Our principles, or why our tools look like a farmers’ market

fof.lol is a collection of small free tools: a phone checkup, an internet speed test, a tuner, a password generator, a shared whiteboard and a dozen more. Each one has a fruit or a vegetable for a logo. Why? Because a watermelon speedometer is easier to remember than the thousandth blue gear. And because once your password generator is a passion fruit, there is no going back.

(Yes, we know that botanically a pumpkin is a berry. The pumpkin knows too, and brings it up at every meeting.)

Over time the tools grew opinions of their own. We wrote them down, and they became our principles.

1Open a link, not an installer

Every tool is a plain web page. No app store, no 300 MB download, no “Allow notifications?” before you have even said hello. It works on a phone, a tablet, a laptop, and on that old tablet in the kitchen that everyone has been meaning to throw away for three years.

Want an icon on your home screen? Any tool installs as an app in one tap. It is the same page, just wearing a nicer coat.

2Your data stays yours

The tools run on your device. We have no accounts, no profiles and no uploads, so we would love to tell you how carefully we guard your data, but there is nothing to guard. It is the cheapest security policy in the world, and so far nobody has managed to hack it.

• DropBench sends files straight from one browser to another: encrypted, with no copy left on a server.
• PhotoBench strips the GPS location and the camera’s serial number from photos without uploading them anywhere.
• PassBench checks whether a password has leaked without sending the password: only the first 5 characters of its hash leave your device.

Honesty corner. Some jobs can’t be done without the outside world: a speed test has to download something, and a map needs map tiles. Which tools talk to which services, and why, is listed in the Terms of use, with no small print. Well, the print is regular size.

3One job each

A Swiss army knife is great until you need an actual knife. So every tool does one thing and finishes with a clear result: a number, a verdict or a file you can save or share. The tuner does not test your keyboard. The keyboard test does not tune your guitar. Everybody is calmer that way.

4Free, with no sign-up

No payments, no accounts and no “Premium” plan hiding the one button you actually need. The only thing our tools consume is a bit of your battery, and SpeedBench is truly sorry about the traffic.

The code is open under the MIT License. The names, logos and pictures are all rights reserved: the watermelon has an agent, and the agent is strict. The details are on the License page.

5Works offline, as far as physics allows

Install any tool and it opens without a connection. The stopwatch runs in airplane mode, the bubble level works in a basement, and the password generator doesn’t care where you are at all.

Some tools simply can’t work without the internet: a map needs map tiles, and a leak check needs someone to ask. We don’t pretend otherwise.

6In your language

Every page exists in English and Ukrainian, each at its own address, so a search engine finds the right one and you never land on a page that is half translated. More languages can be added; the pumpkin is already practising its accent.

What’s next

This blog. Here we’ll write about how the tools work inside, why a phone compass lies next to the fridge, how to check a used phone in five minutes, and other useful things, with the same amount of fruit.

If a tool breaks one of these rules, or you have an idea for the eighteenth vegetable, write to . We read everything. The onion reads it twice.