Your files stay on your Mac.
Man pages are written in roff, a typesetting language built for terminal rendering. Converting them to reStructuredText maps headings, inline styles, and cross-references into RST equivalents ready for Sphinx, GitHub rendering, or plain-text editing. Convertessa reads the roff source directly on your Mac — files never leave the machine.
Drag one .man file or an entire folder of man pages into Convertessa. Batch mode processes a whole section — man1, man3, or any directory — in a single pass.
Choose reStructuredText from the output format list. Convertessa maps roff macros such as .TH, .SH, .TP, .B, and .I to their RST counterparts automatically.
Click Convert. The resulting .rst files land in the same folder, ready to drop into a Sphinx project or commit to version control.
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.
Convertessa maps the most common man page macros — .TH, .SH, .SS, .PP, .TP, .IP, .B, .I, and .BR — to their reStructuredText equivalents.
Yes. Point Convertessa at a folder and every man page inside is converted in one pass: convertessa ./man1/ --to rst. Output files appear alongside the originals.
No. Convertessa writes new .rst files and leaves the source .man files untouched.