Why
Converting a file usually means opening an app or uploading it to a website you don't control. DragWheel puts a radial menu right under your cursor while you are already dragging the file, so converting a HEIC photo to JPG, compressing a video, or turning a folder into a 7z takes one gesture, and everything happens on your own PC.
Inspired by Tangerine for Mac.
How to use
Start dragging any file or folder in File Explorer or on the desktop. While the mouse button is still held:
| Do this | You get |
|---|
| Tap Shift | Convert wheel: every format the file can become |
| Tap Ctrl | Tools wheel: compress, crop & resize, trim, merge, split… |
| Tap Alt | Actions wheel: copy, copy path, move to, terminal here, float… |
| Scroll the mouse wheel | Opens the Convert wheel. Keep scrolling to move between slices |
Then release over a slice to apply it. Release in the middle (or press Esc) to cancel. Tap another key, or hover one of the pills under the wheel, to switch wheels without letting go.
Results are saved next to the original (photo.webp, clip compressed.mp4, …). The original file is never changed.
Other ways to open it: shake the mouse while dragging, select files and press Ctrl + Alt + Space, or right-click → DragWheel (on Windows 11: Show more options, or turn on the full menu in Settings → Everyday). Then pick with the mouse, the scroll wheel, or the arrow keys + Enter. Tab switches wheels, Esc closes.
All keys can be changed in Settings (tray icon → Settings).
What's new in 1.2.2
- Read QR code on screen: the QR codes on your screens light up, click one and open the link, copy the text or copy the Wi-Fi password. Works offline
- Fix alignment for photos of documents, like a scanner app: finds the page's corners, straightens it, evens out the light, with a live preview of each look and rotate left/right
- Send to phone, redone: Link from this PC (works on any network, nothing uploaded) and Cloud link (OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Box), a QR code that's ready with a spinner while it loads, the same QR code again for a file that's already shared, and Stop sharing? when you close
- Smoother with a video playing: Settings and Send to phone open without making a Float stutter; Reopen on the Float menu
- Fixed: a PDF used in a PDF tool no longer stays locked
What's new in 1.2
- PDF tools: sign (draw or drop your signature, on one page, all pages or a range), arrange pages by dragging (drop more PDFs or pictures in), watermark with live preview, page numbers, grayscale, unlock, word count
- Comics, fonts, subtitles and archives: CBR/CBZ/CB7 to PDF and back, font conversion and install, add or extract subtitles, split and join big files, password-protected ZIP/7Z, fix garbled Arabic text
- Float, the mini player: play YouTube and ~1,800 sites (copy a link, right-click → Play copied link in Float), live streams, quality menu, repeat and loop, saved links, subtitles, keyboard media keys with a big on-screen sign
- Send to phone: Quick Share, Bluetooth, the same Wi-Fi, or a temporary internet link with a QR code (5 minutes to 72 hours)
- Make it yours: choose and reorder slices (with a live preview), presets like WebP · quality 80 · max 1920 px, chains like resize → WebP → ZIP, your own commands, results next to the file / in a folder / replacing it / on the clipboard, export and import settings
- Everyday: recent results in the tray, a queue for many files, Undo, watch folders, a command line (
dragwheel convert *.heic --to jpg), quick preview (tap Space while dragging), wheel animations, sounds, high contrast
- AI, offline: remove backgrounds, blur faces, speech to text in many languages including Arabic
- Smaller installer (97 MB) and optional downloads you can tick during setup
Everything that changed is in the changelog.
Features
- Hundreds of conversions across images, video, audio, PDF, documents, slides, spreadsheets, subtitles, e-books and archives
- File tools: compress, crop & resize editor, rotate, flip, grayscale, strip metadata, trim, mute, 720p, snapshot, speed, normalize, fade, merge, split PDF pages, extract pages or images, password-protect PDFs
- Crop & Resize editor with live preview, aspect presets (Free, Original, 1:1, 4:3, 3:2, 16:9, 9:16, 4:5), rotate/flip and an exact output size
- Archive converter: turn any ZIP, 7Z, RAR, TAR, TAR.GZ, TAR.BZ2 or TAR.XZ into any other, or compress folders straight into one
- Float: pin any file on top of all windows, drag it anywhere, scroll to resize it, and drag it into another app later
- 14 languages: English, العربية, فارسی and اردو (full right-to-left layout), Français, Español, Português, Italiano, Deutsch, Türkçe, Русский, हिन्दी, 简体中文, 日本語
- Dark and light themes: follow Windows or pick one in Settings
- Cancel any time: every conversion shows a notification with a Cancel button; partial files are cleaned up
- Updates built in: checks this GitHub page once a day (can be turned off) and offers Download & install
- 100% offline conversions. No accounts, no telemetry. DragWheel only goes online for things you ask for (updates, links you play, Send to phone) — see the privacy policy
Supported formats
| Category | Opens | Converts to | Tools |
|---|
| Images | JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, AVIF, TIFF, BMP, GIF, ICO, SVG, PSD, TGA, DDS, JPEG 2000, PCX, PPM, QOI, ICNS | PNG, JPG, WebP, HEIC, AVIF, TIFF, BMP, GIF, ICO, TGA, JPEG 2000, ICNS, PDF | Compress, Crop & Resize, rotate, flip, grayscale, strip metadata, combine into PDF |
