Clusters for Mac1.7.2

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 guess development on this is dead? Does anyone know if it works with 10.11? If not are there any alternatives? Terminal commands?

The last blog entry on their website is from March 2012...:-/ Anyway, Clusters has been working ok for years, here on OS 10.9.5. In fact, when installed, and once it has compressed the files, you don't even know it's there — I was wondering if it was still working, indeed! ;-) To check the gain, the easier solution I found is to Get Info on a big folder and compare it to the result for a Terminal command (du -sh path_to_the_folder) — multiplied by 1024×1024×1024, if you want a fair reading, Finder considering that 1 KB = 1000 bytes). The result for my /Applications folder gives 36GB against 28GB, a nice 8GB gain! If you're interested in HFS+ file compression, this article highlights a few utilities: http://www.cnet.com/news/unix-commands-for-managing-hfs-compression-in-os-x/ Some links are broken, but you'll easily find them — afsctool seems what you need to use for compressing files and folders without copying them.

Prefpane not opening under 10.9.3

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 have used Clusters since the days when it was known as Squeeze. No problems, no complaints - works welll in the background compressing everything I have thrown at it. Two minor glitches/issues - the Total Savings as reported by the app is a cumulative total over time, so the longer it has been on your machine, the greater the Total is, so use this figure with caution. The other GUI hiccup is I have a folder listed that is greyed out - it is listed as "Other" with "Savings obtained from previously selected folders" - presumably from my previous MacBook before I migrated to current MacBook. I can't delete this entry when I believe I should be able to .. Otherwise can recommend this app - it does what is says it will do, and for me, no issues with CPU spikes etc as reported by others.

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?

I installed Clusters on a new MacBook Air, and am seeing Clusters CONSTANTLY consuming between 110% and 150% of my CPU cycles, even though clusters is NOT actively compressing anything... Both the menu bar icon and the system preference show clusters is not actively compressing anything, but after an extended period of being 'idle', clusters is somehow consuming the bulk of my idle CPU... I emailed support with no response...

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.

Still trying to wrap my head around this. Why doesn't Apple use this if it's built in? Trying to think of potential drawbacks -- for example, you should probably exclude Dropbox or other shared folders if you're sharing with anyone pre-Snow Leopard or, I'm assuming, Windows users...

No fear ;) I use Clusters (Squeeze) since the beginning and only removed last version before updating to ML. All compressed files stay compressed and stay usabele without clusters. Only if you would boot with old 10.5 DVD/extternal HD you will get problems because compressed HFS* isnst supported by < 10.6. I saved over 15 GB space selecting some Apps and some Folders. Great! Only at first install the first check/compress background process takes some time / slows down system minimal, but less than spotlight first run. Later the system will not get any slowdowns - it only works

No review today, only a comment: I had 1.6.1, registered, and went through the update process by uninstalling and reinstalling as recommended by the author. ALL my settings are gone (I have a time machine backup, so I think I could bring them back, if only I knew where they are; they are not in the .plist in preferences, that I already found out...). Also, it is no longer possible to hide the icon in the menu bar. The preference for it is still there in the tab "General", but it doesn't do anything. I refrain from giving a rating today, because it would REALLY be a bad one, and I want to give the author the chance to fix those bugs. I used to like Clusters, and I want to continue liking it...

This app has one benefit I found which was unexpected for me... When I compress my Applications folder with this, I find my larger apps load much quicker than before they were compressed... Effectively the reduction in size means it can be read faster (and apparently in memory expansion has little delay), so in the end my apps are up and running noticeable faster...

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.

Been using a while and I'm happy with it. 16gigs saved, with over 2 gigs freed having compressed a specific Library Mail folder that I've marked "Old". I hope they add very specific FAQs regarding what is safe to compress so we don't have to experiment. That will get them that last star. Have a star less to MacUpdate for bad programming of this window; it won't let me revise stars after selecting. Oh well.

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%.

