Numi – Calculator app for Mac

[reid]

Soulver is a similar app for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS with shared documents in iCloud Drive. Check it out if you’re looking for something like this to go!

[cprecioso]

And! the parser and calculator engine is free to use for personal projects. It is an extremely pleasant SDK to use, and super powerful.

https://github.com/soulverteam/SoulverCore

[kstrauser]

Soulver is no longer available for iOS and iPadOS. It's been pulled until version 3 comes along: https://twitter.com/soulver/status/1375548200833146884

[tonyedgecombe]

https://soulver.app

[selykg]

Soulver is so good. I use it almost every single day. It's just a great app and isn't that expensive. One of those apps I completely miss when it's not installed on a new device.

[davidgl]

Another good one is http://calca.io, very like Soulver but also has simple graphing, runs on mac, iOS and Windows

[sneak]

Periodic reminder that iCloud Drive is not end to end encrypted, permitting both Apple and the US federal government to read all of your calculations at any time without a warrant.

[monkeydust]

Would love to see a web version

[peterloron]

AFAIK, Soulver is only for MacOS...

[lordleft]

I find that calculators remain weirdly unergonomic on most Operating Systems. There are so many times where I want to do some quick math but feel hobbled by the insistence of calculator software writers to ape physical calculator design -- Numi seems like a cool step in the right direction

[apazzolini]

If you're using OS X, try using Spotlight or Alfred directly (Keypirinha[0] is a reasonable Windows alternative) - just type in `1 + 2` and you get the answer without launching a special app. There are plugins for conversions as well.

[0]. https://keypirinha.com/

[0x_rs]

I've found programs such as SpeedCrunch[0] to be extremely more comfortable to use than calculators imitating "classic" designs.

[0] https://speedcrunch.org/

[ryanmccullagh]

Excel is the secret calculator app that you’ve been dreaming about.

[908B64B197]

There's always a REPL close by for users that are technical enough.

[layoutIfNeeded]

I didn’t even know there’s a calculator app on macOS. I simply write formulas into Spotlight, and if I need history or variables or anything serious I launch an Octave prompt.

[perryizgr8]

I used to have an amazing calculator in Windows XP/7 called powertoy calc. It was so simple to use and had amazing powerful features too. Huge help while I was in engineering college.

[asdff]

This is why I still use bc

[bbodi]

Since others already mentioned many fantastic alternatives, let me share mine: https://bbodi.github.io/notecalc3/

[SkyMarshal]

This gets posted regularly but not often discussed. Here’s one of the few prior postings with comments, from six years ago, fwiw:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837802

[andy_ppp]

Wow this is awesome! I kind of want this integrated into Alfred though...

Edit: it of course already has it https://github.com/nikolaeu/numi/wiki/Alfred-Integration

[Exuma]

wwoowow excellent find, this is amazing

[ianferrel]

The final example in their intro video doesn't make sense to me. Can someone explain it?

Here's the text: price = $8 times 5 $40 fee = 8% 8 % fee on price in Euro 39.48 EUR

What does that mean? "fee on price" should mean "fee times price", right? So 8% of $40. That's nowhere near 39.48 EUR. Could it mean "price after fee is deducted"? But if so, it must have been made during a time when EUR was worth almost 8% less than dollars? Did that ever happen?

[tcskeptic]

I suspect it means $40USD in Euro (at about .914 to the dollar) then add 8% to that amount.

5 * 8 = 40 40 * .914 = 36.56 36.56 * 1.08 = 39.48 (ish)

[Toutouxc]

Do we have the dev here?

I love the idea of a fast and tiny calculator notebook. I was a big Mathematica user (as long as my uni paid for the crazy expensive licence) for even simple calculations, and this would almost scratch my itch.

I'm saying almost because it needs a bit more work, at least some more quantities and units, like speed, voltage, power etc. And it all breaks down if you try do a calculation where the quantity/units change, i.e. the units disappear (because the app doesn't understand the formula) and you can't use the conversions anymore. I'm not saying it's a bad thing or that I absolutely need it, but the $24 price is no joke.

[villgax]

What I wanted was the old calculator in the sidebar to be back in Big Sur. It was the one muscle memory that I loved to reach out for something small, no matter how indifferent it makes typing it in spotlight or finely clicking on the dock icon, it will never beat sheer speed/confidence of accessing it in the sidebar

[toomim]

I would totally use this if it were an extension to Emacs. I keep lots of calculation results in text files, and edit them in emacs, but I don't want to use a totally separate app whenever I want to enter and calculate some math within a text file.

