Filed under: OS, Apple, TUAW Tips, Universal Binary
TUAW Tip: How to tell if an application is a Universal Binary
You want to figure out if an application is Universal, but you're not sure how to do it? There is a very simple easy way to find out. Simply select the icon of the application you're curious about and either right click and select 'Get Info' or hit Command + i. Either one will get you to the info window about the application you selected.Look under 'General' and you'll see 'Kind: Application.' Next to that (assuming you're running OS X 10.4) you'll see either 'Universal,' 'Intel,' or 'PowerPC.' This lets you know on what Macs this application will run natively on:
- Universal runs on either PowerPC or Intel Macs.
- Intel only runs on Intel Macs (no matter what).
- PowerPC runs natively on PowerPC Macs (odd, huh?) but the application will, most likely, run on Intel Macs in Rosetta, Tiger's emulation layer. Some applications, such as Microsoft's Virtual PC, will not run on Intel Macs at all.
Finally, another tip for all you folks out there that are using Universal apps on Intel Macs that use plugins which aren't Universal. Assuming you still have the Info window open you should see this 'Open using Rosetta' check box (pictured to the left). This forces a Universal apps to use its PowerPC native codebase (in Rosetta) thereby letting you use your older plugins. Note that this option is only available for Universal applications.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
nosidam said 8:46AM on 7-20-2006
Is there a way to "remove" the PPC version of apps from the hard drive so they don't take up space? You know, sort of like removing foreign language code.
Reply
mroach said 9:47AM on 7-20-2006
You can also open Activity Monitor (/Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app) to see which running applications are running Intel or PowerPC code by looking in the Kind column. I'm not sure if Kind is there by default, but if not, you can add it by going to View > Columns > Kind.
Reply
mungler said 9:48AM on 7-20-2006
nosidam: yes there is, but it escapes me for now...
Reply
mungler said 9:55AM on 7-20-2006
found it.
ditto can be used to "thin" multi-architecture ("fat") binaries during a copy.
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/ditto.1.html
Reply
mungler said 9:58AM on 7-20-2006
The command:
ditto --arch i386 fat_file thin_file
Copies the contents of fat_file into thin_file, thinning executable code to intel-only on the fly.
The same can be done to remove Intel code if you have a PPC mac:
ditto --arch ppc fat_file thin_file
Note that to do this for applications, you must do it to the actual executable file (in Contents/MacOS within the package), not the .app package itself.
Reply
Solipsism said 9:58AM on 7-20-2006
nosidam, the amount of space the PPC code takes up in an application is quite small and do so make corrupt future application updates. In other words, you really shouldn't do it.
Another way to see all he apps that are Intel, Universal & PPC is to use System Profiler as it will show everything on one page.
Using the hint given on this page. If you hold down the Option key while clicking Get Info it will instead be the Show Inspector option. The differs in only one way... it's dynamic. When you click on another folder, file or app the information changes. This would allow you to scroll through your programs without having to do multiple Get Info windows.
Reply
Kristof Polleunis said 10:09AM on 7-20-2006
To "remove" the PPC version of apps from the hard drive so they don't take up space, you can use
http://homepage.mac.com/gweston/macware/TrimTheFat.zip
Reply
Dan Frakes said 11:19AM on 7-20-2006
Scott:
To get a quick overview of all your apps, launch System Profiler, click the Applications item on the left, and after System Profiler has listed all your applications -- which takes a while -- click the Kind column header to sort by application type: Classic, "Native/Classic," PowerPC, or Universal.
Reply
Query said 8:54PM on 7-20-2006
Just a note: the iLife applications don't contain the option to open them in Rosetta, beats me why. So much for using that 8-bit Garageband plug-in from a week back. :P
Reply
Joe Block said 5:19PM on 8-03-2006
The size of the PPC portion of a universal binary is probably going to be lost in the noise in a world, but if you really want to get rid of it, try 'man lipo' at the command line.
I suspect removing it will cause you more aggravation than the space savings are worth in the long run, but it's your machine.
Reply
julian miller said 7:01PM on 8-31-2006
Another way to see what apps are running in rosetta is to use iClock.
http://www.scriptsoftware.com/iclock
iClock has an application menu like in OS 9 that shows you all running applications. On an Intel Mac this app menu now shows which of the applications are running in rosetta. Very handy on top of all the other features in iClock.
Reply