Pretty good app that basically re-defines how much data something takes. I'm not sure if this is correct, and I can't remember where I found this info, but according to [source] the Mac OS defines data storage larger than it actually is. I believed it was said to be as 1,256kb for 1mb instead of 1,000kb for 1mb. (and so forth.) This person made a terminal command that re-programs that definition, and offered it freely. (If I find that source againI will reply here.) Now, this app isn't worth it for people who regularly keep 100G+ of free space on their HD. (assuming it is 250G). It is very useful, works on Lion (10.7.3), but is selective in how much data it saves you. (based on the file type.) For a better idea if you really need this, look this up on youtube. you may have to search "squeeze" (which is what it used to be called apparently.) This app certainly seems like it wasn't easy to make, but overall it should offer better features for the price they charge. Now, this DOES take plenty of CPU power (about 1-30%). (you can monitor with the free "istat" menu for dashboard.) You can tell it what folders you want it to compress and which ones not to. Or you can add an entire directory ("desktop" for example). For an idea of how much data you can save, it depends on how much data of certain files you have. The most it will save on is apps, docs, txt, rtf, etc. The Least you will save on is videos and picture files.

It does one thing but it does it great.

I'm a BIG fan of Xslimmer by the same company. Xslimmer has saved a lot of disk space on my drives, but I have continuing problems with Clusters slowing my machine down to a crawl, even after it finishes its compression. I won't give it a star rating since I'm not sure the problem isn't inherent to my machine, but I've had to remove every version shortly after installing it. Hope they can get this fixed.

I made the mistake of installing my registered copy of Clusters before I discovered what a shady company LateNiteSoft is. I submitted a simple question using their tech support web form on June 17, 2011. On June 23, I sent a follow-up e-mail (through the online service they use for tech support tracking) requesting an answer. It is now June 26, 2011. I have received no answer of any kind. The tech support request still shows in their online "tracking" where it will apparently remain unanswered. LateNiteSoft registered their domain using DomainsByProxy to hide their mailing address, phone number, and e-mail addresses. There are no e-mail addresses published for them on their web site, no phone numbers, and no physical address. Even their press releases only list the town (Torrelodones) in Spain where they are located, but no address, phone number, or e-mail address. No legitimate company goes to this level of effort to hide from their customers.

I am looking at this s/w, but it hasn't had an update for a year. I am a little insecure about purchasing it. Is there an update forthcoming and what is the update policy? Are updates free or do we pay again?

Simple and effective. I have only owned this app for two days but the benefits are quite obvious to me. Workingon a Macbook Pro With highly limited space due to an SSD replacing the harddrive saving space is often a time consuming bi-weekly organisation process. Clusters has thus far freed up 9.06% of my hard drive space( 7% of the the space in the entire. volume!)This is made all the better by the fact that the application automatically manages your set folders and runs in the background constantly at work, lowering the amount of input and distraction of having to constantly tell the application to get to work. No noticable hit on my computer, currently it is utilizing only .01% of the processor, and 20.5 MB of real memory. Great buy, excellent savings, worth the money.

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.

They should have said they're changing the name for the second time. First it was Squeeze, then Squeezer, and now it's Clusters. I hope this name sticks. ;-)

@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

Just an advisory that may be helpful to some: Squeeze can cause certain applications to pop the following message nearly every time you go to save a file: "The location of the document cannot be determined. You can specify where to save it." even if the file *is* exactly where it should be. This began to happen with me when when saving files in CSS Edit as well as ChronoSync. I researched the cause of this error and found this Apple support forum post where users report the same issue with Numbers, Pages and Logic 9: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11129467 The developer is aware of this and has listed it in their FAQ under the heading "I am editing a document. When I save it, the application shows a warning." http://latenitesoft.com/squeeze/FAQ.html#FAQ_10 I like Squeeze, I know the company behind it is top notch, and it was pretty cool of them to give it away free in the MacHeist promo last week. Hopefully they can find a workaround for this issue. Until then flipping Squeeze off in the pref pane immediately took care of the problem for me as I suspect it wil for others who encounter this quirk. A few gb saved on my drive is nothing compared to a huge speed bump in my work flow every time I go to save a document.

Doesn't work on volumes other than "main"? I want to compress other internal volumes why wont this work?

