Synalyze It! Pro

Now runs great on Monterey !

I updated to MacOS 12.3 and now this crashes when trying to open. I checked the system requirements before and saw it needs MacOS 10.9 or greater, but now on deeper review, it is known to not work with 12.3... So much for trying to research and plan upgrades. Please get it working again.... It was a great program when I could use it.

Deletiing and reinstalling doesn't help. Until that's fiixed, I must giive one star

some UI features seem hidden or possibly missing for the Length item on the bottom bar of the main window, i see you can enter a new length after already selecting some bytes, and the selected bytes change accordingly. but this length is in hex. can u enter the length of a preselected byte range in decimal to change the byte range? also for the Data panel, can we see multiple data items of the same type (e.g. select 8 bytes of the file, see them as two int32 values)? Updated review: developer responded and gave me some hints, thanks! I see there is a "ctrl click" option in the "grammar" / "create struct" that might be what I need. Will update the review when I get a chance to try it out on real data. The hidden options could use some hints on the grammar editor because they seem difficult to find. Also I saw some popup about the application querying your address book for some email addresses? I don't recall exactly what it said. Seems to be an odd thing for a binary editor. I definitely like the "select / copy bytes" then create new file (in the editor) and paste these bytes to fresh file. This lets you easily work with a block of data without having to remember where the block started. Maybe there is a manually mark bytes w/ color or something, but I havent tried to find that yet. Update 2: Tried to create a grammar with seven 4 byte integers in it and that worked ok, but I was unable to figure how to apply this to an arbitrary byte location in the file. I get this error in the bottom panel: "ERROR Failed to map structures." Do grammars have to start at the beginning of the file? Update 3: the bottom small window that shows position and length of selection sometimes disappears or sometimes is there but no data in it. this seemed to happen after i started editing. also i couldnt find if there is a way to select some bytes and zero fill them. when you start typing data to enter, it clears your current byte range selection.' Update 4: this editor seems to be more designed for the concept of parsing files thru a user defined grammer than manual editing. it is very easy to mess up editing a file and/or lose your place and have to start over. editor defaults to Insert editing mode, not Replace. what mode it is in? you have to always check or you will mess up your file. i have not been able to figure how to properly use the grammar maker yet. it seems confusing to me, but maybe you have to do a lot of reading of the manual? Update 5: I ended up writing some ObjC code to to do what I needed w/ binary file format, the editing portions of this app were too jumpy as a beginner at this app. I kept messing up my file and losing my place. Maybe it takes some skill / usage build-up before you get comfortable w/ this app. It was useful for some viewing purposes.

Many (too many) features to review point for point in this limited space, but in short: Does everything expected from a solid and full-featured binary viewer/editor. One notable, *huge* feature is the ability to apply a “grammar” to a file and have the structures of that file type be displayed. Basically, if you’re viewing a JPEG, for example, you would see the header fields (width, height, bits-per-pixel, etc) decoded, alongside the raw data, usually displayed as hex. Those familiar with Ethereal/Wireshark , Hex Editor Neo (on Windows)… will be instantly familiar with this feature. It works really well - even with huge, multi-megabyte files - and the number of grammars is impressive, at least from my albeit limited use so far; it’s offered to download a grammar for nearly every common binary file format I’ve tried (most recently, MP3, which was a welcome surprise). The importance of this feature cannot be overstated! If you work as a developer in low-level protocols or codecs, this saves not just hours, but DAYS of time! I am subtracting 1-Star for a seemingly-small but very annoying and time-wasting bug (*I realize this may be something that only happens on my/some systems. However I think it’s impacting enough to retract a rating point): When I have a file open from a removable drive (e.g. a USB flash drive), and then I finish with it and fully close it in the app, the app still seems to hold on to the file, such that the OS won’t let me eject the drive. I must close the entire app to eject. This is very annoying if I am working with multiple files which I want to continue with, but must replace the USB drive back into the embedded board which I am debugging. (I am running OS X 10.11.6)

I’ve been using Synalyze It! for years. It’s a definite "must have” tool in any computer programmer’s toolbox. Most recently I’ve used this tool to help me write a RTP H264 decoder. Without Synalyze It I would have been left groping in the dark. With it I was able to quickly and confidently confirm my assumptions. Great tool.

Well, maybe I am exaggerating. Fact is, for me as a software developer and hacker, this is a must-have tool. The app's description already explains pretty well what it can do, and I can only confirm that it's not only working well and offers free templates for many file formats (e.g, I often use the one for zip files when I need to figure out issues with some zip files). It also runs stable and has a responsive developer. Just what a developer needs.

Described in one word, indispensable. Synalyze it is much more than a hex editor. It’s like a logic logic analyzer for binary files. I would like for it to be able to compare and difference two files similar to Kaleidoscope, but for binary files, to see changes between two saved files, but missing that feature isn’t worth taking a star away, because it does more than any other hex editor I’ve ever used, and it does it all very well. It’s worth the extra cost for the pro version, I found very quickly that the scripting support is very much necessary.

The app is great, but there are too few grammars regarding its price ($29.99). Actually there are about 50 grammars in this application. I buyed it for saving my time for googling binary formats and apply them manually, but now I think I’ll have to define a lot of grammars. Also I was suprised by that they have no grammar for jpeg format while having it for 'PS1 Save Games'. Please pull off some new grammars for famous file formats. If so, this app will deserve 5-star.

Simply put, this is the best hex editor for OS X that I have been able to find so far, and I have been looking on and off the AppStore for some time. Analyzing file data structures is so much easier when you can color them in! Right now I am using Synalyze It! Pro to analyze and manipulate graphics files of various formats. Since each file I work with was created at some very specific point in the evolution of its format, the differences between any two files of a single format can be quite striking and/or very very very subtle. The custom grammars work very well to keep those changes from confusing me, especially on those days when my brain sleeps in but I want to work early. It is easy to use a grammar file as a pre-existing map and a developing diagram at the same time, and if, like me, you are changing different parts of the files you are working with, you can use a grammar sheet for that one file and scribble notes all over it. It is sort of like a byte-level visual project manager for me. I am working as an artist rather than as an engineer, and Synalyze It! Pro is the only hex editor I have actually been able to learn from simply by using it. The others--well, they show you the bytes, and you can change them, but they are not much help in deciphering structures so that you know which ones will break everything if you drop a byte and which ones will stand up to a little tinkering. Also, the color schemes are completely customizable. Maybe I am getting old, but I can no longer work with black text on blaring white backgrounds, so I am always looking for those foreground/background preferance panes. This has them! So very happy to have found this tool.