Monolingual: Reclaim your Hard Drive Space

Posted by Alex Galonsky on 03/15/07 in Applications, Utilities

Did you know that Mac OS X and many applications hold data for many languages that you probably don’t speak and don’t need? Well, they do, but there is a solution, Monolingual. Monolingual is a small app that strips language files from your system and applications. The first time I ran Monolingual, I think I saved around 300 megabytes of space. And since every time I update an app, more localizations are added, I periodically run Monolingual to save more space and make them run a lot smoother. New Mac users may not be as concerned with disk space, but this is a great way to save disk space if you are running an old Mac like me.

monolingual

Running Monolingual is extremely simple. You just have to select the languages you want to remove (everything but English for me), enter your password, and it runs. It also has options for removing PPC or Intel architectures, similar to Xslimmer (Check out our XSlimmer review). So download Monolingual to reclaim your hard drive space. It’s a free universal binary, available here.

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6 Comment(s)

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Yohannes Wijaya said on

March 15th, 2007 at 3:25 pm

if you use intel-based mac, dont remove ppc architecture if you still use some ppc-based apps like photoshop. i learned this the hard way.

benz said on

March 16th, 2007 at 12:01 am

i second that. jsut finished re-installing everything(OS, Apps). A re-install of just the apps did not work.

Taylor said on

March 16th, 2007 at 4:41 am

WARNING!
This article should have some sort of cautionary warning. I love saving space just as much as the next Mac enthusiast, but this app can be dangerous if used incorrectly! With that said it can also be VERY beneficial if used correctly.
Perhaps an update is necessary?

This same app was posted to Digg a few months ago and caused utter chaos. I’d hate for any readers to despise MacApper. It’s a great resource

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Tsukari said on

March 16th, 2007 at 11:35 am

This program got me back 400 megs of space which is definately appreciated on my small HDD.

rublind said on

March 24th, 2007 at 4:33 am

That’s true. But, a re-install + some extra work can fix the problem.

Just go to the Console app and read the files that the program is looking for. If you’ve got another unaltered mac you can grab them from, or if you can download those files, you can fix the problem.

For example: Dreamweaver, I had to get a copy of the language bundles and reinstall quicktime, and then it worked again no problem. =]

Luther said on

July 3rd, 2007 at 3:22 pm

I just saved 2.4gb by deleteing all unused languages ( I only kept all english files (Enligh, US, Ausie, UK, Canada, etc) but didn’t remove any ppx architecture because I wasn’t sure if any of my apps use it