What is IT Tools? The short answer, and a faster way to use one

IT Tools is a free, open source website of small utilities for developers and people who work in IT, found at it-tools.tech. If you want the same kind of toolbox without opening a website each time, AyeTab puts developer tools on your Chrome new tab and runs them locally in the browser.

The short answer

• What it is: a collection of web-based developer utilities, such as converters, encoders and generators, in one place.
• Who makes it: Corentin Thomasset, with outside contributors on GitHub.
• Cost: free.
• Licence: open source under GNU GPLv3.
• Where to use it: on it-tools.tech, or on your own server with the Docker image the project provides.

People sometimes search for "IT tools" and mean IT management software, such as ticketing or monitoring. That is a different category. The IT Tools discussed here is the developer toolbox.

What people use a toolbox like this for

The appeal of a site like IT Tools is that the small jobs in a working day are all in one place. Typical tasks include:

• formatting or validating a JSON response
• decoding a JWT to read its claims
• encoding or decoding Base64 and URL strings
• generating a UUID or a hash
• converting a Unix timestamp to a date
• turning YAML into JSON, or the reverse

Each of these takes seconds, which is why the time spent finding the tool can be longer than the task itself.

There is a second thing to weigh. Some of that input is sensitive, like a session token from production or a customer record you are debugging. Before you paste it into any website, it is worth knowing whether the site processes it on your machine or sends it to a server.

A faster way to the same tools

AyeTab is the toolbox we recommend for that problem. It is a free Chrome extension that replaces the new tab page with a list of developer utilities, and it also opens in a side panel next to whatever page you are on. A web app at app.ayetab.com offers the same tools without an install.

Here is how the two compare on the questions people ask most:

AyeTab also has smart paste, which looks at what you paste, for example a token or a JSON blob, and suggests the tool that handles it. Favorites keep your most used tools at the top, and the extension keeps working offline once it is installed.

To try a single tool before installing anything, open the AyeTab JWT Debugger or the JSON Formatter in any tab.

Which one should you use

For one developer who wants tools close at hand and private by default, use AyeTab. Pick IT Tools instead if your team wants a shared toolbox on an internal server, or if you plan to read and change the source code. Both are free, so trying each costs nothing but a minute.