I get this question a lot. Usually phrased more bluntly: "Why bother? There are like 500 unit converters on the App Store already."
Fair point. And honestly? I asked myself the same thing before I started. But then I kept using those 500 converters, and they all made me want to throw my phone across the room.
The Breaking Point
It was a Tuesday. I was trying to figure out how many cups were in 350ml for a recipe. Simple enough, right? So I opened one of those "top rated" converters from the App Store.
Immediately hit with an ad. Fine, I'll wait three seconds. Then I had to scroll through a list of maybe 40 unit categories to find "volume." Tap that. Now I'm looking at two dropdown menus with tiny text. Selected milliliters on the left, cups on the right. Typed 350. Got my answer.
Thirty seconds for something that should take three.
And that's when it wasn't crashing. Or showing me currency rates from last Tuesday. Or plastering banner ads across the keyboard so I couldn't actually see what I was typing.
The Problems Nobody Was Solving
I spent a weekend downloading every unit converter I could find. Paid ones, free ones, the ones with suspiciously perfect 5-star reviews. Here's what I kept running into:
Cluttered interfaces. Most of these apps look like they were designed in 2012 and never updated. Tiny buttons. Confusing layouts. Five taps to do one conversion. I'm not running a chemistry lab here — I just want to know how many grams are in an ounce.
Outdated currency rates. This one genuinely shocked me. Some of the most popular currency converters were using rates that were days old. One was pulling data from a free API that hadn't been updated in a week. A week! If you're exchanging a few thousand dollars, that's real money you're miscalculating.
No natural language. Here's the thing — when I think about conversions, I think in sentences. "How many miles is 10k?" "What's 72 degrees in Celsius?" But every converter wanted me to pick from dropdown menus and type in little boxes. It felt like filling out tax forms.
Ads everywhere. Look, I understand free apps need to make money. But when the ad covers half my screen while I'm trying to type a number? That's not a trade-off anymore. That's sabotage.
What I Actually Wanted
I started sketching out what my ideal converter would look like. The list was embarrassingly simple:
- Type naturally. "50 usd to eur" should just work.
- See the result instantly. No waiting, no loading spinners.
- Fresh currency rates. Updated multiple times a day, not whenever someone remembers.
- Clean interface. One screen. No maze of menus.
- Works offline. Because sometimes you're in airplane mode or a basement.
That's it. That's the whole list. And somehow, no app I could find did all five.
Building It Anyway
So I built Convert. Not because the world desperately needed converter number 501. But because I needed a converter that didn't make me frustrated every time I opened it.
The natural language input took the longest to get right. Turns out people phrase conversions in a million different ways. "100 km in miles." "100km to mi." "How far is 100 kilometers in miles?" "100 kilometers = ? miles." I wanted Convert to understand all of them.
Currency rates pull from a professional-grade API now. Updates happen automatically throughout the day. And I added rate alerts because I'm always waiting for the Aussie dollar to hit a certain number before booking flights.
The interface is basically one big text field. Type what you want, get your answer. Everything else stays out of your way.
Did I Reinvent the Wheel?
Kind of. Yeah.
But sometimes the existing wheels are wobbly. Sometimes they squeak really loudly. Sometimes the wheels have ads on them that block your view of the road.
I built Convert because the converters that existed weren't solving my actual problem. And based on the emails I've gotten since launch, I wasn't the only one frustrated.
If you've ever searched the App Store for "best unit converter" and come away disappointed, give Convert a try. It's free, and I genuinely think you'll notice the difference in about three seconds.
That's how long your first conversion should take. Not thirty.
