Free maintenance app for Leopard reaches its fourth beta

Jul 28, 2008 06:57 GMT  ·  By

Users of Titanium Software's free maintenance, optimization, and personalization utility for Mac OS X should be glad to learn that OnyX has recently been updated. The new version packs quite a number of changes, bringing the current version of the software to 1.9.6 Beta 4.

Using OnyX, you can tweak pretty much anything there is to tweak within Mac OS X. As long as there are some parameters to change, things like the Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Expos?, Safari, the Login window and even the hidden settings of some of Apple's own applications are just obstacles in the way of your Mac OS X view / work style. The utility enables you not only to optimize the way OS X works, but also to manage some of the processes behind most applications. It allows you to delete caches and remove a certain number of files and folders that may become cumbersome, and there's also the option to see detailed info of your configuration, and to preview the different logs and CrashReporter reports. OnyX automatically checks for updates on startup, so you don't need to worry about that.

Another aspect you needn't worry about is the look of your OnyX UI. The app also lets you modify its appearance - window transparency, the icon and the toolbar icons, and more.

Last time we talked about OnyX, the maintenance app was at its third beta, which improved the deleting logs option, corrected rebuilding the display of folders content, added new tab Parameters > Spotlight, show/hide Bonjour browser in Screen Sharing, as well as show/hide full toolbar in Screen Sharing.

The most notable addition, however, was the software's ability to save a Desktop before modifying and relaunching the Finder, while you could set Help Viewer window to floating or non-floating mode, and choose the application to execute at launch of X11. Other tweaks included modifications to the Automation panel, misc corrections in the translations, an updated Help menu, and an improved application deleting from Uninstaller.

OnyX is at its fourth beta release. The free utility for Mac is available ranging from Jaguar version to Leopard version. This link takes you to your own version of the software, as well as to the uninstaller. If you're not very fond of betas, stable versions of OnyX are also available for download following the same link. OnyX is a Universal Binary. Note that the software must be installed from an admin account in order to run correctly.

Also note that it is very important to back up your data before using OnyX. The application is not bug-free, and no user is infallible, according to the makers. Back up your data using Time Machine or any third party backup utility. Also, if your computer freezes, don't worry, OnyX cannot destroy the System. If your computer freezes during the verification of the volume, it is a completely normal behavior! Once OnyX is finished checking, control will be returned to you.