Hey everyone,

So I had this problem that was driving me nuts. I've got 1000+ 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.

So I built a simple app to recover that space. 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 . A new option may handle some tricks for plugins with weird permissions or attributes.

Download the app here (current version 1.6):
https://www.avelio.tech/unfatten

Important stuff:

- This is beta ! it works great for me and for others, 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 do its best to process those, and guide you on how to fix issues on them.
- 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 partially or totally
You probably have a permission or attribute issues on those files. Click the fix permission buttons, try again, and follow the instructions if Unfatten need your help to solve those issues.

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!

 

I’ll have to reinstall all my plugins when I upgrade to apple silicon anyway, this might be able to reach where clean my Mac doesn’t, it could remove unnecessary binaries but I don’t know if it works for plugins like it does for applications

 

"Hundreds of GB" is a complete overstatement. All you are doing is using terminal utilities like Lipo, ditto, and file to strip either ARM or Intel slices to create what we call a "skinny" Mach-O binary. Hence the name Lipo.

You are looking at a 50% reduction in size to remove one slice and keep the other. Right now I have 700 plugins installed. They are taking up 19gb of space. So I would save roughly 9.5gb by stripping every one of them, if they were all fat binaries to begin with.

Nothing about this is going to save anyone hundreds of gb by stripping plugins. When people take this "advice" and then come back with the problems they will invariably run into, are you going to fix it for them?