Is your Mac running low on local storage? Try this new app before you start sacrificing files.
It turns out the Mac has this ability to reclaim disk space without actually deleting files in some instances.
If you’re a programmer like John Siracusa, you can write a script that will make use of this capability. If you’re like me and programming isn’t a language that you speak, Siracusa’s new Hyperspace macOS app is here to help.
Siracusa explains how Hyperspace came to be in a blog post today on Hypercritical:
Today, most Mac users don’t even notice that using the “Duplicate” command in the Finder to make a copy of a file doesn’t actually copy the file’s contents. […]
There are plenty of Mac apps that will save disk space by finding duplicate files and then deleting the duplicates. Using APFS clones, my app could reclaim disk space without removing any files! As a digital pack rat, this appealed to me immensely.
By the end of that week, I’d written a barebones Mac app to do the same thing my Perl script was doing. In the months that followed, I polished and tested the app, and christened it Hyperspace. I’m happy to announce that Hyperspace is now available on the Mac App Store.
Hyperspace is easy to use and costs nothing to try. Download it from the Mac App Store, launch the app and aim it at the folder you would like to target, and let it run.
If Hyperspace finds storage that can be recovered without deleting files, the app will report the amount of potential disk space to reclaim.
If the disk space that can be recovered is zero or insignificant, you haven’t spent a cent and you’ll have confirmation.
However, if Hyperspace finds tens of gigabytes of reclaimable storage without deleting files, the app has unlocked the ability to free up disk space. At this point, you can purchase Hyperspace and actually reclaim disk space that it identified without deleting a single file.
Hyperspace works with your Mac storage as well as attached storage that uses Apple File System, or APFS.
Recovering disk space can be unlocked for one month for $9.99 or one year for $19.99. If you prefer to pay once, you can purchase a lifetime unlock for $49.99.
Hyperspace is available starting today on the Mac App Store.
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