#Apptrap review mac os x
#Apptrap review series

You can sort applications by size, last date used and name: as you drag over a menu a sexy black HUD-ish slider fades in allowing you to adjust the preferences and, say, increase the file size you wish to search for.

#Apptrap review mac os x

If Apple will ever decide to change Mac OS X interface, I wish they’ll choose the guys who created AppZapper 2 UI as a dream team of graphic designers. What’s so great about Hit List it’s (again) the user interface: it’s not only beautiful, smooth and whatever adjective I can think of now, it’s functional and seriously enhances the experience.

Anyway, Hit List lets you select an application from the top and view (and obviously Zap) its related files on a bottom “shelf”. Same applies for prefpanes and plugins located God knows where on my Mac HD. It doesn’t just scan your Applications folder: I have some applications in my Downloads folder and AppZapper listed them just fine. Hit List (accessible through a small button in the top right corner of the main window) displays every app on a beautiful dark background, together with widgets, prefpanes and plugins you have on your Mac. Hit List (it’s not The Hit List, pay attention folks) it’s basically a visual browser for the applications you could / should delete. Let’s see what they can do, and if they’re really that useful. User Interface refinements aside, nothing changed here since the 1.0 version.ĪppZapper comes with two new features: Hit List and My Apps. And that’s it for the zapping process: you can add multiple to the list and AppZapper will take care of it. You can decide to check off all the items and zap them (move them to the trash) or just Cancel and go back to the previous screen. Preference panes are depicted as a black sheet, Application Support files as a book with the “A” symbol on the cover and Caches as a wooden clipboard. So, the icons really help to convey the “meaning” of what you’re actually deleting.

I interviewed both Marcelo and David a while ago ( here and here), be sure to read the interviews if you missed them. The icons are crisp and pixel-perfect and they were designed (together with the whole UI) by the uber-talented designers Marcelo Marfil, Clemens Knieper, Jasper Hauser and David Lanham. But, and here comes the cool part, just take a look at the details: every file has its own 32px icon on the left side. I was an AppZapper die hard fan, and I knew all along it would get way better someday.Īnd here we are today, with a completely refreshed app, with more features and a brand new, awesome user interface.Īt first launch, you’ll notice how the overall feel of AppZapper is still there: there’s the small window where you have to drag the app’s icon and as you’ve dragged it, there’s the list of every file found on your hard drive, the file size, type and the Zap! button. Many followers told me on Twitter to try AppTrap, a preference pane which runs in the background and asks you if you want to delete additional files every time you trash an application. Now, many people didn’t like AppZapper as much as I did: take a look at this AppStorm roundup and you’ll see how many utilities you can use to correctly delete an application from your Mac. This is why I used to love the first version of AppZapper: if I wanted to delete an app, I dragged the icon into the main window and AppZapper found all the related files. Guess what, after 2 years of usage these files could waste GBs of space and you don’t even know that. They’ll just stay there on your hard drive.

#Apptrap review series

Well, they’re not so hidden, actually: you should know that every time you launch an application on your Mac, the OS creates a series of “associated” files like preferences, support files and databases which won’t be deleted when you drag the app’s icon to the trash. AppZapper was popular because with a simple drag & drop it allowed you to delete an application together with all the “hidden” files related to it.