A Tangerine alternative: the file wheel, plus dictation and an AI

Tangerine and Koi's Shift wheel work the same way. You start dragging a file, press Shift, and a wheel opens round your pointer. Drop the file on what you want and a new copy is saved beside the original, made on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded.

The difference is everything around it. Tangerine is a file converter and nothing else, and it does that job well. Koi has the same kind of wheels for pictures, videos, PDFs, Word files, slides, spreadsheets, EPUBs and archives, and it also types what you say in any app, records your calls, and has an assistant you talk to that can see your screen and use your Mac.

We make Koi, so read this with that in mind. Every fact about Tangerine comes from its website, its press kit, its tools page and its Mac App Store listing, checked October 20, 2026. We didn't test Tangerine ourselves.

Tangerine is made by Leap Studio, launched in September 2026, and sold on the Mac App Store. It lives in the menu bar. Start dragging a file, then tap Shift for formats, Command for tools for that kind of file, or Control for file actions. Its site counts 275 conversion options, 26 file tools and 6 file actions, all done on your Mac.

• Images: JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, TIFF, AVIF and BMP, PDF out, SVG in. Compress, metadata, edit, annotate, add a background, crop, redact, a collage, or several images made into one PDF.
• Video: MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, AVI, WMV and GIF, MP3 out. Trim, crop, speed, join, split, save frames and redact.
• Audio: MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC, OGG, Opus, AIFF and WMA. Normalize the volume, trim, change channels, bleep a part, or make a waveform video.
• PDF to DOCX, Pages, PPTX, XLSX, JPG, PNG, EPUB, TXT and MD. Merge, organize, compress and split.
• Documents (DOCX, Pages, Markdown, TXT, EPUB), slides (PPT and PPTX to PDF, JPG and PNG), spreadsheets (XLSX, ODS, CSV, TSV), subtitles (SRT, VTT) and archives (ZIP, TAR, GZIP, RAR in).
• File actions on Control: AirDrop, Float (a shelf that stays on screen), Copy, Move, Copy Path and Terminal. They work on folders too.

Its App Store listing also lists reading QR codes. It needs an Apple silicon Mac with macOS 13 or later.

In Koi there's one key: drag any of these and hold Shift. The wheel that opens fits the file, tools and formats together.

• Pictures: Compress, Metadata, Edit, Annotate, Add BG, Crop, Redact, Collage, and Convert to PNG, JPEG, HEIC, TIFF, AVIF, BMP or PDF.
• Videos: Trim, Crop, Compress, Mute, Speed, Snapshot, Split, Metadata, Redact, Convert to MP4, MOV, GIF or M4A, and Edit, a video editor with a timeline that splits, cuts, trims, speeds up, crops and redacts.
• PDFs: Compress, Organize (reorder, turn, copy or take out pages), Metadata, Split, Merge, and Convert to DOCX, Pages, PPTX, XLSX, JPG, PNG, TXT or MD.
• Word, RTF and ODT: Pages, PDF, TXT, MD, HTML, PNG or JPG.
• PowerPoint: the whole deck as a PDF, or every slide as a JPG or PNG.
• Spreadsheets (XLSX, XLS, ODS, CSV, TSV): PDF, ODS, CSV, TSV or XLSX.
• EPUB: PDF, DOCX, Pages, TXT, MD or HTML, its chapters in order.
• Archives (ZIP, TAR, GZIP, 7z, RAR): Extract, or repack as ZIP, TAR or GZIP. A folder or several files get packed into one.

The original is never touched and nothing is sent. Pages copies need Apple's free Pages app on the Mac. More on the Shift wheel page.

Tangerine's column is from its own site and App Store listing, checked October 20, 2026.

This is why Koi costs more. The wheel is one of many things it does:

• Dictation in any app: tap Fn + ⌥, talk, and the words land where your cursor is. It runs on your Mac, works offline, in 100 languages, and it's unlimited.
• An assistant you talk to: tap Fn + ⌘ and ask. Koi answers out loud, can see your screen if you let it, points at the button you need, edits text in any app and uses your Mac for you.
• Recorded calls: tap Fn + ⌃ on Zoom, Meet or Teams. No bot joins, and you get You and Them written down on your Mac, with notes and your to-dos if you want them.
• Audio and video transcribed on your Mac, with SRT and VTT subtitles to export. Tangerine converts subtitles; Koi writes them from what was said.
• Documents with tables, charts, equations and flashcards, exported to Word or PDF.
• A calendar that works with Google and Apple Calendar, an expense tracker, and study notes and flashcards from any PDF or slides.

If the file wheel is all you want, Tangerine is the cheaper pick. Its $29.99 unlocks everything it does, with no subscription.

Koi Lifetime is Koi's pay-once option, and its price climbs as it sells: $59 for the first 25 buyers, $99 for the next 50, $159 for the next 100, then $199 for good. The Shift wheel, dictation and recorded calls run on your Mac and are unlimited on Lifetime. Talking to Koi and the notes it writes use cloud AI, so Lifetime comes with credit worth 20% of what you paid for that, which never expires, and top-ups from $5 when it runs out. Lifetime isn't refunded unless Koi fails to deliver, so if you're unsure, start with Pro's 3-day free trial, which needs a card. See the plans.

• Converting files is the only job, for the least money? Tangerine.
• Audio files, subtitles or AirDrop from a drag? Tangerine.
• An Intel Mac? Koi. Tangerine needs Apple silicon.
• The file wheel plus dictation, recorded calls and an assistant that sees your screen, in one app? Koi.

Both let you try first: Tangerine with a free allowance before the $29.99 unlock, Koi with a 3-day trial. Drag the same few files through each and keep the one you reach for.