It’s nice because I don’t have to install it. Now I can use it when I work, on my computer at home or when my dad calls me.

But there is also merit to using a desktop application.

I think that a good chunk of the selfhosted community is "sole IT guy at a tiny company". This is great for that, since having to update desktop software in twenty places sucks.

Different use cases.

It's not like your uploading and downloading gigabytes to it to use ffmpeg. For that you use something local. This is for converting smaller files conveniently. For example from a laptop and you don't want to use a public converter that might keep the content.

If you regularly convert certain file types on a computer, dedicated programs tend to be better than these combo ones anyway.

Why not both?

I use this on desktop https://github.com/Tichau/FileConverter but then on mobile how you would convert files, especially niche technical ones? I used to rely on cloudconvert.com but now I can install this on my server

Install it once, use it on any of your devices. Run it once on a capable server so even potatoes get the advantage of it. Run it once so it only needs to support one OS and hardware architecture.

Using an app of some description over many different device types is far more of a maintenance headache and that's before you start dealing with app stores.

Same, I've been looking for something like that for quite some time

But I want to trust randos with my file conversions! 😡

And your simple command that covers all the file types supported, on any platform, is... What?

If you're gonna bitch, and say your alternative is better, you had better cough up the alternative or your just full of shit...

There is no we here. You obviously dont need it, so dont use it. Easy right?

If it's behind a VPN, there's no extra attack surface.