Purveyors of fine freeware since 1972 · On the net since 1991
A hand-curated directory of freeware, built by engineers who actually use it.
ACME Laboratories indexes and maintains roughly fifty tools — encoders, converters, network utilities, and reference material — each one tested, described in plain language, and kept working. No trackers, no rankings for sale, no tool listed twice.
54 yrssince founding, 1972
1991on the net since
~50tools maintained
8categories
About the lab
Still run the way it started
ACME Laboratories began as an internal tools shelf in 1972 and went public on the net in 1991. The list has grown to roughly fifty entries since, and it is still reviewed by the same small group of engineers who build and use the tools day to day.
Every listing gets a plain description of what a tool does and who it's for — not a sales pitch. Entries are removed the day they stop working, not left to rot at the bottom of a page.
The directory
Tools, sorted by what they do
Eight categories, chosen the same way the original list was organized — by function, not by popularity.
Unicode DecoderCodepoint lookup
Unicode TransformationsNFC / NFD / NFKC
Diacritic StripperPlain-ASCII fold
Line Ending FixerCRLF / LF convert
Whitespace AuditorTabs vs. spaces
Text Diff ViewerLine-level diff
Developer Utilities
7 toolsSystem & Files
6 toolsNetwork & Internet
6 toolsGraphics & Media
6 toolsSecurity & Encryption
6 toolsRetro & Archive
6 toolsTutorials & Resources
6 tools
Contribute
Suggest a tool or report a broken link
The directory is maintained by hand. If you know a freeware tool that belongs here, or a listed link no longer works, write in — a person reads every message.