Shrink Alias 1.0.2

What's this?

It's a plugin to recover some disk space that Apple decided to take away from you. When you create an alias file in Finder, the resulting file can have a lot of information in it that isn't really required to find the original item. I'm sure it can be useful for some things, but if all you're doing is double-clicking, tens or even hundreds of kilobytes is a lot of overhead for something that should easily fit in a single disk block.

Why?

Because some people don't like the wasted space. Especially notebook users, who can't always easily just add/replace their disks.

How does it work?

Simple. Just put the ShrinkAlias.plugin file in /Library/Contextual Menu Items or ~/Library/Contextual Menu Items. Right-click or control-click on an alias, or a selection consisting of several aliases. Choose the new Shrink Alias command from the context menu and marvel at your newly-regained storage capacity.

Anything else I should know?

Yep. Removing or upgrading contextual menu plugins for Mac OS X can be tricky. What you have to do is open up the Contextual Menu Items folder and move the plugin you're interested in to the trash. If you're upgrading you can then put the new copy where it belongs. Then you have to restart Finder by holding down control and option while clicking on its Dock icon and selecting "Relaunch" from its menu. Until you do that last step, Finder is still holding onto the copy that it knew about and you can't delete it or start using a newer copy.

Alright. How much?

Nothing. Nada. Zip. It's free. Now, that said I certainly wouldn't mind joyful tears of appreciation directed my way, or small donations via PayPal to gweston@mac.com or

Greg Weston

PO Box 54

Avon CT 06001.

But that's utterly up to you. Support is always available by sending mail to support@splook.com with a subject line including the phrase “Shrink Alias.”