[jimvdv]

Numi looks awesome! My favorite calculator app so far is Tydlig[0], too bad it's has not been updated in a couple years. I remember a really good talk by the creator (Andreas Karlsson), but I can't seem to find it, anyone has any idea what I'm talking about?

[0]. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tydlig/id721606556

[tunesmith]

My favorite is still Calca (http://calca.io) - it hasn't been updated for a while, the developer has been working on other things, but it still works for me.

[dshacker]

I love calca, it the best for me by a long shot.

[BozeWolf]

What is wrong with “bc” ;-) half joking, anybody else who uses bc? I am by no means an expert, just using the regular add/multiply and sometimes a variable.

This looks way better though.

[kevincox]

This is what I do. I do it so frequently that I have a small script `b` so that I can `b 'l(156)'` or just type `b` to get a shell with the match library loaded. Seems funny to alias a 2 char command but I often prefer passing the expression on the command line.

[speleding]

I use "irb" (interactive ruby), installed by default on MacOS and there is always terminal window open somewhere anyway. Will give Numi a try though.

[sgt]

I use bc too. Like literally every day. And it's only a terminal window away. I did install Numi now though and I like it!

[erk__]

my favorite calculator app is emacs's calc-mode, it is probably one of the nicest RPN calculators on desktop

[foobarian]

It's my go-to calc too but I always start 'bc -l' in case I need decimals.

[eugeniub]

A lot of people mentioning Soulver as a great alternative. But after running into limitations with Soulver, I eventually discovered Magic Calculator, and I fell in love. It allows for more precise calculations, and it's way cheaper at $4: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magic-calculator/id421993158?m...

[tmchow]

Surprised no one has mentioned https://instacalc.com yet. Not a native Mac app but genius.

Update: There is a chrome extension https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/instacalc/hfoojdao...

[samirahmed]

I have used Numi for several years - and versus Alfred/Google variants i have found Numi to be incredibly helpful for most back of the hand calculations.

I have yet to find an alternative that is more convenient

1) Configurable keyboard shortcut to bring this up 2) Good units/percentages/bytes support 3) Variable assignments / custom functions 4) Long History

[neighbour]

What is it with people calling their applications "beautiful"? What's so beautiful about this?

[dlivingston]

Clean and unobtrusive design, with a focus in typography, layout, ample whitespace, and a color palette that provides context and visual information without being gaudy and flashy.

With that said, it looks exactly like it could be a random CLI application running in an Oh My Zsh theme. Not much differentiation there.

EDIT: I feel like this app could be created in a few hours by wrapping a context-aware unit/currency conversion library with Rich Python [0].

[0]: https://github.com/willmcgugan/rich

[KaseKun]

I just watched the demo on the landing page and am struggling to think of a target audience for this.

Most technically oriented Mac users I know use Alfred. A quick CMD+space "4 tea spoons to ml" will open a browser window with your answer from your favourite search engine.

For more complex queries, preceded your input with "Wolfram" (tab autocomplete on the "wo") and you have the entire Wolfram engine at your fingertips.

The above mechanism is exceptionally flexible to any form of question, conversion, or math,and very low friction.

For the tax percentage calculation example (or anything similar), you'll be hard pressed to find someone who has this problem often enough to want to to pay for this, AND doesnt already use anymore comprehensive and familiar spreadsheet tool.

[tzekid]

I just started using it a bit and can see myself using it as an alternative for simple stuff I would otherwise do in Excel / Google Sheets.

[ksec]

With Soulver 2 for iOS is not longer available, I wish Numi have a paid version for iOS so it could use iCloud Sync between all devices.

Edit: And one of the thing I dont understand is all these Notes Calculator dont have B for Billion and T for Trillion. Some of them has M for million, but most dont.

[coldtea]

>And one of the thing I dont understand is all these Notes Calculator dont have B for Billion and T for Trillion

Most people aren't Jeff Bezos!

[cgufus]

Cool. Has anyone tried to enter 1 barn-megaparsec [1] ?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_meas...

[Abhinav2000]

My favourite IOS calculator app (for those who are RPN minded). Love this little free gem!

https://apps.apple.com/qa/app/rpn-30/id1451413517

[trasz]

Also Free42, https://apps.apple.com/us/app/free42/id337692629 - free reimplementation of the best RPN calculator ever, and with niceties such as tactile feedback.