Launching today

Hexel Editor

Launching today

Native macOS hex editor with a brain for file formats

47 followers

Native macOS hex editor with a brain for file formats

47 followers

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A native macOS hex editor for developers, reverse engineers and security researchers. Open files of any size instantly, decode the bytes under your cursor, parse Mach-O/ELF/PE/PNG/ZIP structure, run checksums and entropy, bookmark what matters

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Launch tags:Mac•Productivity•Developer Tools

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Hexel Editor

Maker

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Hey Product Hunt 👋 I'm Shaun, and I built Hexel Editor because every time I needed to look at raw bytes on my Mac I ended up in something that felt like it was ported from 2003 — or in a terminal, squinting at xxd output. Hexel Editor is a native macOS hex editor that looks and behaves like a Mac app. An Xcode-style document window: navigator on the left, a precise hex grid in the middle, a live inspector on the right. What it does: • Opens anything, instantly. Large files are memory-mapped, so a multi-GB binary opens as fast as a 2 KB one and stays responsive while you scroll. • Tells you what the bytes mean. The inspector decodes Int/UInt 8–64, Float32/64, binary, hex and strings at the cursor, little- or big-endian, toggled instantly. • Understands real file formats. Built-in parsers for Mach-O, PE, ELF, PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, ZIP, gzip and PDF. Click a parsed field and it jumps straight to those bytes. • Finds anything. Hex pattern search with ?? wildcards for don't-care bytes, text search in UTF-8/UTF-16 LE/BE/ASCII, and Go-to-Offset in hex, octal or decimal. • Analyzes. CRC32, MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, plus entropy and a byte-frequency histogram over a selection or the whole file. • Annotates. Named, colored bookmarks and plain-text notes on any byte range, exportable as .hexel files so you can share your findings. • Edits safely. Insert/overwrite/delete, read-only mode, unlimited undo, and atomic saves that won't corrupt the file. And it's private by design: no network access, no analytics, no tracking. Your files never leave your Mac. I'd love to hear what formats you'd want parsers for next — that's the roadmap I most want your input on. Happy to answer anything in the comments today.

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1d ago

BetterClaw

A hex editor that actually understands what it’s looking at feels like a huge upgrade. Great to see more developer-focused tools getting smarter.

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11h ago

Hexel Editor

Maker

@better_shaya Thanks! Honestly that's the whole reason it exists. Got sick of having a format spec open in one window and counting bytes in another.

More parsers coming, and eventually I want people to be able to define their own so you're not waiting on me for the weird stuff. What are you working with?

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10h ago

Hey Shaun, there's something very satisfying about cracking a file open and watching the raw bytes actually make sense, all of it staying right here on my own machine.

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9h ago