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Sparsity

More updates for Tahoe: Aliases (Alifix), special files (Sparsity), file types (UTIutility) and language (Nalaprop)

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Four little utilities now compatible with macOS Tahoes, covering repair of Finder aliases, creating test sparse files and checking special file types, looking up UTI types, and analysing language.

July 3, 2025 Macs, Technology, Updates

APFS: How sparse files work

Sparse files are now common among databases, disk images, and virtual machines. How they work in APFS, how they’re created, and how they can explode.

June 8, 2024 Macs, Technology

Which files are purgeable? Look with new versions of Sparsity and Precize

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Where are all those purgeable files? Two updated utilities to help you find them: Precize and Sparsity, which will crawl folders checking which files are purgeable, sparse or clones.

April 20, 2023 Macs, Technology, Updates

Inside APFS: from containers to clones

How APFS containers and volumes work. What hard links, clones and sparse files are, and when they break down.

January 2, 2023 Macs, Technology

Copying a Mac volume to another file system (and back)

Tired of HFS+? Disenchanted by APFS? Why not copy or back up to a different file system? Here are crocodiles waiting to bite you.

November 25, 2021 Macs, Technology

Explainers: Sparse things

Sparse bundles, sparse files, and sparse matrices explained in a nutshell, and how a sparse bundle could have a band which is a sparse file containing a sparse matrix.

April 10, 2021 Macs, Technology

Exploring sparse files and potential clones with Sparsity 1.2

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New version searches for sparse files and clones, reporting their individual sizes and totals for the folder or volume examined.

April 5, 2021 Macs, Technology, Updates

Last Week on My Mac: APFS and pursuit of the free lunch

Can APFS really store more on disk using sparse files and clones? Is there such a thing as a free lunch, or do these tricks have a cost?

April 4, 2021 Macs, Technology

How can you tell whether a file has been ‘cloned’ in APFS?

APFS can ‘clone’ files when copying or duplicating them within the same volume. But how can you tell whether any given file is a clone?

April 2, 2021 Macs, Technology

Sparse files are common in APFS

If there’s one thing we’re learning about APFS, it’s that file sizes are flexible. That means that free […]

March 29, 2021 Macs, Technology

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