XaBatch Nighttime

Getting rid of the creepy crawlies.

Get It Try It

LONDON (Rixstep) — There are some who claim only last year (ahem) that they have the first and only 'XA' utility for macOS. Sorry to disappoint, but Rixstep have had an ARMADA of XA-related utilities for almost fifteen years.

XaBatch is one, speeding through nearly 95,000 files in just one minute.

What's it after?

What's XaBatch after? Keeping your machine clean, of course. The above video shows XaBatch rummaging through some 95,000 files (in one minute flat) looking for the following (unwelcome) extended attributes.

-:com.apple.diskimages.recentcksum
-:com.apple.FinderInfo
-:com.apple.lastuseddate#PS
-:com.apple.metadata\:_kMDItemUserTags
-:com.apple.metadata\:kMDItemAttributeChangeDate
-:com.apple.metadata\:kMDItemDownloadedDate
-:com.apple.metadata\:kMDItemIsScreenCapture
-:com.apple.metadata\:kMDItemScreenCaptureType
-:com.apple.metadata\:kMDItemWhereFroms
-:com.apple.Preview.UIstate.v1
-:com.apple.quarantine
-:com.apple.TextEncoding
-:com.apple.xcode.PlistType
-:com.apple.XcodeGenerated
-:NSStoreType
-:NSStoreUUID

And there can be more. It's up to you. You decide what's to be removed (or what's to be added, if that suits your fancy).



Just set a '+' or '-' in the first field, followed by the extended attribute you want gone (alternately, if you want to add an extended attribute, that second field is to the file path where XaBatch can pick it up).

XaBatch follows on the command-line administrative utility xabatch, and yes, they've all been around since OS X Tiger 10.4.

And that's about fifteen years ago.

See Also
Xattr: No More Oompas
Industry Watch: xabatch
XaBatch: lastuseddate#PS
Xfile System: Super Software
ACP Gurus: More File Stuff (2)
ACP Gurus: Managing File Attributes
Learning Curve: The xargs Speed Boost
Learning Curve: On File Management (5)
Industry Watch: The Legend of Oompa Loompa
Developers Workshop: Document Specific Extended Attributes
Developers Workshop: Oh Where Oh Where Did My Resource Fork Go?

About Rixstep

Stockholm/London-based Rixstep are a constellation of programmers and support staff from Radsoft Laboratories who tired of Windows vulnerabilities, Linux driver issues, and cursing x86 hardware all day long. Rixstep have many years of experience behind their efforts, with teaching and consulting credentials from the likes of British Aerospace, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Lloyds TSB, SAAB Defence Systems, British Broadcasting Corporation, Barclays Bank, IBM, Microsoft, and Sony/Ericsson.

Rixstep and Radsoft products are or have been in use by Sweden's Royal Mail, Sony/Ericsson, the US Department of Defense, the offices of the US Supreme Court, the Government of Western Australia, the German Federal Police, Verizon Wireless, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Microsoft Corporation, the New York Times, Apple Inc, Oxford University, and hundreds of research institutes around the globe. See here.

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