Top 5 Developer Tools You Should Bookmark

Every developer has a mental Rolodex of websites they visit multiple times a day. These are mine — the ones that survive every browser cleanup, every new laptop setup, every "I should finally organize my bookmarks" promise I make to myself.

1. JSON Formatter

Debugging a 200-line JSON response in a raw terminal is a special kind of suffering. A good JSON formatter does more than pretty-print — it validates, shows you exactly where your syntax is broken, and lets you collapse/expand nodes. I've wasted too many hours on malformed JSON to go without one.

Try our JSON Formatter →

2. Base64 Encoder/Decoder

Base64 shows up in APIs, email attachments, JWT tokens, and data URIs. You need to encode something, decode something, or just figure out what the heck that string actually represents. Having a reliable Base64 tool handy saves a ton of echo commands and online converters of questionable origin.

Try our Base64 tool →

3. Regex Tester

Writing a regex without testing it is like writing code without running it. A solid regex tester shows you matches in real-time, explains what your pattern is actually doing, and handles different regex flavors. Whether you're validating emails, parsing logs, or building a router, this one pays for itself constantly.

Try our Regex Tester →

4. Cron Expression Parser

Cron is famously cryptic. */5 9-17 * * 1-5 — is that every 5 minutes during business hours on weekdays, or something else? A cron parser that humanizes your expressions and shows you the next N execution times is indispensable for anyone who writes scheduled jobs.

Try our Cron Parser →

5. Hash Generator

MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, bcrypt — you need to hash things, compare hashes, or just verify a checksum. A good hash generator handles all the common algorithms in one place. Useful for password testing, file integrity checks, and that one time you needed to compare two MongoDB ObjectIds.

Try our Hash Generator →

---

These five cover probably 80% of my daily tooling needs. Bookmark them, share them with your team, and stop googling "online JSON formatter" every time you need one.

What did I miss? Check out all our tools — there's plenty more where these came from.