Bad, Bad, Bad, why an app like this permanently in the background when you only need to this once!!! And with different preferences permissions,it's juts too bad... Just google for afsctool, it's free and do the same with lot more options, just use the terminal for once! http://web.me.com/brkirch/brkirchs_Software/afsctool/afsctool.html

What gets "squeezed" depends on the type of file you are trying to compress. Since Squeeze uses a built-in OS X 10.6.x utility to "safely" compress files, it is constrained by what that utility can do. In addition, many, if not most, system files are already compressed, which is one way Snow Leopard conserves space on a hard drive - something that was not highlighted in the general descriptions of why Snow Leopard is "smaller" than OS X 10.5.x. Clearly there was more to the story than the fact that 10.6 doesn't install a full set of printer drivers. I suspect that without this automatic compression of system resources, it would not, indeed, be smaller than Leopard. At the same time, the fact that uncompressing files when they are needed and then re-compressing them afterwards does not appear to impact system performance is quite remarkable. Be that as it may, I personally would hesitate to use Squeeze on my entire hard drive without first testing it on at least some applications. That said, different people are bound to have different numbers of files on their boot drives that are subject to compression, hence they will get different percentage results from Squeeze. Heretofore it was possible to use Terminal to invoke the Snow Leopard compression routine. Once again, we owe some thanks to an enterprising third-party developer for liberating us from the Terminal by providing a UI that enables us to do the job more easily.

Started with 224 GB used on my MacBook Pro. "Squeezed" the entire HD. Ended with 213.5 GB or 4.5% saved. It was free so I will not complain, but wonder why others are getting 10% and more savings. I am using the latest 1.0.2.

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.

License code will not verify. The helper app has full access to the internet but it still can not verify the license code. Email to the developer has not been answered. This code was given free from MacHeist - I wonder if it was not entered into the database? I tried another code using a different email and still have the same problem.. Sure glad I did not pay for this...

Wouldn't risk it. Install ok, added my documents and downloads folders, save a massive 250MB from 46GB, wow not! so I turned it off in the System Preference Pane. Now I just get a grey bar on startup and the disk wont repair in disk utilities : ( Cant think what else might have cause this... Any ideas

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)!

Ditto. And after a quick google: "10.6: Compress files with HFS+ compression" http://tr.im/PWPd One source seems to indicate that only read-only files are compressed. Perhaps only as OSX utilizes it. http://tr.im/PWIk Other sources indicate that in retaining backward compatibility of files when copying to an older OS, they are decompressed before copying. The compressed data is hidden in the resource fork so that older systems can't read and possibly corrupt the compression data. HFS compressed external drives then should probably not be used with older systems. And the resource forks new job may cause pause for overzealous hidden file cleaners out there. And then there is the issue of protecting your compression data when backing up. Thankfully, it looks like Carbon Copy Cloner and Superduper are already set up to preserve it. An in-depth look at the behind the scenes of HFS+ compression: http://tr.im/PWN8 Incidentally, I may have bumped into an issue with Squeeze. Closed the lid on my MBP while it was compressing. On wake, Squeeze popped up an error saying the compression database was corrupted and it needed to start the job from scratch and I would need to re-ad my folders to be compressed. OK. Interestingly, Squeeze no longer "sees" the same "Savings" as before. Maybe it only recognizes the compression performed after rebuilding its database and not what was compressed previously.

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.

Is it safe to just add the main hard drive as a folder, so everything compresses? What are the downfalls in doing this?

I'm a bit hesitant about using this- is it like compressing drives in Windows where programs will start a bit slower because they have to decompress on the fly? There's not enough information on the developer's website to make me feel confident about using this.

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

This appears to be an absolutely fantastic app - been using it since this morning and saving tons of disk space, so far without complication. Having said that, the FAQs on the developers website is a bit FAQ-lite. Are there any types of files that shouldn't or can't be compressed? And why do some folders seem to take a very long time, whilst others compress very fast, unrelated to size? Is it better to compress folders individually or can you compress folders containing many others? Is the process reversible? If so, I can visualise a situation where previously compressed files might exceed disk space. Perhaps a forum will spring up with answers to these kind of queries. In the meantime, though, it seems to be a wonderful utility in this era of ever-expanding hard disk needs!!

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