HoopsideConverting
How to batch convert embroidery files — a whole folder at once
You bought a pack of designs — a holiday set, a bundle, a folder inherited with a second-hand machine — and every file in it is the wrong format for your machine. Converting them one at a time is an evening. Converting the folder is a minute, and the part worth reading afterwards is the list of files that were left alone.
Can you batch convert embroidery files on a phone?
Yes, and it is the same job the desktop programs do: decode each design, re-encode it for the format you want, and write a new file. Hoopside has a Convert a folder screen for it — you pick the format, then the folder your designs are in, then where the converted copies should go. The originals are never touched.
While it runs it counts, Converting 12 of 137…, and when it finishes it shows two figures: how many converted, and how many were left alone. Viewing designs is free in Hoopside; converting, one file or a folder, is a one-time unlock, and you pay once.
Do one thing first. If the pack arrived as a zip — most bought packs do, often with a folder per format and per hoop size — extract it with your phone's own file manager. Hoopside recognises a zip and says so plainly, but it does not list what is inside one, so the designs need to be ordinary files in a folder before a batch can read them.
What happens to each file in the batch
Renaming two hundred files from .dst to .pes converts nothing. A format is an encoding, not a label: the bytes inside are unchanged by a rename, and a machine that opens one finds a header it does not understand. Every format also caps how far a single command may travel, and the caps are not the same.
| Format | Longest single command | In millimetres |
|---|---|---|
| DST | ±121 units | about 12.1 mm |
| XXX | ±124 units | about 12.4 mm |
| EXP, JEF | ±127 units | about 12.7 mm |
| VP3 | 255 units | about 25.5 mm |
| PES, PEC | ±2047 units | about 204.7 mm |
Units are tenths of a millimetre. A design written for one format routinely holds a stitch or a jump that the next format cannot express in a single command, so a converter has to split it into a run of shorter ones along the same path. The needle lands in the same places; the file says so in smaller words. Software that skips that step either fails outright or quietly writes a shorter stitch, and a shortened stitch is a design that stitches wrongly.
Hoopside puts every file through that pass before writing, in a batch exactly as for a single design. Its conversions are checked against pyembroidery — the library Ink/Stitch ships on — in every direction, every format to every other: 245 files, none failing. When it writes PES it writes version 1, the file beginning #PES0001, because the oldest revision in circulation is the one an older Brother is likeliest to understand. Whether your particular model loads it is still a question for its manual, not for a converter.
Which files get left behind, and why
The number that matters in a batch is not how many converted. It is how many did not, and which ones. A tool that silently drops four files out of 137 and reports “133 converted” is the worst kind of wrong, because nobody finds out until they are at the machine with a design that was never written. Every file Hoopside leaves alone comes back named, with the reason it was skipped.
| It says | What that means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| not a design file | A PDF, a licence note, the pack's cover image — things a design pack is full of | Nothing. Skipping it is correct |
| already that format | The file is already what you asked for | Nothing. Copy the original across yourself |
| would not open | The bytes would not decode into a design, decoded into nothing real, or would not re-encode as the format you picked | Download that design again from the seller; if it still will not go, try a different target format for that one file |
| could not be saved | The destination folder refused the write | Pick a folder you can write to, and check there is room |
“Would not open” usually means a truncated download. A design cut short mid-transfer often still has a convincing header, and what follows decodes into a run of zero-length stitches at the origin. Hoopside applies the same guard in a batch that the viewer applies on screen, and refuses to write that out — a folder full of plausible, empty files is harder to notice than one named skip.
Converting a whole pack, step by step
- Extract the zip with your file manager, so the designs are real files in a folder.
- Open one design first — free, and it tells you whether the pack is what the listing claimed: real size in millimetres, stitch count, the numbered colour stops, and stitch-by-stitch playback.
- Decide the target format. Brother and Babylock read PES, Janome reads JEF, Husqvarna and Pfaff read VP3, Melco and Bernina read EXP, Singer reads XXX, and most commercial machines read DST. The convert list names the machine beside each format, so you are choosing a brand rather than three letters. What each format stores is in embroidery file formats explained.
- Pick the source folder, then a destination folder. Keeping the converted copies somewhere of their own is worth the extra tap: the originals stay unmistakably the originals. Hoopside asks for no storage permission and never goes looking through your storage — it sees the folders you hand it and nothing else.
- Read the left-alone list before you close the screen. It is the whole reason to use a batch tool that names its skips.
Converted files keep their names and change their extension, so a pack that was alphabetical stays alphabetical — which matters when the design you want is number 94 of 137.
What a batch conversion cannot fix
Size, density and thread names
Size. Converting does not resize. A 180 mm design is 180 mm in every format, and still will not go in a 100 × 100 mm hoop.
Density and quality. A design with poor underlay is the same design in another format. Conversion moves stitches between encodings; it does not improve them, and it is not digitizing — what each kind of embroidery software actually does covers that difference.
Thread names. DST and EXP carry no colour information at all, so converting a DST pack to PES produces thread lists whose entries are stand-ins. JEF and PES store an index into their own maker's palette, so converting between them picks the nearest shade on the other side. The colour stops survive in every direction — the same number, in the same order — but the names are nearest shades in a palette, not the spools you own.
Phone, desktop program, or a web uploader?
Batch conversion has mostly been a desktop feature: the tools that come up in roundups, as of September 2026, are overwhelmingly Windows programs, free and paid. The browser-based converters vary — some take a batch, some one file at a time — and all of them work by uploading each design to somebody else's server.
A phone is the obvious place, because it is where the download landed. Hoopside converts on the device — no account, no upload, nothing leaves the phone.
Check a few before you stitch the lot
Do not take a batch on trust, and do not check all 137 either. Open two or three of the converted copies — the biggest, the most colourful, and one at random — and compare four things against the original.
- Size should match, to within a tenth of a millimetre.
- Stitch count should match or rise very slightly, because splitting one long stitch makes two. It should never fall.
- Colour stops should be the same number, in the same order.
- The shape should look the same. A design that has shifted or scaled is a failed conversion, whatever the numbers say.
What those figures mean for how a design behaves on fabric is in reading a design before you stitch. If the machine turns a converted design down even though it opens perfectly on the phone, the file is usually not the culprit — six reasons a machine rejects a design takes the causes in the order that wastes least time. And if it is one design rather than a folder, converting a single DST to PES is the same work without the picker.
Related
- How to convert a DST to PES — and why renaming the file fails — What a real format conversion does to the stitches, and why changing the extension produces a file the machine refuses.
- Embroidery file formats explained — Which machine reads which format, what each one stores, and which of them carry colour at all.
- Why your machine rejects an embroidery file — Six reasons a design will not load, in the order worth checking.
Convert a folder of designs at once
Hoopside converts a design to DST, PES, JEF, VP3, EXP or XXX, re-encoding the stitches for the format you pick rather than just renaming the file. Viewing every design is free; converting is a one-time unlock.
