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Monolingual for M1 Macs—anyone tried it
- Thread starter 4k78
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Das is OK mit mir! Ich spreche drei oder vier Sprache sehr schlecht!
Aber ... 1GiB really? Do you clench your buttocks to save on TP?
Because that's what this feels like.
Also, why switch to German with me, of all people?
Sorry man. I was hoping you selected German for a reason but it was a default selection.
Stay safe in the US my friend as it's looking very ugly right now.
I recently bought a new Mac Studio with the M1 Max chip, and (as is my usual fashion) installed Monolingual.
It barely does anything now. Save a few kb, but nothing like the gigabytes of space being used by localisation.
From what I can tell, the issue is not the chip _per se_, but the new file system. With the main OS installed on a read-only volume, no simple app has access to the entire drive and all its subdirectories.
We'll see if the author updates it. He hasn't in a while since it "just worked" for so long. Considering the cost of internal SSDs upon purchase, we really need to find a way to save space.
It barely does anything now. Save a few kb, but nothing like the gigabytes of space being used by localisation.
From what I can tell, the issue is not the chip _per se_, but the new file system. With the main OS installed on a read-only volume, no simple app has access to the entire drive and all its subdirectories.
We'll see if the author updates it. He hasn't in a while since it "just worked" for so long. Considering the cost of internal SSDs upon purchase, we really need to find a way to save space.
If a large number of the language files are stored on the Secure System volume, then Monolingual isn't going to be able to "reach them".
For "user-installed" apps (that go onto the "Macintosh HD Data" volume) Monolingual will probably still work.
EDIT:
I wrote the text above while using my 2018 Mini (not an m- series).
I'm typing this edit on my MacBook Pro 14".
I just opened Monolingual and ran it (I've used it before on this MBP).
It just removed almost 700mb of non-English language files.
So yes -- it does work (to an extent) on an M-series Mac.
BE CAREFUL:
You need the "last version" of Monolingual, that supports APFS:
Version 1.7.8.
For "user-installed" apps (that go onto the "Macintosh HD Data" volume) Monolingual will probably still work.
EDIT:
I wrote the text above while using my 2018 Mini (not an m- series).
I'm typing this edit on my MacBook Pro 14".
I just opened Monolingual and ran it (I've used it before on this MBP).
It just removed almost 700mb of non-English language files.
So yes -- it does work (to an extent) on an M-series Mac.
BE CAREFUL:
You need the "last version" of Monolingual, that supports APFS:
Version 1.7.8.
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Doing some thread necromancy here, but from what I can gather it sounds like Monolingual respects app signing and won't remove files that would invalidate the app's signature, which is actually part of the reason why it's less effective than it used to be. That, and its inability to remove system files due to them being read only.
Anyway, it's 2023 and Monolingual still works so far as languages are concerned (though it only saves a fraction of the space it used to), but I'd be hesitant to use the architecture removal functionality on an M-series chip given that it could break Intel-only apps that run under Rosetta. The app also hasn't yet been updated to be Universal, so it, itself is also running under Rosetta. It's been one of the first apps I've installed on every Mac I've run for the last decade or two, but at this point I'm thinking I may finally retire it, what with its benefits getting smaller while storage gets cheaper.
EDIT: Just noticed that the dev has links in various GitHub issues to a pre-release 1.9 version, so maybe it isn't done for just yet?
Anyway, it's 2023 and Monolingual still works so far as languages are concerned (though it only saves a fraction of the space it used to), but I'd be hesitant to use the architecture removal functionality on an M-series chip given that it could break Intel-only apps that run under Rosetta. The app also hasn't yet been updated to be Universal, so it, itself is also running under Rosetta. It's been one of the first apps I've installed on every Mac I've run for the last decade or two, but at this point I'm thinking I may finally retire it, what with its benefits getting smaller while storage gets cheaper.
EDIT: Just noticed that the dev has links in various GitHub issues to a pre-release 1.9 version, so maybe it isn't done for just yet?
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Localisation takes so little space that it's a bit useless to remove them. 15 years ago Cocoa apps had to duplicate a lot of NIB files for each localisation, but since many years ago they improve it so now it's enough to localise a bunch of text files. The sum of all Safari localisations is less than 1 MB for example on Ventura, with the old system used in Snow Leopard they would have taken 22 MB.
