The Applications pane

Introduction

The pane Applications allows you to perform selected operations on Mac OS X applications or similar software components, e.g. plug-ins or screen savers. The following features are available:

• You can clean your system from an application that has been installed via "drag and drop". Not only the application itself, but also all its support files, like preference settings, help files and similar components can be removed for all users.
• You can "thin" an application or software component, removing code for processor types which are not needed in your environment. For example, you can remove an application's support for PowerPC processors if you are working with a Macintosh system based on an Intel processor.
• You can manipulate the services menu of Mac OS X. Many applications offer service items which are automatically integrated into the sub-menu Services in the main menu of all other applications. If you want to remove some specific menu items to reduce the size of the Services menu you can alter the application offering the services.

To perform one of the mentioned functions on a given application or software component, just drag the icon of the object into the field Application or software component. You can alternatively click on the field and enter the BSD path of the component, or press the button […] to choose an object from one of your volumes.

It is also possible to let TinkerTool System automatically search for components of a certain type. To do this, select an item in the pull-down menu Search components. The following software components can be chosen:

• Mac OS X applications, installed in any of the standard Application folders
• Widgets
• Screen savers
• Preference panes
• QuickTime plug-ins
• Internet plug-ins

The automatic search only respects components for which you have read access. TinkerTool System will only offer applications which fully support Mac OS X technologies. Legacy applications for the Classic environment or applications which have been stored using the deprecated PEF standard (Preferred Executable Format, a standard developed for the old Mac OS, also known as CFM or Code Fragment Manager executable) will be omitted automatically.

The search knows the so-called file domains used in Mac OS X: You can select whether or not you want to search for components that have been installed for your user account only, for all users of the local computer, or for all users of your Mac OS X network. Select or deselect the respective checkmarks User, Computer or Network to control the search locations.

TinkerTool System displays all results of the current search in a table, listing names, paths, icons, version numbers, and dates of last usage. The table is updated "live" while the search is still running. You can select an entry in the table and click OK before the search has ended.

The time of last usage is an item which is only supported in Mac OS X Tiger or later versions. If you are using Panther, the column Last used will always display the result unknown for the usage time of each object.

Removing software components which have been installed by "drag and drop"

Applications that strictly comply with Apple's software design guidelines for Mac OS X and don't need to be deeply integrated into the operating system for some technical reasons, are usually installed by "drag and drop". This means no actual installation is necessary, you just copy the application into one of your application folders and can launch it immediately.

However, Mac OS X automatically creates additional files when you work with a new application, for example files to store the personal preference settings for each user, or for example cache folders for download files, when applications are accessing the Internet to search for automatic updates, etc. You can simply deinstall a drag and drop application by dragging its icon to the Trash. This won't deinstall all the aforementioned other support files, however. This is were the deinstallation help of TinkerTool System comes in.

The item Deinstallation Help automatically assists you in identifying all other components that might have been created by the application you want to remove. You can let TinkerTool System automatically remove the other files and folders as well, cleaning the entire computer. There are in fact four different levels of clean-up you can choose from:

1. You can restrict the search to components which have been created for your user account only.
2. You can search for components that have been installed for "computer-wide" usage of all users of the local computer and the personal items of your user account.
3. You can search for components which have been installed as personal items for all user accounts known to the local computer, including components which have been installed for computer-wide usage.
4. You can additionally include items which have been installed for "network-wide" usage. This is useful if you are using a central software distribution server and the management features of Mac OS X Server which store information in the /Network/Applications and /Network/Library folders.

If you are using the search levels (3) or (4), TinkerTool System will allow you to delete files and folders which are owned by other users. This is a dangerous option which should only be used by experienced system administrators. Please verify each object carefully before you are actually going to delete it.

Before any object is removed, TinkerTool System will list each affected item. You can then decide for each object if you actually want to remove it. Deinstall an application (or a similar software component like a plug-in or widget) as follows:

1. Make sure the tab item Deinstallation Help is selected.
2. Select the software component in the upper part of the window, as explained in the paragraph "Introduction". TinkerTool System will display the name of the selected software component and its type in the line Selected for deinstallation.
3. If an application was selected, you have to choose between one of the four possible search levels discussed above, using the buttons at Deletion Level. This step is not necessary if you have selected a component which is not an application.
4. Press the button Prepare deinstallation….

