14 DAY TRIAL // Veteran Mac applications developer The Omni Group has released OmniDiskSweeper 1.9 R197948, a “Test” version of the company’s smart utility for finding and deleting unnecessary files on your hard drive.
A free solution for keeping your Mac free of useless clutter, OmniDiskSweeper gets constant maintenance updates from its creators. 1.9 is still in its testing stages, and promises to be more responsive.
“OmniDiskSweeper is much more responsive when scanning a slow disk,” according to The Omni Group.
The company explains that “The interface used to block while scanning the list of files contained in a folder, which could cause very long pauses when scanning slow disks.”
Users will also notice that remote disks can be scanned faster now.
This is possible because the new version scans directory contents using an application programming interface (API) that “only collects the small set of attributes that OmniDiskSweeper is actually going to use, so it can scan remote disks much more quickly.”
The scan order is smarter too. The software now automatically jumps between folders to give you a better idea of which one has the most clutter inside.
The Omni Group explains it best.
“Rather than scanning a directory to completion before starting on any other directories, OmniDiskSweeper will automatically skip between folders so you can more quickly get a sense of how big each directory is relative to the others.”
Finally, the system requirements have changed. Users on Mac OS X 10.6 or 10.7 will not be able to download OmniDiskSweeper 1.9 when the Final build comes out.
The minimum spec is now OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. It isn’t immediately clear whether OS X 10.9 Mavericks is officially supported, but considering that Mountain Lion is the “minimum” requirement, it may well be supported.