iShrink, Therefore I Am
For as long as hard drives have been bogged down by large files, file compression apps have been there to help reduce the size of the clutter. New from developer CodeFuzion comes iShrink 3.03 and it is ready to reduce the size of your files and free up some disk space.
At first glance iShrink sports a clean and simple drag-and-drop interface. Drag any file you want to compress onto the app and voila–instant shrinkage! Because iShrink supports batch jobs, you can drag multiple files onto to the app at the same time and each file will be compressed individually. Conversely, you can drag one or more compressed files onto iShrink and the contents of the archive will be extracted.
If you’re averse to standard zip files or if you’re feeling particularly geeky, you can easily change iShrink’s default archive settings to have it shrink your files in the venerable tar with either standard Unix compression (.tar.z), gzip (.tgz), or b2zip (.tbz2). iShrink archives (.ishr) compress multiple files into one. An added benefit of iShrink files is that when you drag an .ishr file onto the app, you can search for specific files within it and add or delete files from the archive.
Good news for Growl fans! Notifications, a recent addition to iShrink, can be turned on or off via the preference pane to notify you when your jobs are complete.
And now for the final verdict . . . iShrink is a well designed file compression utility. It looks good and I genuinely like iShrink however, it doesn’t feel complete. It has a few little quirks that I haven’t gotten used to. First, iShrink has an “File” menu in the menubar but it doesn’t have any listings. Nothing, nada, zilch. Why have this menu then? The other issue I have is with the search feature for iShrink’s native .ishr files. It seems to only search from the beginning of the file name. Meaning that if I entered “Things” into the Search field it would return as results “Things to do.pdf” and “Things about me.pdf”, but not a file named “25 Things.pdf.” If you find yourself working with an abundance of compressed files and are looking for an elegant solution, iShrink might be just what you’re looking for. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this app as it continues to mature with hopes that the search function evolves with future releases.
A free trial is available from CodeFuzion and a license can be purchased for the very reasonable price of $15. The trial version allows you 10 compressions and a unlimited number of decompressions before requiring you to register.
Time to get your swag on! Mark at CodeFuzion has graciously given us 5 licenses to giveaway. You should know the drill by now, but here goes anyways. If you want to get your hands on a free license, download a trial of iShrink and then leave a comment below to let us know what you think would make iShrink better. The contest ends on March 10th, 2008 at midnight EST and winners will be announced shortly thereafter. So leave your comments now and get entered to win this slick app.
Will checkout and compare to others. Great looking app but would be so much nicer GUI when having the buttons designed closer to mac/leopard look…
Cheers,
Michel
I’d like the ability to split a file, eg a 1GB file, into 2 512MB files because I’m too cheap to buy a larger capacity thumbdrive to replace my 512MB thumbdrive.
quicklook integration?
RAR format compresssion!
What the man said - RAR support?
So many mac unarchivers are unreliable or generally buggy. RAR is especially badly supported, but there are SO MANY compression formats on the Windows side of the world that there’s a HUGE gap in the market for a swiss-army-knife unarchiver.
The appropriately named “Unarchiver” promises much, but fails in its execution - complains about corrupt files that other unarchivers can handle etc.
This is such a core problem - why don’t we have a decent tool yet?
A more Mac-like interface and more compression formats would be nice… how about giving an option to also save password protected dmg’s?
Jonathan, UnRarX does the job for me. I have never had problem extracting any rar file using UnRarX (even those that other utilities like Unarchiver or Stuffit fail to extract). And it’s free
I’ve never heard of “preference pain”. Does it hurt you when you open it?
D’oh–Spellcheck, you’ve failed me again!
For compressing RAR files there’s the old and unsupported RarMe, or you can hold out for RarMe’s completely rewritten and easy to use replacement, currently in private beta. It’s still a way out, but it’s slowly getting there.
I would like too see the ability to split files into many 1kb files
overall the interface could be made less shiny (buttons, the normal/shrunk status, buttons, header list, scroll buttons)
The buttons could be made to reflect iTunes/iLife apps buttons
the header list and scroll buttons also can be changed to iTunes style (with an option to revert to the aqua version to satisfy the orthodox)
‘the decompress and compress file into’ drop down menu could be shifted to the right so the left corner will be aligned with the checkboxes, I think it looks better
better handling of .rar files (since it is very common), especially when opening password protected .rar files
master .rar files and You’re Home FREE!
This is not about iShrink
I think this method of license giveaway is the best
instead of random draw, one could ask for users input as the prequisite entering the license giveaway contest
the idea is to force as many user as possible to actually try the product and give feedback to the developers (so they can gain a lot from exposure and app feedback) and hopefuly ‘accidently’ may become interested in the product itself
I wouldn’t call tar venerable. Using gzip or b2zip, it achieves better compression than zip.
@Ammon - Fixed!
This looks like a neat App!
I’ve been searching around for a multi-zip tool for my external hard-drive and the such and this looks like it would be the one!
The interface is nice, and I don’t think it needs any improvement.
The Search feature is also gold in finding files when you have a fair amount of zipping.
As for improvements, I would implement quick look as said before. Not sure if .rar is neccesary but could be an option. I would also compress all these little windows into one big ‘overall’ window when dragging multiple folders to the drop box.
http://img.skitch.com/20080303-qnfcsc21ia66pfn7y1qa33d33d.jpg
That way it would make the screen clutter free when compressing and the compressing wont take longer due to extra lag from the multiple windows (Think about compressing 100 folders at once!)
Some minor fixes… The little picture in the drag and drop box looks a little bit fuzzy and not the usual crisp icon that mac uses? The preferences pane could also have a bit of a touch up to look more appealing!
Other than that, this is a great program and I would love to try out the full version
Thanks,
Matt.
I have used and liked BetterZip for rar files. It also supports plenty of other formats which were alien to me - like 7z etc. I have used it only as an unarchiver so dont know if and how well it archives. I used the inbuilt BOMArchiver for archiving - for all its worth.
How about Spotlight integration for searching inside the .ishr files?
I like interface,
It will be nice to add:
1. ability to include or exclude Mac OS X specific system files.
2. in archive drop box ability to compare compressions metod,
which one hase smaller output
3. ability to password protection
4. RAR compression
5. sit, sitx opening
[...] week I reviewed iShrink, a promising file compression app, and committed to reward our readers with the chance to win 1 of [...]
I have used BetterZip for quite some time. It’s a solid app. I’ll have to write an article on that one.
[...] week I reviewed iShrink, a promising file compression app, and committed to reward our readers with the chance to win 1 of [...]
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