Note that nothing is removed yet. TinkerTool System will always analyze your selection first and display the items which would be affected. The program will begin to search for these objects after you have pressed the Prepare deinstallation button. You can interrupt and cancel the search at any time by pressing the STOP button which will appear while the search is running. Note that a search run can take several minutes if your computer or your network hosts a high number of user accounts and you have selected one of the search levels affecting each user.

After the search has ended, all candidates for possible removal will be listed in a table. The table contains the following columns:

• Remove: Set or deactivate the checkmark to include or exclude the affected object from removal.
• Object: Icon, name and path of the object which is suggested for removal.
• Type: the role this object plays in respect to the software component you want to remove.
• Owner: the short name of the user who owns this object. Be very careful if you are going to delete personal items of other users.
• Size: the storage size of the object. This space will be freed when the object is going to be deleted.
• Last change: date and time when the object was last modified.
• Show: press the button in the Show column to display this object in the Finder.

The total number of selected objects and the total storage size is displayed right under the table. The two buttons in the lower left corner allow you to select

• if you want to put the items marked for removal into your Trash, or
• if you want to delete the marked items immediately.

TinkerTool System does not allow you to bypass the security features of Mac OS X. Although this feature allows you to delete objects owned by other users, you cannot use it to spy out the contents of private files. For this reason, it is not possible to display detail information of files which are neither owned by you or by the operating system, or to move items to the Trash for which you don't have access.

The selected objects will be removed when you press the Remove button. All objects remain untouched when pressing the Cancel button.

TinkerTool System automatically creates a detailed report on the components you are removing. It will be displayed after and while the removal takes place. After the operation has been completed, you can either save the report to a text file or print it by pressing the respective buttons in the report sheet.

The list of objects suggested for removal is computed according to Apple's software design guidelines for Mac OS X. Please note that a few applications may not be fully compliant with these guidelines. In this case, the list of removal candidates might not be exact. This means there could be objects which were created by the selected application but have been omitted in the list. It also means there could be objects which are included in the list but have actually not been created by the selected application, so they should not be deleted. Please verify each object carefully before using the removal function.

TinkerTool System contains several security features that prevent you from removing important parts of the system. You cannot remove components which are official part of Mac OS X. You also cannot remove applications which are currently running on the local computer.

You should never use this function for software components which have not been installed via drag and drop. Applications that came with their own installers or have been using the Mac OS X Installer usually had a technical reason to do so. In this case it is very likely that more than the usual components have been installed in the system and that they are not following the rules for self-contained applications. The Deinstallation Help cannot work as expected in that case. You should deinstall such applications according to the instructions of their vendors.

"Thinning" of software components

All versions of Mac OS X support a file format which allows computer software to support more than one processor type. For example, there can be an application which contains code support for G3/G4 PowerPC processors, an optimized 64-bit version for the G5 processor, and support for Intel processors which are used in all new Macintosh systems. Software components which support multiple processor architectures in one single file are called "fat". Components which support both PowerPC and Intel chips are sometimes also called "universal". TinkerTool System allows you to selectively remove support for processor architectures you don't really need in your environment, a procedure called "thinning". So you could for example remove support for PowerPC processors in a given application if you are sure you will be using this application on Intel-based Macs only.

Thinning a software component will reduce the amount of storage space needed to store it. You should consider however that you will be losing some flexibility when you thin an application: You can no longer transfer this application to any other Macintosh system, only to Macintosh systems which are using the same processor architecture. It would also be a bad idea to thin components on a network file server which is accessed by clients with different processor types.

You should also not overestimate the amount of storage space you will be saving. The machine code contained in a software product is usually only a minor part of it. The largest amount of storage space is typically consumed by the application's resources, like image and sound files, reference manuals, or example documents. So if you are going to remove one CPU architecture in a two-architecture product, you can never expect to save 50%.

