Caliper lives in your menu bar — look for the ± icon near the clock and click it. There is no Dock icon and no window; that is deliberate.
What you can type
One field handles everything. The answer updates as you type.
- Math — 2*(3+4), 10/4
- Conversions — 5 in to mm, 2.2 lb to kg, 72 f to c
- Mixed units — 1 ft + 2 in to mm
- Fractions — 1 1/4 x 5, 5 1/2 in to mm, or typed 1½
- Percentages — 15% of 80, and 100 + 10% gives 110
- Feet and inches — 5' 6", 1 ft 6 in, 6'2" to cm
- Areas — 12ft * 10ft is 120 ft², and 120 sqft / 32 sqft counts sheets
- Volumes — 10ft * 10ft * 0.5ft to cuyd for concrete, 1 cuft to gal
- Conversion factors — ft to mm answers 304.8 mm
Supported units: length (mm, cm, m, km, in, ft, yd, mi, plus " and '); area — any length squared, written sqft, sq ft or ft², plus acre and hectare; volume — any length cubed, written cuyd, cubic yards or yd³, plus ml, L, fl oz, cup and gal; mass (g, kg, oz, lb); and temperature (°C / °F).
Not sure what to type? Leave the field empty for a moment — the placeholder cycles through worked examples.
Questions
- How do I copy an answer?
- Press Return. The bare number goes to your clipboard — no unit attached — so it pastes cleanly into CAD, a spreadsheet, or a text field. The line is saved to the tape below. The small copy button next to the result copies without finishing the line.
- What is the tape?
- Your last ten calculations, kept below the field and across restarts. Click any line to bring it back for editing. Clear Tape in the gear menu empties it.
- Can I get answers as fractions?
- Yes — gear menu → Results → Fractions. Inch, foot, and yard results then read like a tape measure, snapped to the nearest 1/16, with ≈ marking a rounded value. The same menu sets 1–6 decimal places instead.
- Why does 5 in + 2 kg show an error?
- By design. Caliper understands what the units mean and refuses to add a length to a mass, rather than quietly returning a wrong number.
- Can it start automatically when I log in?
- Gear menu → Start at Login. Caliper also offers this the first time you run it, because otherwise it will not be running after you restart, and it looks as though the app has vanished.
- Multiplying two measurements gives an area. Can I get a plain number instead?
- Divide rather than multiply, or drop one of the units. 12ft * 10ft is an area; 12 * 10 ft is a length. Combinations Caliper has no honest name for — a length times a mass, for instance — are refused rather than guessed at.
- My keyboard writes decimals with a comma.
- That works. 1,5 and 1.5 both mean one and a half, and thousands separators are understood either way round, so 1.234,5 and 12,345.6 both parse.
- Does Caliper collect any data?
- No. It has no network access at all — it runs in the macOS App Sandbox without a network entitlement, so it cannot transmit anything even in principle. Your tape stays on your Mac. See the privacy policy.
Still stuck?
Email info@figstudiollc.com and include your macOS version and what you typed. We read every message.