RELEASE: appleclean

For general release. For everyone on a Mac. For free. Updated.

Get It Try It

BELGRAVIA (Rixstep) — London-based Rixstep today announce appleclean, a free command-line utility for all versions of Apple's OS X / 'macOS' from 10.6 Snow Leopard to 10.14 Mojave. Compatibility is predicted for 10.15 as well.

Apple's metadata mania is getting out of hand. Downloading anything from the web, whether or not it be through Apple's default web browser Safari, can result in a half dozen or more 'extended attributes' stuck to the download. If the download is zipped, then unzipping will result in each and every item inheriting the same extended attributes. Ordinary non-technical users have no way to detect these extended attributes with their 'Finder' 'file manager' and no way to remove them - something that can lead to insurmountable issues.

Rixstep's appleclean is an attempt to counter that - it's a mere 4 KB download, and of course it's free.

How appleclean works

There is a slight difficulty in using appleclean: it has to be run from the command line (no known exceptions). But after that you're home free. There are no special settings, or anything to add to the command line, nothing at all. Just run it. (It should be fairly instantaneous.)

appleclean works recursively: starting at its own location, it cleans everything in its own directory and all subdirectories.

What appleclean does

appleclean is an iterative project. appleclean can be further enhanced at any time. At present, appleclean not only removes extended attributes, but also all special 'file flags' - something else Apple's 'Finder' 'file manager' will not reveal.

Compatibility

appleclean is compatible with all versions of Apple's OS X / 'macOS', from 10.6 Snow Leopard to 10.14 Mojave. Compatibility is predicted for 10.15 as well.

Download

Download appleclean here. The download is 4,129 bytes.

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.

All Content and Software Copyright © Rixstep. All Rights Reserved.