Clusters1.7.2

@MACTECHHEAD: I think you misperceive the purpose and method of Squeeze. It is not a general purpose compression application. There are a number of those already available that create compressed files in various forms and formats. These are useful for storing and archiving files. Squeeze uses a compression scheme built into OS X 10.6.x which saves some space and yet allows files to be accessed and operate as if they were not compressed. This compression is routinely applied to most system files. Squeeze enables you to expand the use of this method to other files of your choice, which you can, in fact, drag and drop onto Squeeze. I used Squeeze for awhile when some of my hard drives were filling up. Ultimately, though, to relieve my space concerns I replaced those drives with larger ones. Not everyone will have this option available to them, however, and for them Squeeze may extend the usefulness of their computers for some time.

This was a great little app, as it stands now I can't seem to get it to work since the 10.13 upgrade.

This app was a great way to gain a few extra GB of disk space on a packed HD. I also found on older systems (ones without SSDs) that it actually reduced the load times of larger applications, in some cases quite substantially...

Since the Mac OS X 10.13 update this doesn't appear to break anything, but it sits permanently idle. When I try adding a folder to the app I'm warned that it appears I'm adding a folder that is not part of the boot volume (even though I am)...

It may simply be that apple's new format no longer benefits from what this app does. If you are using an older system pre-dating 10.13, and especially if you have a non SSD, I'd still recommend this app.

I have been waiting since Dec. 20th for this company to respond to my tech support request. I can't get my serial number to register in a second account on the same machine. Supposedly, I'm supposed to be able to, but it won't work, and they won't get back to me...

I am a fan of Clusters for a long time. I tend to use up all the available space on my drives and this extends my general usability. But I have noticed false reads of the space on my main drive. Once I restart it goes back to normal but I am curious is this is an issue with Clusters or some other drive issue.

An excellent Application which saves space on my hard drive.

I think that clusters may actually be slowing down my OS (otherwise it's the space that was used up). After I re-installed my OS and apps, I noticed that *everything* was MUCH faster. I do love the idea of saving space, but not at the cost of the speed and reliability of my overall experience. This app should run completely seamlessly in the background, with adjustable priority/speed. It also should take fewer resources while doing its job. The places in which you'd gain the most space would be documents, pictures, and apps. Videos, archives, audio, and other extremely large files will barely get any change. (the /system and /library is also excluded). On Average I'd say that you'd gain 10-15% more space on your hard drive. However, I would not recommend this for SSD users because this is specifically meant for a HD. I would recommend extra storage over compressing, because if you lose that much data it's bad, and there's most likely some files on your HD that you haven't used in months. I would recommend investing in a small SSD and replacing the disc drive with it, or a 64G SanDisk class 10 SDXC card. Running the OS/apps from either is well worth an investment, especially for the new MBP or Air. All in all, this app is really is good if one were too lazy to sort through their data or cannot afford another storage device. It's okay for students/businesses if they have no other options. If it's just out of curiosity or wanting to make the best use of your HD, it's really not worth it in the long-run.

I finally got a response after a few weeks... According to what they told me my email had gotten lost in a sea of spam... They worked with me and ended up releasing an update which fixed my issues. It's now working fine for me...

Company seems to be closed. I couldn't get any reply to my mails since about a month.

I might have considered this product, however the demo appears to be crippled because it limits you to saving a maximum of 50Mb and expires after just one hour! How on earth am I supposed to really put this product thru its paces, see how it performs, whether I encounter any issues, whether it really benefits my setup (Mac Pro with 6Tb of internal storage) and the way I work if all I get is one hour and an absurdly low compression limit? I've heard of 30 day trials, 14 day trials even 1 day trials but this is daft.

No complaints here, great little gem. In my case, it's 60 Gb of free disk (in both my internal 320 GB HD and 120 Gb SSD). One issue I have is about virtual machine image disks, like the one from VMware or Parallels. Should I allow Clusters to compress them?

