#Techtool pro download free mac for mac

Most Mac books describe this, as does the built-in help system for Mac OS, accessible from the Finder’s Help menu. If you don’t carry out disk checks first (as recommended here), minor errors can readily grow into serious ones and cause crashes.

Missing applications can leave document icons still in their ‘generic’ form, for which the only solution is to install an application which can open them. Insufficient disk space to build and save new Desktop database files causes fatal errors, as will a write-protected disk. Mac OS, Disk First Aid, optional third party disk tool such as TechTool Pro. Maintaining those databases ensures that icons remain properly recognised – a task you should do from time to time. The Desktop files are hidden database files used by the Finder to create the icons that make up the illusion of your Mac’s Desktop. It’s a faithful account of routine maintenance we had to perform then on Mac OS. While macOS thankfully no longer uses this mechanism, but has UTIs and LaunchServices databases instead, those old type and creator codes are still recognised, and macOS can use them to work out the UTI of a file using them, when there’s no other way.īefore you accuse me of April Foolery, the article below has been reformatted from an original first published in MacUser volume 17 issue 07, 2001. You then had to maintain and rebuild those databases before the Finder worked properly again. Periodically, this would break down and all your document icons were replaced with generic forms, and the links between documents and apps broke. In those days, Mac OS maintained hidden databases that matched your apps to the documents they could open, using two four-character codes on every file setting its type and creator. In the last few weeks, a few have mentioned an old procedure used in classic Mac OS to ‘rebuild the Desktop’.