Running OxiPNG, SVGO, rembg and FFmpeg in a browser tab: what actually worked
A lot of the best file tools are command-line programs. OxiPNG shrinks PNGs losslessly, SVGO minifies SVGs, rembg removes image backgrounds, and FFmpeg does everything to video. They're excellent, but each one asks you to install Rust, Node, Python or a native binary first. That's fine on your own machine, and annoying on a locked-down work laptop, a Chromebook, or when you just need to do one…
Running OxiPNG, SVGO, rembg and FFmpeg in a browser: what actually worked
Optimizing image formats like PNG, SVG, and video files used to require installing command-line tools like OxiPNG, SVGO, rembg, and FFmpeg. However, a developer built a small site with browser-based tools that perform the same functions. Here's how it works.
OxiPNG, a PNG optimizer written in Rust, is compiled to WebAssembly and self-hosted on the site. The process is simple: read the file into an ArrayBuffer, call optimise(data, level), and compare sizes. If the optimized file isn't smaller, the original is kept. Levels above 4 are not recommended due to slow processing times in the browser.
SVGO, an SVG minifier, is run with preset-default and multipass options. Users can adjust the precision. Note that removing the viewBox is now an opt-in feature with a warning. The preview shows the SVG without whitespace, but the downloaded file is the original SVG minus whitespace.
rembg, a Python tool that uses U²-Net models for background removal, is integrated using ONNX Runtime Web. The small model is bundled with the site, while the larger model is downloaded on-demand from Hugging Face. The sensitivity slider adjusts the mask, not the alpha matting of rembg.
FFmpeg, a powerful video processing tool, runs in the browser using FFmpeg.wasm. The site starts with a stream copy to mute a video, taking only a few moments even in WebAssembly. If the copy fails, it re-encodes the video with x264. The tool is single-threaded and works well for short videos but struggles with larger files.
The pages include the engine name, version, license, command, and differences from the original tool. This transparency builds trust and aids developers who might eventually use these tools in scripts. The site is available at onemilliontools.com, and the source code is free to use.
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