Hoopside: Embroidery Viewer

Someone sends you an embroidery design and your phone has no idea what to do with it. Hoopside is an embroidery file viewer that opens it — and shows you the design the way it will actually stitch.

No account. No ads. Nothing leaves your phone.

OPENS THE FILES YOU ALREADY HAVE

PES, DST, JEF, EXP, VP3, XXX and PEC. Straight from Downloads, WhatsApp, a Facebook group or an Etsy purchase.

So it is a PES file viewer, a DST file viewer and a JEF file viewer in one — a DST file opener too, without a separate app for each.

Hoopside reads the file itself, not its name. Designs that arrive with the extension stripped, or renamed to something odd, still open — which is exactly where most embroidery viewer apps give up.

SEE IT BEFORE YOU HOOP ANYTHING

• The design rendered stitch by stitch, in its real thread colours, on a dark stage where colours read true
• Real size in millimetres, total stitch count, and the smallest standard hoop it fits
• Numbered colour stops, in the order your machine will ask for them, with thread names
• Trims, jumps and an estimated thread length
• Pinch to zoom right into the satin stitches
• Watch it stitch out, stitch by stitch, at your own speed — so you spot a long jump before it is in the fabric

CONVERT IT FOR YOUR MACHINE

Bought a DST and own a Brother? Hoopside is an embroidery file converter too. Save any design as DST (Tajima), PES (Brother, Babylock), JEF (Janome), VP3 (Husqvarna, Pfaff), EXP (Melco, Bernina) or XXX (Singer).

That covers the usual swaps: a DST file converter for Tajima designs, a PES file converter when the shop only sells Brother, and a JEF file converter for a Janome.

Stitches are re-encoded properly for the format you pick, so long stitches and jumps stay inside what that machine accepts — not simply renamed, which is what produces a file the machine refuses.

• Convert a whole folder of designs at once
• Print a thread chart: the design, its figures and a tick box for every colour stop, to tape up next to the machine

HONEST ABOUT WHAT IT IS NOT

Hoopside does not digitize. It will not turn a photo or a logo into stitches — that is different software, and any app promising it for a few pounds is not telling you the truth.

Thread names are the nearest shades in the chart on file. Most DST files carry no colour information at all, so check them against real spools before you buy thread.

FREE, AND CLEAR ABOUT THE PAID PART

Opening, viewing, zooming, the stitch-by-stitch playback, the figures, the colour stops and the thread list are free, forever, with no ads and no watermark.

One optional purchase — once, not a subscription — unlocks saving to another format, the printable thread chart and batch conversion.

WHY THE FORMAT ENGINE IS WORTH TRUSTING

Hoopside's readers and writers are checked against pyembroidery, the open-source library Ink/Stitch is built on, on every single build: 21,816 stitches compared across 35 files with zero mismatches, and every format converted to every other format — 245 files — matched against that reference. A design that stitches wrongly wastes an evening, thread and fabric, so this is tested rather than asserted.

WHAT PEOPLE USE IT FOR

• As an embroidery file viewer, to check a design before buying thread or hooping fabric
• As an embroidery file converter, when the design you bought is not in your machine's format
• To count the colour stops and write a shopping list
• To check a design fits the hoop you own
• To open a PES file or a DST file that nothing else on the phone will open

Built for machine embroiderers who just want to see the file.