Every time I build a file upload feature, media player, or document parser, I run into the same small annoyance: finding clean test files in specific sizes (like a 100 KB vs. 5 MB vs. 10 MB file) without clicking through sketchy download sites full of fake "Download" buttons and pop-up ads.
Recently I came across SampleFilesHub, and it has quickly become a bookmarked tab in my daily dev and QA workflow.
Why it's actually useful for developers
- Zero ads or dark patterns: No signups, no captchas, and no fake download buttons. You pick a format, pick a file size, and click download.
- Multiple file sizes per format (100 KB to 10 MB): Really handy when you need to test both happy-path uploads (small files) and edge cases like progress bars, chunked uploads, or server payload limits (
client_max_body_size/ API body limits). - 30+ formats organized by category:
- Sample Images: JPG, PNG (with alpha transparency), WebP, SVG, GIF, and AVIF.
- Sample Videos: MP4 (360p up to 4K Ultra HD), MOV, WebM, AVI, and MKV.
- Sample Audio Files: MP3, WAV (uncompressed PCM), OGG, AAC, FLAC, and M4A.
- Sample Documents: Multi-page PDF files, DOCX, XLSX spreadsheets, PPTX, CSV datasets (up to ~96,000 rows), TXT, and RTF.
- Archives & Data Payloads: ZIP, TAR, JSON, XML, Markdown, and HTML.
Common scenarios where this saves time
- Testing file upload validators (checking MIME types, magic bytes, and size limits).
- Benchmarking image optimization pipelines (
Sharp,next/image,Cloudflare Images). - Testing PDF text extraction, OCR, or AI RAG document chunking.
- Stress-testing CSV/JSON importers and streaming parsers with 5 MB–10 MB datasets.
All files are royalty-free for development, automated E2E tests (Playwright/Cypress), and commercial QA.
Link if you want to bookmark it: https://www.samplefileshub.com
What tools or utilities do you all keep bookmarked for quick QA and dummy data testing?
