uts

Do you remember the exact ffmpeg flags to compress a video? What about pngquant for PNGs, or ghostscript for PDFs?

Every time you need to do something with a media file, you end up Googling, copy‑pasting, and praying the command works. It's a massive waste of time.

uts ends that chaos. It wraps all your everyday media operations into one dead‑simple command pattern:

uts <category> <action> <input...> [flags]

That’s it. The same pattern works for images, video, audio, PDFs, and archives. Install uts, install your encoders, and you'll never look up a media‑related command again.

Here are a few real‑world examples that show how uts saves you time:

# Compress image with a low-quality (small size) preset
uts image compress screenshot.png -q low

# Convert HEIC photo to JPG
uts image convert photo.heic --to jpg

# Compress video in-place (replaces original recording)
uts video compress recording.mp4 -i

# Convert MOV video to MP4
uts video convert clip.mov --to mp4

# Convert multiple pages to high-res PNGs
uts pdf convert slides.pdf --to png -q high

# Stitch/Convert multiple images into a single PDF
uts pdf convert page1.png page2.png page3.jpg --to pdf

# Compress WAV audio to MP3 using high preset quality
uts audio convert track.wav --to mp3 -q high

# Compress PDF document to a medium-res profile
uts pdf compress draft.pdf -q medium

# Compress folder to a zstd tarball archive
uts archive compress ./project/ --algorithm zstd

# Inspect media file details and get format-specific recommendations
uts info recording.mp4

Forget the command salad uts replaces the complicated syntax of ffmpeg, pngquant, jpegoptim, ghostscript, tar, and many others with a single, memorable pattern.

Quality, simplified Stop fiddling with CRF values, DPI, and bitrates. uts gives you three intuitive presets via the -q (or --quality) flag:

You can also pass a raw numeric value (e.g., -q 75) for fine‑grained control.

Your data, your machine No cloud, no telemetry, no backdoors. uts is just a smart dispatcher that runs the right local tools (like ffmpeg) on your own hardware.

# 1. Install uts (Homebrew is recommended)
brew install y3owk1n/tap/uts

# 2. Install the underlying tools (example for macOS)
brew install ffmpeg imagemagick pngquant jpegoptim ghostscript

# 3. Start using it!
uts image compress my-photo.jpg -q low

For complete installation instructions and dependency details, see the Installation Guide.

uts organizes all operations into clear categories and actions:

uts is not a re‑encoding engine – it's an intelligent orchestrator. It detects which command‑line tools you already have installed and chooses the best one for each job.

                  ┌───► [pngquant / optipng] (PNG compression)
                  ├───► [jpegoptim]          (JPEG optimisation)
uts image ───────►├───► [cwebp]              (WebP conversion)
                  └───► [imagemagick]        (other formats)

uts video ───────────► [ffmpeg]              (video/audio processing)
uts pdf ─────────────► [ghostscript]          (PDF compression)
uts archive ─────────► [tar / zstd / zip]    (archiving)

You don't need to install all of them – uts will intelligently work with what you have.

• Batch processing: Combine with the -r (or --recursive) flag to process entire directory trees.
• Dry‑run preview: Use -n (or --dry-run) to see exactly what commands would be executed, without making any changes.
• In‑place replacement: Use -i (or --in-place) to overwrite the original file.
• Custom output directory: Use -o (or --output) to specify where results are saved.

For a complete reference, check out the CLI Guide.

uts supports full color palette customization via environment variables. See the Configuration Guide for details.

• Installation – Detailed setup for all platforms.
• CLI Reference – Every command, flag, and exit code explained.
• Configuration – Color customization and environment variables.
• Development – Build tasks, testing, and release process.
• Contributing – Code of conduct, commit guidelines, and pull request workflow.

uts is written in pure Go with a clean, modular architecture. Contributions of all kinds are warmly welcomed.

If uts has made your life easier, please consider starring the repository on GitHub ⭐ – it means a lot to us.

MIT — see LICENSE.

brew install y3owk1n/tap/uts && uts image compress screenshot.png -q low