like - “ want to combine these two tracks into a single stereo track with A on left, and B on right” which is super helpful for putting stuff in an SPD.
https://github.com/VERT-sh/VERT
AGPL licensed, which seems perfect for this kind of product:
The AGPL (Affero General Public License) is a type of free software license developed by the Free Software Foundation. It is similar to the GPL (General Public License) but with one key difference:
Network Use Clause: If you modify AGPL-licensed software and use it over a network (like a web app or API), you must also release your source code to the users who interact with it.
In other words, with GPL, you have to share your code only when you distribute the software. With AGPL, you have to share your code even if users are just accessing it over the internet (like using a SaaS product). AGPL was created to close the "SaaS loophole" in the GPL.
Further reading: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/7578/what-are...
I appreciate you are using Plausible (good) and it is perfectly understandable and justifiable that you want to know how vert is used, but why hide it at the bottom of the settings screen? It just makes me trust you less. Yes, I could audit the source code for other surprises. That is not the point.
Please treat my comment as a suggestion / feedback. Otherwise, congratulations on an enormously useful and easy to use project!
I've got a few file converter apps on my laptop. They're faster and better and you don't need to stream the data off somewhere just to process and stream back, which is silly.
An often missed driver for the cloud-ification of everything is that it offers a way to escape corporate IT. Sending a 20mb file 2000 miles away to do something trivial to it and send it back is easier than getting permission to install an app.
> Why do such things need to be hosted at all?
because: corporate computing inmates, who cannot install anything locally
Basically, denying or not seeing the practicality factor of web hosted solutions is either trying to be edgy or worryingly myopic.
Are you unsatisfied with the myriad of Imagemagick, FFMPEG, sox or Ghostscript GUI front-ends ? What does a web deployment offer ? Even not taking privacy concerns in consideration, the local solution if better - I guess a one-off conversion might wish to eschew local installation, but such bread-and-butter operations are rarely one-off.
Or should we consider the market for a zip/7zip/rar/tar.gz file compression web front-end ?
My most powerful machine tends to be the home server, and some of my laptops are terrible.
If you're happy using your existing apps, you probably wouldn't see much use in this. But I can definitely see how the UI/UX would appeal to a lot of people.
Anything I missed, that explains this?
"The vertd project is a server wrapper for FFmpeg [...]"
Edit: Actually, using a library via a package manager would likely be considered "linking" and not a Derivative Work, so I don't think even Apache's clause would apply in many cases.
> Video uploads to a server for processing by default, learn how to set it up locally here.
The server is open source too: https://github.com/VERT-sh/vertd
- libvips (wasm): for image conversion
- ffmpeg (wasm): for audio conversion
- ffmpeg (remote, via vertd): for video conversion, with an option for the hoster to use wasm ffmpeg instead with some limitations (performance, maximum file size, etc)
And from browsing the github, missing formats are usually caused by difficulties linking the libraries that handle those formats into the wasm libvps/ffmpeg
Though I think as long as video conversion requires uploading to a jobserver, you're probably better off just invoking ffmpeg directly. Would suffer a lot from upload and download times on files that large. Though I wouldn't be surprised if problems like that become minimal if/when the video conversions can also run pure out of WASM as well.
Images, videos, documents, etc.
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/6521
https://git.ffmpeg.org/gitweb/ffmpeg.git/commit/a0821345eb31...
https://github.com/kleisauke/wasm-vips/issues/3
It does support AVIF and JXL. Hopefully Apple will abandon HEIC hehe.
If you finessed that `supportedFormats` array to add video formats, this would probably just work.
> Video uploads to a server for processing by default, learn how to set it up locally here.
The server code is open source too: https://github.com/VERT-sh/vertd
For this specific license, be extra-sure that you understand the license before deploying.
If you need to automate the conversion on a small scale, either Puppeteer or Playwright are excellent choices and are easy to self-host on any home server or VPS with enough resources to run a browser.
If you need to scale the automation or rely on it for business purposes, I'd suggest you to have a look at hosted services, there are plenty of them.
Shameless plug: I run https://yakpdf.com/, a hosted Puppeteer-based service. If you want to give it a spin, there’s a free plan on RapidAPI (https://rapidapi.com/yakpdf-yakpdf/api/yakpdf). It’s used in production by many and is one of the most trusted solutions on RapidAPI.
Happy to help if you have any questions!
Or: what am I missing here, why is this on the front page?
Once an app is installed locally it is more convenient to use - that is why it is so common for apps to replicate (or just wrap) websites.
If you are not interested in the self-hostable part there are lots of online converters.
Why on the front page? That question might also have a non-technical answer. What's going on in news and events? Who's been setting up file translators and then "Dude I have over 4,000 soundfiles, pictures, address-books..." ... "Whoah? Like. howdy manage that one?" ... "People just submitted it. Zuck fucks"
A WASM solution might not be the most performant but it will be an option.
As for the web not being a good application platform, that ship sailed 20+ years ago and at this point, it’s hard to find any “native” apps that don’t share at least some similarities or core components as web apps, even if it’s just for UI. Although I personally would rather have a good native Mac app than a mediocre web app, I’d rather have a well-written web app than a mediocre Mac Catalyst app, and in many cases, than running an iOS app on the Mac. And I often prefer a web app or app built with web technologies to “native” apps built with GTK or Qt.