Hey guys, have a rMBP 2013 15" and I have this app running on it. It seems really glitched up compared to before when it first came out and I feel like its not doing much on my Mavericks system. Is this app really worth it or doing anything? Thanks.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Clusters app by LateNiteSoft
- Thread starter bluedoggiant
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Funny lol.
The app seems sort of buggy and it is claiming that it is saving 27.5GB of space on my computer but I cannot be so sure.
I say you should try it out and see if it actually saves any space.
I wish more people would give input.
The software works as expected on Mavericks.
On El Capitan today it was necessary to open
/Library/PreferencePanes/Clusters.prefPane/Contents/Resources/
and then use Finder's contextual menu to open ClustersHelper.
First attempts to retrieve a key (in response to entry of a registration code) failed. I sought advice, Google led me to this topic. Eventually I worked around the key retrieveal issue by simply quitting then reopening System Preferences.
I was aware of only one significant bug – in HFS Plus, over which LateNiteSoft has no control. Probably the best way to avoid that bug:
On El Capitan today it was necessary to open
/Library/PreferencePanes/Clusters.prefPane/Contents/Resources/
and then use Finder's contextual menu to open ClustersHelper.
First attempts to retrieve a key (in response to entry of a registration code) failed. I sought advice, Google led me to this topic. Eventually I worked around the key retrieveal issue by simply quitting then reopening System Preferences.
I was aware of only one significant bug – in HFS Plus, over which LateNiteSoft has no control. Probably the best way to avoid that bug:
- ensure that there's always enough free space for an uncompressed copy of the largest file that is to be compressed.
Last edited:
This is so interesting. How do you understand the technology behind the application. If it is such a must, why aren't there other Mac applications claiming to do the same thing? I deleted the app because it was a hog on the CPU processes and was unsure if it was actually doing anything.
The other app LNS makes XSlimmer is great but hasn't been updated in years. I suspect the founder has moved on. I am not so keen on using abandoned software.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6/3/ was a good introduction.
AppleFSCompression is mentioned in open source areas such as
https://opensource.apple.com/source/kext_tools/kext_tools-326.1.12/systempaths.plist and there was reference to a private framework –
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AppleFSCompression.framework – but there's no comparable systempaths.plist at https://opensource.apple.com/source/kext_tools/kext_tools-426.20.2/ for OS X 10.11.2 … I can't guess whether that framework is still private.
There was another third party product, I don't recall its name. When I compared the two, Clusters was much better.
I still use this and it's great. It effectively gave me back 100GB on my setup.
Is anybody in contact with the developers?
I'm hoping Clusters gets an update for High Sierra (which still supports HFS+ compressed files, even on APFS volumes)
I'm hoping Clusters gets an update for High Sierra (which still supports HFS+ compressed files, even on APFS volumes)
I expect developers (not necessarily LateNiteSoft) to focus on something more suitable than HFS compression.
I don't understand. More suitable how? MacOS High Sierra still uses HFS+ compression during its installation. Are you saying Apple shouldn't use it?
Simply: I expect that there'll be something more suitable.
With HFS Plus, AppleFSCompression could be pushed in a way that led to silent dataloss of hundreds of MB from a file, with the consequent file system inconsistency non-detectable by fsck_hfs(8), then after the inconsistent file system was apparently OK there would be, for the wrecked file, an error code that was widely non-understood or misunderstood. I might have written about it somewhere on the Internet.
That's not to be alarmist about use of AppleFSCompression with APFS. I haven't even looked at the combination, let alone pushed it.
With HFS Plus, AppleFSCompression could be pushed in a way that led to silent dataloss of hundreds of MB from a file, with the consequent file system inconsistency non-detectable by fsck_hfs(8), then after the inconsistent file system was apparently OK there would be, for the wrecked file, an error code that was widely non-understood or misunderstood. I might have written about it somewhere on the Internet.
That's not to be alarmist about use of AppleFSCompression with APFS. I haven't even looked at the combination, let alone pushed it.
I found your post https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...ed-by-the-compression-tools-within-lion/87307
Sounds like the issue was with third-party software that used HFS+ compression rather than the feature itself.
Sounds like the issue was with third-party software that used HFS+ compression rather than the feature itself.
Last edited:
I've put together a shell script of my own using:
- the latest afsctool
- find
- cron
Last edited:
This is awesome to read! I hope you see this, and could possibly help. I didn't know how popular Clusters was since it seems to be hard to find any information about it online outside of the developers site which states that Clusters has been discontinued, and it no longer works with High Sierra. I have been using it since Snow Leopard. Could you elaborate a little on how you did this? I would love to get something working. Clusters is a huge staple of an app I have been using, and I just upgraded to High Sierra. How did you get something working?
This is awesome to hear! Thanks for the response! Yeah, I will post a couple screens as soon as I get a moment. Really quick question, if I use afsctool to compress some files when I go to open them, will macOS automatically decompress them like with clusters? Say I compressed an application, when I open it, will it work without issues?
I've been living with the prototype for some time. Not quite ready for the masses. Definitely 2019.