What's improved
A dated record of what has changed on PracticalBench: new tools, upgrades, merged pages, fixes and corrections. Corrections to published results or explanations are listed here as well as on the page concerned. How we decide what to fix is set out in our editorial policy.
- Merged six near-duplicate tools into stronger single pages: grams-to-cups into cups to grams, gas mark into the oven temperature converter, baking-pan area into the cake tin size converter, pixels-to-centimetres into pixels to inches & centimetres, the Print PPI calculator into the screen & image PPI calculator, and weeks-between into days between dates. The old addresses redirect.
- Upgraded 27 simpler tools. Twelve now work both ways (for example km to miles, L/100km to mpg and cups to ml), and several answer the follow-up question: why a 1 TB drive shows about 931 GB, which day of the week a date falls on, an age in years, months and days, and weekly paid hours from a shift.
- Worked examples now show each input in plain English ("Wall area: 20 m²") instead of internal field names.
- Privacy page rewritten to describe exactly how Google Analytics and advertising cookies are used, with opt-out links.
- Tightened 17 page titles and 34 page descriptions so they read clearly in search results.
- Correction: the screen-dimension calculator's 55-inch example said 26.97in high; the calculator gives 26.96in, and the example now matches.
- Fix: the oven temperature converter accepted 0°C (showing a −20°C fan equivalent); it now starts at 50°C.
- Expanded nine of our most-used calculators with extra worked examples, cited sources and more FAQs: bricks, concrete, recipe scaler, EV charging cost, appliance running cost, turf, moving cost, DPI and business days.
- The turf calculator now lets you enter your supplier's coverage per roll instead of assuming 1 m².
- Added a light, dark or system colour theme switch to every page.
- Removed our own cookie banner; advertising consent is now handled by Google's certified consent message.
- Rewrote the explanations on cost and energy tools with clear example inputs and stated assumptions, including EV vs petrol, petrol journey cost, download time and insulation.
- The washing machine, dishwasher and tumble dryer calculators now accept the energy-per-cycle figure from the appliance label.
- Refined calculator wording to match what people actually search for.
- Developer and file tools: clearer category descriptions, more relevant related links, and converters labelled as converters rather than calculators.
- Correction: the insulation calculator's page overstated a depth and regulation point; the wording now reflects that requirements vary.
- Fix: the business days calculator now rejects invalid dates in shared links and handles long date ranges instantly.
- New PracticalBench logo and icon, with the wordmark kept on mobile.
- Nothing on the site blocks access any more: consent is optional, and an earlier ad-blocker check was removed.
- Merged the Privacy and Cookies pages into one; old cookie-page links redirect.
- Merged a duplicate heater tool from the Home section into the electric heater cost calculator.
- Added practical guides to each category page and cited Federation of Master Builders cost guidance for the extension, loft conversion and renovation estimators.
- Easier navigation on phones, with a category menu; Dev and Files added to the main navigation.
- Clearer terms and disclaimer wording.
- Fix: the roof pitch calculator showed "1:Infinity" for a zero run; it now asks for a valid measurement.
- Fix: two broken Planning Portal reference links replaced.
- Completed the developer and file checkers, including the SQL identifier checker, text file portability preflight, attachment filename doctor and YAML cross-runtime preflight. All run entirely in your browser.
- PracticalBench went live at practicalbench.com, with a homepage, tool search, an all-tools page and legal pages.
- Launched seven new categories with 76 calculators: Garden, Energy, Cook, Time, Tech, Print and Events.
- Launched the Dev and Files categories: in-browser checkers for YAML, dates, URLs, version numbers, .env files, regular expressions, Markdown and email files.
- Added metric/imperial unit switches, links that share a full calculation, clearer result cards, and "recently used" and saved tools.