TinkerTool System can display which architectures are supported in a specified component. It can also pre-compute the storage space you will be saving before you perform the actual thinning operation.

1. Make sure the tab-item Thinning is selected.
2. Select the software component in the upper part of the window, as explained in the paragraph "Introduction". TinkerTool System will display the name of the selected software component and the processor architectures it is supporting. The architecture table will remain empty if you have selected a component which doesn't contain any executable code or if it has been stored in an old format which cannot support the multi-architecture technology of Mac OS X.
3. Use the column Support this architecture? to deselect the processor types you don't want to have supported.
4. Press the button Prepare thinning operation…. TinkerTool System will now analyze if the component can be thinned successfully and how much storage space you will be saving. The results will be displayed in a dialogue sheet.
5. Press the button Yes, continue to perform the thinning operation, or press No to leave the component unchanged.

Warning: There are some applications which have self-monitoring or self-repair features. Although this is not fully compliant with the design of Mac OS X, such applications may refuse to run if they detect they have been changed. You should consider to create a backup copy before using the thinning feature.

Warning: You should also avoid to apply the thinning procedure on applications which produce program code themselves. The applications could lose their ability to create code for Macintosh systems with different processor types. This includes developer tools, programs which patch other programs, and applications that create installers or self-extracting archives.

TinkerTool System will automatically create a log file which helps you to track which applications you have thinned at which date. The log is stored in the private home folder of your current user account. Each entry in the log contains the following items:

• time and date of the thinning operation
• the absolute BSD path and name of the application you have thinned
• the list of processor architectures you have kept in the application.

To review the log entries, press the button Open log.

TinkerTool System additionaly stores a Finder comment for each application you have thinned. This makes it easy to verify whether an application has originally been distributed as a "non-universal" package, or whether you have thinned it. Just select the application in the Finder, use the Get Info feature to open the Finder's information panel and look into the field Spotllght Comments.

TinkerTool System never erases or overwrites your Finder comments. The thinning note is appended at the end of your own comments.

Modifying the Services menu of Mac OS X

Mac OS X applications can support entries in the sub-menu Services of other applications. This allows you to select some part of a document in one application, and let a different application perform some operation on that selection without having to leave the current program. The Services menu doesn't need any storage space or processing power. It is automatically created by Mac OS X, depending on which applications you have installed on your system.

If you have installed a high number of applications however, the number of entries in the Services menu can become very large as well, making the menu less usable. TinkerTool System allows you to remove some or all service menu items of a given application to clean up the menu according to your choice. If you later change your opinion, TinkerTool System can also restore the menu items to their original state.

Note that service menu items are a feature of an installed application. It is not possible to control this as a user preference, so all changes you make will become effective for all users accessing this application. You should also verify if the licensing terms of an application you want to manipulate in this way allows this kind of modification.

Applications compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (or later) may be protected against modification by a digital seal. Changing the Services menu would break the seal, making the application unusable. TinkerTool System automatically detects such protected applications and will ensure that you cannot inadvertantly destroy sealed applications.

1. Make sure the tab-item Services Menu is selected.
2. Select the software component in the upper part of the window, as explained in the paragraph "Introduction". Note that only applications can provide service menu items, so it doesn't make sense to select software components of other types.
3. If the selected component is an application which supports service menu items, they will be displayed in the table below.
4. Use the column Keep this item? to deselect all menu items you no longer want to have supported. You can also press the button Deselect all to eliminate all menu items of this application at the same time.
5. Press the button Start operation to remove the service menu items according to your selection.

If you have removed menu items for an application in an earlier session of TinkerTool System, you can restore them to their original state. To do this, select the application and press the button Revert to original. The button can only be pressed if the application had indeed contained menu items which had been previously removed by TinkerTool System.

It depends on the location where the application is stored and on the version of Mac OS X you are using at what time the changes will take effect. If you want to make sure the Services menu is updated immediately, you'll have to log out and then log in.

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