Random Posts

WHATSIZE: A REVIEW





When your system starts hanging and slowing down unnecessarily, the first thing you're advised to check is your storage space. Not responding swiftly to commands is one of the first signs you will notice when your drive is getting full.
 WHATSIZE MAC


 To address this issue, you need to delete some files, but how do you find out the particular files that are taking up more space?
 You need a pointer, a quick viewer that will show you the exact space each file is occupying and that's exactly what WhatSize does for you.

 It provides this information in multiple data views and lets you free up drive space quickly. Each view provides new ways to look at the data, and determine where you can pare down the bulk that's stored on your Macs drive.

Beyond showing you the inner details of your drive, WhatSize also includes other tools that can help you remove files, find duplicates, and even remove localization files that many apps include.

Pros
·        Easy-to-use interface.
·        Offers multiple views: Browser, Outline, Table, and PieChart.
·        Can examine and display size information for any drive connected to your Mac.
·        Includes three utilities to help in the cleanup process: Cleaner, Delocalizer, and Duplicates.
Cons
·        Initial scan or re-measure can be slow, depending on the drive size.
·        Cleaner tool is basic; it only examines preset locations for items to delete.

Which WhatSize

WhatSize is available in two forms; the first is available from the Mac App Store and the second directly from the developer. Although the Mac App Store version is less expensive, it also doesn't have as many features as the version sold directly by the developer. The Mac App Store version is also a major version release behind the version available directly from ID-Design.
This review is focused only on the version available directly from the developer, currently at version 6.4.2.

Installing WhatSize

WhatSize is provided as a .dmg file. Double-click the .dmg file, and your Mac will mount a disk image that contains the WhatSize app. Once the disk image opens, simply drag the app to your Applications folder.

Using WhatSize

WhatSize opens to a multi-pane window that includes a toolbar across the top containing just about everything you need. There is also a help file you can go through. It's well written, and shows off many of the app's capabilities, which you might not otherwise know are there.

The left-hand sidebar contains all of the devices; essentially, the drives connected to your Mac. In addition, there's a Favorites section, which contains some commonly used folders, such as Desktop, Documents, and Music. You can add or remove items from the Favorites section, which allows you to customize the sidebar to suit your needs.

WhatSize Views

The views are what set WhatSize apart from similar apps. There are four views available: Browser, Outline, Table, and PieChart. Each view presents the data (files and folders) stored on the selected device a bit differently, and each view can be helpful for discovering large chunks of data you may no longer need.
The Browser view is a lot like the Finder's column view; it lets you work your way through the hierarchy of a drive or folder.

The Outline view is more like the Finder's list view, showing details about each item.
The Table view may be the most versatile because it includes a search function that allows you to narrow down your search. For instance, you may want to find files that haven't been used in over 6 months and are larger than 100 MB.

The last view is the PieChart, also known as a sunburst chart. WhatSizes PieChart view offers a way to see how data is stored on the drive. Working out from the center, the PieChart shows concentric rings, each corresponding to the hierarchy of folders. Those at the center are closer to the root entry point of the drive; as you move out through the rings, you move folder by folder away from the root point.

Removing Files and Folders

From the various views, you can select an item, and then right-click it and send it off to the trash. Right-clicking an item also brings up many additional commands, including revealing the item in the Finder, a nice way to take a closer look at a file.

By the way, the Finder's Quick Look feature works within the various views, so selecting a file and pressing the spacebar will display the file's contents in a Quick Look window. However, using this method, you're basically removing files one at a time, which can be stressful if you have a lot of space to free up.

Cleaner, Delocalizer, and Duplicates

WhatSize has three built-in utilities for quickly finding files to remove:
·        Cleaner
Cleaner provides quick access to log files, the downloads folder, cache files, NiB files, localized files, and known temporary folders, allowing you to quickly delete their contents.
Developers commonly use NiB files to present an alternate user interface layout. An example would be a word processor interface, with the layout altered a bit to accommodate another language.
Localized files are additional data files used by an app to support multiple languages.
Cache files are used by the Mac to speed up certain processes; many apps also use cache files. Removing them can slow things down a bit, but will temporarily give you a bit of free space. Its only temporary because the cache files are recreated as soon as they're needed.

·        Delocalized

The delocalized tool can search a drive for system and application localization files. The idea is that you probably wont need to use an app in all of the languages available, so removing those you dont need will free up space.
The problem is that just like the Cleaner tool if your drive is so full of information that removing the localization files can provide temporary relief, then you have bigger worries than what this tool can remove. You need additional storage space; removing these files wont help all that much.

·        Duplicates

Duplicates maybe the best of the utilities included with WhatSize. The Duplicates tool looks at a file's content, creates a signature that represents the file, and then compares it to similar files it finds.
Using the signature method allows Duplicates to find files that have the same content, even if the file names are different.
You can delete the duplicate immediately, move it to the trash, or replace the duplicate with a hard link to the original.

Review

WhatSize is very helpful for tracking down files to delete in order to free up space on Macs drive. Its various views allow for both different ways to see data and different tools for tracking down data to eliminate.

However, two of the utilities for helping track down data, Cleaner and Delocalizer, are less useful, not because they dont work, but because their impact on drive space would largely be temporary.

 A better approach would be to invest in more storage space, either a bigger drive or additional external storage.
The rest of WhatSize is very useful for cleaning up a drive, as well as keeping track of whats going on with your Mac's storage space.
WhatSize is $29.99. A demo is available.

Post a Comment

0 Comments