This is a no-brainer 5 stars from me. I set Clusters to compress everything except for system files. To date, I've saved 50.4 GB on a 500GB hd. 50 GB!!! I've transferred all files and applications from a previous mac to a new MBP without hiccup. All compressed files still work as usual. I only allow clusters to run while plugged in, and I pause it when I need the extra RAM. Granted, the original Macbook these files started on, was running OSX Tiger, which I believe doesn't use the HFS+ file compression. In moving all of these files to a new MBP system and allowing clusters to do it's thing, the space savings is jaw-dropping. Your results may vary if you start on a HFS+ compressed system. Absolutely no complaints here.

Hand to roll back to 1.5.6 via Time Machine. Version 1.6 would not run on my 10.6.8 machine. The helper app would continually crash.

I haven't had many problems with Clusters and it has saved 7.98 GB of space on my MacBook Pro, which tells me that it does its job. I did have to set several exclusions, to include my Parallels virtual machines and a game, which I didn't realize would have been problems until they were problems. After setting the exclusions I removed the damaged apps (and virtual machines) and reinstalled them - no problems since.

Works, but disappointing how little it actually compresses. I bought it hoping to feee up space on my 128GB Macbook Air SSD. I was using 91GB and it freed up jus over 1GB. That's almost $13 a gigabyte for storage! Hardly worth the trouble and certainly not worth the money. I was hoping for at least 5-7GB in savings. It saved just of 300MB out of 5.2GB in Applications (6%), and just under 800MB in my user profile which had 64GB (1.5%) for an overall performance of around 1%.

It does one thing but it does it great.

Okay, more serious comments (and assuming that cereals and software don't compete in the same market): 1. just doing what needs be done – trying to apply the new 'external drive' ability to a spare time machine volume. I'll get back with results later. 3. A minor annoyance: by now, I've got three different versions of the same preference file. 3. By the way, if you download Clusters rather than using the inbuilt updater, you'll end up with both preference panes. Starting Clusters a second time got rid of Squeezer.

@MACTECHHEAD: I think you misperceive the purpose and method of Squeeze. It is not a general purpose compression application. There are a number of those already available that create compressed files in various forms and formats. These are useful for storing and archiving files. Squeeze uses a compression scheme built into OS X 10.6.x which saves some space and yet allows files to be accessed and operate as if they were not compressed. This compression is routinely applied to most system files. Squeeze enables you to expand the use of this method to other files of your choice, which you can, in fact, drag and drop onto Squeeze. I used Squeeze for awhile when some of my hard drives were filling up. Ultimately, though, to relieve my space concerns I replaced those drives with larger ones. Not everyone will have this option available to them, however, and for them Squeeze may extend the usefulness of their computers for some time.

It seems after a while of using, squeezed items that have been deleted are still being counted towards the savings. For example, I use Squeeze on my Applications folder. I haven't been installing new applications, but many regularly update, and the saving total keeps going up and up. Also, the compressing I did on some duplicated folders (early on, to test Squeeze) which afterwards have been deleted still count as previous savings. Doesn't seem correct to me.

Any reason why this won't work on external drives? That would make it perfect.

A great piece of software! It is very unobtrusive and does its job beautifully. Big thank you to dev for giving it away with macheist, otherwise I would have never tried it.

Version 1.2 is virtually PERFECT. I cannot expend enough energy recommending this brilliant software.

Super easy to use, unobtrusive, and effective

I neglected to mention the most important factor - How much Hard Drive space is saved. Thus far I am seeing 10 to 12 %, depending on file type.

Beyond awesome. Works perfectly - as advertised. Version 1.0.2 bug fixes are significant.

Lots of user results and explanation by the devs over here (in between the wooting): http://www.macheist.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=16895

I really like Squeeze so far, but I have noticed it starts to eat up memory. After running it for about 24 hours, it's now hogging up 85 MBs of RAM, which is a tad much for an app like this. Here's hoping to some updates to fix the memory hog issues (and the Hazel incompatibility issues, too)!

Thanks for the free Squeeze through MacHeist. Now, perhaps, the tiniest bit of information like, what it is, what it's for, what it does and doesn't do ... on the site or hey, in a ReadMe? Just saying.

afsctool is a command-line interface to the built-in HFS compression features of Snow Leopard: http://web.me.com/brkirch/brkirchs_Software/afsctool/afsctool.html

today is free... http://www.macheist.com/