| Video | MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, AVI, WMV, M4V, FLV, MPG, 3GP, TS, MTS/M2TS, VOB, OGV, MXF, F4V, ASF | MP4, MP4 H.265 (smaller), MOV, MKV, WebM, AVI, WMV, GIF, MP3/M4A (audio only) | Compress, 720p, trim, mute, rotate, snapshot, 2× speed, merge |
| Audio | MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC, OGG, Opus, AIFF, WMA, AAC, AC3, MKA, CAF, M4B, AMR, AU, DTS | MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC, OGG, Opus, AIFF, WMA, AC3 | Compress, trim, normalize loudness, mono, fade in/out, merge |
| PDF | PDF | DOCX, PNG, JPG, TXT, Markdown, HTML | Compress, split pages, extract pages, rotate, extract images, password, merge |
| Documents | DOCX, DOC, RTF, ODT, Markdown, TXT, HTML | PDF, DOCX, ODT, RTF, TXT, HTML, Markdown | |
| Slides | PPTX, PPT, ODP | PDF, PNG, JPG, PPTX, ODP | |
| Spreadsheets | XLSX, XLS, ODS, CSV, TSV | XLSX, CSV, TSV, JSON, HTML, Markdown table, PDF, ODS | |
| Subtitles | SRT, VTT, ASS/SSA | SRT, VTT, ASS, TXT | |
| E-books & comics | EPUB, MOBI, FB2, CBZ, XPS/OXPS | PDF, TXT, Markdown, HTML (+ PNG/JPG pages for CBZ/XPS) | |
| Archives | ZIP, 7Z, RAR, TAR, TAR.GZ, TAR.BZ2, TAR.XZ, GZ, BZ2, XZ, ISO, CAB | Extract, ZIP, 7Z, RAR, TAR, TAR.GZ, TAR.BZ2, TAR.XZ | |
| Folders / any files | | ZIP, 7Z, RAR, TAR, TAR.GZ, TAR.BZ2, TAR.XZ | |
Built in: ffmpeg (video/audio), MuPDF (PDF/EPUB), Pillow (images), ZIP/7Z/TAR.
Uses what you already have:
- Word, PowerPoint and Excel conversions use Microsoft Office if it's installed (it runs invisibly in the background), otherwise LibreOffice.
- Opening RAR works with 7-Zip, WinRAR, or the
tar tool built into Windows. Creating RAR needs WinRAR (RAR is a closed format); the slice is marked needs WinRAR if it's missing.
Install
- Download the installer (the latest version), or pick a file on the Releases page.
- Run it. It asks for administrator rights and installs for all users into
C:\Program Files\DragWheel.
- Choose your options: Explorer right-click menu + Send To, start with Windows, desktop shortcut. The installer speaks all 14 of DragWheel's languages, and the app starts in the one you pick.
DragWheel then sits in the system tray. To remove it, use Settings → Apps or Uninstall DragWheel in the Start menu.
Releases are being prepared for code signing through the SignPath Foundation (see Code signing policy). Until then, Windows may warn you about the installer:
- Microsoft Edge may hold the download ("isn't commonly downloaded"): open the downloads list, point at the file, choose … → Keep, then Show more → Keep anyway.
- SmartScreen may warn when you run it: choose More info → Run anyway.
Requirements: Windows 10 (1809+) or Windows 11, 64-bit.
Build from source
You need Python 3.12 (64-bit).
git clone https://github.com/ilukezippo/DragWheel.git
cd DragWheel
run.bat :: first run creates a .venv, installs dependencies, starts DragWheel in the tray
build.bat :: builds dist\DragWheel\DragWheel.exe, plus the installer if NSIS is installed
To get NSIS for the installer: winget install NSIS.NSIS.
Every push to main builds the installer and a portable zip with GitHub Actions and publishes them as release v<VERSION> (the VERSION in dragwheel.pyw). Bump the version to publish a new release; the app's update check picks it up.
Project layout
dragwheel.pyw app: wheel, tray, toast, float window, settings, drag watcher
editor.py crop & resize editor
engine.py every conversion and tool (no UI, usable from your own scripts)
i18n.py translations; add a language by adding one dictionary
updater.py update check against GitHub releases
winsys.py Windows plumbing: input state, mouse-wheel hook, Explorer selection, registry
installer/ NSIS installer script and artwork
engine.py works without the app:
import engine
ops = {op.id: op for op in engine.conversions(["photo.heic"])}
engine.run_op(ops["to_jpg"], ["photo.heic"]) # -> photo.jpg
How it works
- A small watcher polls the mouse and keyboard state. It installs no keyboard hooks and doesn't inject into other apps. A low-level mouse hook is used only to see the scroll wheel while you're dragging.
- When a file drag is in progress (Explorer shows its drag image) and you tap a wheel key or scroll, the wheel appears under the cursor. DragWheel asks Explorer which files are being dragged, and the wheel window is also a normal drop target.
- The drop always counts as a copy, so Explorer never moves or deletes your original.
- Conversions run in the background, and a notification shows the result with a Show button.
- Update check: one request to
api.github.com/repos/ilukezippo/DragWheel/releases/latest per day, only if enabled.
- A log is kept at
%LOCALAPPDATA%\DragWheel\dragwheel.log to help with troubleshooting.
Known limits
- Windows doesn't allow dragging from an app running as administrator into DragWheel (or the other way round).
- Some apps start drags without a drag image. For those, set Trigger on → Any mouse drag in Settings.
Code signing policy
Free code signing provided by SignPath.io, certificate by SignPath Foundation.
Team roles
Every release is built from this repository's source by GitHub Actions and manually approved before signing.
Privacy: conversions never leave your PC. DragWheel only goes online for features you use: the update check (can be turned off), one-time downloads you agree to, links you play in Float, and Send to phone → Internet link, which uploads the file you choose. Crash reports are off by default and are never sent without you seeing them first. See the privacy policy.
License
MIT © ilukezippo
