Stop Opening a Browser Tab to Convert Units (and 19 Other Small Jobs)

Count the browser tabs you open in a day for an answer you need for about three seconds. What time is it in Bangalore. How many grams is two cups of flour. What is 15% of 340. I need a UUID. I need a password. Is this grey readable on white.

Each one is a search, a page full of ads, a cookie banner and a number. Here is how to get most of them without leaving the keyboard.

First, what Spotlight already does

Spotlight is a decent calculator. Press ⌘Space, type 2+2 or 48 kg in lbs, and the answer appears. It handles common unit conversions and can show currency and some time zone results. For a lot of people that covers most of it.

Two things to know. Spotlight Suggestions sends what you type to Apple unless you turn it off in System Settings → Spotlight. And once you go past sums and conversions, it stops: no hashes, no UUIDs, no passwords, no QR codes, no colour checks, no "days until".

Answers in Dhito

Dhito is a search app for your files, and the same search box answers about 20 kinds of small question. The answer appears above your file results as you type, usually before the file search has finished. ⌘C copies it. Everything is worked out on your Mac except currency, which we will come to.

Below is each kind of answer with things you can type exactly as written.

Sums and percentages

• 2+2, 2 * (3 + 4), 10 / 4, sqrt(144)
• 15% of 340 → 51
• 51 is what percent of 340 → 15%
• percent change from 200 to 250 → +25%

Dividing by zero gets a plain message rather than "Infinity".

Units and cooking

• 48kg in lbs, 6ft in cm, 26 cm in inches, 100 c in f
• 2 cups flour in grams, 1 tbsp butter in g

The cooking conversion uses a table of ingredient weights, because a cup of flour and a cup of sugar do not weigh the same. That is why it asks what you are measuring.

Time zones and dates

• 3pm PT in IST
• 14:30 UTC to Tokyo
• now in Berlin
• days until dec 25
• age 1990-05-14

Abbreviations like IST are ambiguous (India, Ireland or Israel?), so Dhito picks the reading most people mean: IST is India, PT is US Pacific. Daylight saving is handled.

Developer and admin bits

• uuid → a random UUID v4. uuid v7 → a time-ordered v7.
• sha256 hello, md5 hello, sha1 hello
• base64 hello, base64 decode aGVsbG8=, url encode a b&c
• snake case Hello World → hello_world. Also camel, pascal, kebab, constant, title, sentence, upper and lower.
• random 1-100, random 16 for a 16-character string, coin to flip a coin
• lorem 3 paragraphs

Passwords

• password → a random password, with its strength
• password 24 → 24 characters
• passphrase 6 → six random words, easier to type and remember

These are generated on your Mac, with the strength worked out from how random they are. Nothing is sent anywhere, which is the minimum you should expect from a password generator.

QR codes and barcodes

• qr https://dhito.io → a QR code you can scan from the screen
• barcode 12345678 → a Code 128 barcode

Handy for getting a link onto your phone without sending it to yourself.

Colours and contrast

• #3b82f6 → a swatch, plus the same colour as RGB and HSL
• contrast #fff #000 → the contrast ratio and whether it passes WCAG AA and AAA

If you design anything, the contrast check alone saves a tab a day.

Words, screens and sizes

• define serendipity → the definition, from the dictionary built into macOS, so it works offline
• 1920x1080 → 16:9. 1920 at 16:9 → the matching height.
• us 9 in uk, women's eu 39 in us → shoe sizes

Currency, the one that goes online

• 40 usd in inr, $40 in rupees

Exchange rates change, so this one cannot be worked out on your Mac. Here is exactly what happens. Once a day, Dhito downloads a table of rates from a public rates service and converts from that copy for the rest of the day. The request is the same for everyone: it carries nothing you typed, no file, no path and no identifier. Every answer shows the date of the rate it used. If you are offline, it uses the last table and tells you it is out of date.

40 in inr on its own does not trigger it, because without a "from" currency it is not clear what you mean.

Why answers do not get in the way

A search box that turns everything into a calculator would be annoying. "q3 2024 report" should find your report, not try to do maths. So each kind of answer only appears when the query clearly has its shape, and the answers sit above the file results, not instead of them. If you were looking for a file, it is still there.

Is this worth switching for?

Probably not on its own. If you already use Spotlight, Raycast or Alfred and they do your sums, keep them.

Answers are a small extra in an app whose main job is finding your files by what is in them, and running tools on them. But if you are already using Dhito to find things, it is nice not to switch to a browser for the small stuff, and nicer that the password and the hash never left your Mac.