If there’s one thing we’re learning about APFS, it’s that file sizes are flexible. That means that free […]
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Unlike file data, metadata has varying persistence. Some is ephemeral, others sticky. macOS has inbuilt mechanisms for managing the persistence of extended attributes.
Explaining inodes, names, dates, permissions, file types, and specialised attributes used for iCloud.
Looking in more detail at newer tricks used by APFS on the data of files: sparse files, which can squeeze vast empty files almost to nothing; file clones; and compression, opening up in Big Sur.
How can you tell whether an app on your Mac is a Universal App, or only support Intel processors?
You’re checking through old files. How can you tell which file type they are when you don’t recognise the extension, or they don’t even have that to help?
Getting strange errors when trying to copy an RTFD package? Try looking inside it, to see if it has developed recursive structure, like Russian dolls.
Telling what a file is – whether plain text, Unicode UTF-8, 32-bit code, and so on – can be hard. Just use a little magic, free in the command tool ‘file’. Includes Swift code to access magic numbers.
