Free Unfatten - Free up dozens to hundreds of GB on your Mac by trimming the fat from your plugiins

Hey everyone,

So I had this problem that was driving me nuts. I've got 1000+ legit plugins on my Mac, and they're eating up a ridiculous amount of space on my boot drive.

Why? Because every plugin on Mac is now a "Universal Binary" – meaning it contains code for both Intel Macs AND Apple Silicon Macs in the same file. Literally double the size they need to be.

If you're on Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4), you're no longer using that Intel code. Back in the day, some of us ran Intel plugins through Rosetta, but now everything is fully native – all the major plugins have been ported to ARM. And with Apple planning to drop Rosetta support soon anyway, that Intel code is just sitting there taking up space.

I got tired of it and originally wrote a shell script to strip out the unused Intel binaries from my plugins.

Been using it for a few months now, and depending on how many plugins you have, you can recover anywhere from dozens to hundreds of GB. Works like a charm on VST3, VST, AU, and AAX.

Then I made it easier: I built a simple GUI app so you don't need to mess with Terminal and command line stuff. You just pick which plugin folders you want to process, select which formats (AAX, VST, VST3, AU), and hit go. Takes a few minutes and boom – half your plugins' size gone.

There is a simulation mode (estimate) that will only run an estimation and tell you how much GB you can save. Nothing will be modified in that mode, so it's worth trying it:)

(If you prefer using the original script instead of the app, just ask – but fair warning, it's trickier to use since you need to be comfortable with Terminal commands.)

Download the app here:
MacOS 15+https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H6c...ew?usp=sharing
MacOS 11+
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jB-...ew?usp=sharing

Important stuff:

- This is beta! it works great for me, but your mileage may vary.
- Backup your plugins folder first – just in case something weird happens with a specific plugin
- The only plugins I've had issues with are Sonnox (they crash after stripping), so I just exclude those
- Some plugins are installed with weird permissions (root owner or immutable flags) – the app will not process those. if. you need to process them, change their permissions first. Hopefolly this is very rare cases.
- When you update plugins, they'll come back as Universal binaries, so just run it again. I do it monthly

If you're on an Intel Mac:

You can use this to strip out the ARM code instead and save the same amount of space. Just be aware that if you upgrade to an Apple Silicon Mac down the road, you'll need to reinstall all your plugins since they won't have the ARM code anymore.

That's why I personally wouldn't recommend it for Intel users unless you know what you are doing – the option is there if you desperately need the space.

If estimation is working but processing doesnt free space
You probably have a privileges issues: the plugins you are trying to strip are either owned by an other user or by root user. Solution: change the privileges of the parent folder with right-click and Get Info on the parent folder, selecting apply to enclosed items, or use an utility like batchmod

The deal:

This is free, no strings attached. Use at your own risk, no warranties given. If you've got a smaller SSD and/or you're constantly juggling space, this might help you and save you time.

Let me know if you try it and how much space you recover.
Happy to answer questions!