Your files stay on your Mac.
Convertessa reads your .dbk source and emits standards-compliant roff output ready to install as a man page. Sections, synopses, and cross-references are carried across without touching your original files. The entire conversion runs on your Mac — no upload, no account.
Drag one .dbk file or an entire folder into Convertessa. The app reads DocBook 4 and DocBook 5 XML without any configuration.
Choose Man Page (roff) from the output list. Convertessa targets the groff-compatible roff dialect used by macOS and Linux man(1).
Click Convert. Each .dbk file becomes a .man file written alongside the original. Run man ./yourfile.man in a terminal to preview the result.
Images, audio, video, documents, archives and eBooks — all converted natively, right on your Mac.
Pick a format you have — see everything Convertessa can turn it into.
Convert hundreds of files at once with per-type group defaults and individual overrides.
First-class support for HEIC, AVIF and WebP — encode and decode, both ways. Read JPEG XL and a dozen more modern formats too.
Drop files anywhere on the window. Native, instant, and exactly what you’d expect on a Mac.
Dial in compression, resolution and bitrate. Keep originals pristine or shrink for sharing.
Never overwrite a file by accident. Convertessa appends safe suffixes automatically.
Every job is logged locally. Re-run a previous conversion or revisit recent outputs in a click.
Bundle your converted files straight into a single ZIP, TAR or 7z — packaged and ready to share the moment a job finishes.
Right-click any file in Finder and choose Convert. A Quick Action handles it on the spot — no need to open the app first.
Shrink Convertessa to a tidy mini window that tucks into a corner — just a drop zone and a format picker for quick, one-off conversions.
No cloud. No account. No upload. Every conversion happens entirely on-device, using the power already in your Mac. What you convert is nobody’s business but yours.
Script conversions, wire them into your build, or batch a folder from the terminal. The same engine, no GUI required.
Read the full CLI documentation →Shrink Convertessa down to a small, focused window — drop, convert, done, with your recent conversions one click away.
macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon & Intel
New formats, new features, and fixes — every release, on the record.
No. Convertessa converts entirely on-device. Your .dbk files are read from disk, converted locally, and written back to disk — nothing is sent to any server.
Yes. Drop a folder onto Convertessa or run convertessa ./docs/ --to man from the terminal. Every .dbk file in the folder is converted in one pass and the .man files appear alongside the originals.
Convertessa emits the man(7) macro set, the groff-compatible dialect understood by man on macOS and Linux. No additional post-processing is required before installing the output.