6 Deejay Utility changes in El Capitan

It looks prettier, but some decisions are upsetting to some

Disk Utility has stayed more or less the same for years, but Apple has given the Mac power user'due south much-loved maintenance tool a big overhaul in El Capitan, making it expect different and removing familiar tools, including the popular "Repair Permissions"  command.

New look

Gone is the box-similar Deejay Utility of yesterday to be replaced past a more colorful edition providing at-a-glance data of how you use your disk.

This means yous can see only how much of your Mac is consumed by Apps (blue), Photos (red), Audio (orange), Movies (green), and everything else, aka "Other" (yellow). Y'all tin also see how much (or, in my case, how little) space is costless (white). This is pretty much the aforementioned view as you'll find in About this Mac under the Storage pane.

Disk Utility launches with this view and offers five choices to achieve its remaining tools in its top bar: Starting time Assistance, Partition, Erase, Unmount and Info.

Repair permissions

The lack of Repair Permissions shouldn't matter too much, according to Apple. The company claims that in El Capitan, "System file permissions are automatically protected, and updated, during Software Updates. The Repair Permissions part is no longer necessary."

Even so, this volition be a shock to Mac users who have traditionally made apply of Repair Permissions as an essential offset step to troubleshooting.

Apple'southward decision to brand this an automatically applied Bone-level performance, part of the new System Integrity Protection congenital into the OS, means Mac users shouldn't need to do it themselves any more. Overall, I call up that's a proficient thing, as inexperienced, new or less technically minded Mac users won't need to acquire how to use the tool; its benefits will already be applied.

First Aid

Disk Utility tin no longer verify a disk before running first aid, so you can't check disk wellness. In essence, this means that if you think your disk needs some maintenance, yous must run the whole matter. Disk Utility must be able to unmount the drive or you receive an error bulletin.

Hang on, where'southward RAID?

In what could be seen as another sign of Apple's shrinking involvement in the pro markets, Apple has removed the chapters to support multi-disk or RAID arrays from within Deejay Utility. At present y'all must use the command-line tool or third-political party solutions to reach this. That'due south a fairly large alter, and probable to upset some pro users – in fact, it already has.

Burn out

If you ever used Deejay Utility to handle your CD or DVD burning sessions, you can't do so now, as this feature has been removed, reflecting the removal of disk drives from across the Mac range.

Disk images

Disk Utility remains the go-to tool for handling disk images. Most of these functions remain unchanged, so you tin keep to create a deejay paradigm from any folder or any selected mounted book, for example. One significant change is that you lot can no longer just drag deejay images from the Finder into Disk Utilities; instead, you must choose the relevant paradigm using the File>Open Disk card.

One more thing...

The all-time Mac maintenance tool Mac users now have in their archive is Recovery Fashion. To access this mode, restart your Mac while holding the Command and R keys. From here yous can access a range of useful maintenance tools to help continue your Mac in shape. For other ideas please accept a await at this (already now in need of updating) Mac tech support guide.

Google+? If you employ social media and happen to be a Google+ user, why not join AppleHolic's Kool Help Corner customs and join the chat as we pursue the spirit of the New Model Apple?

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Jonny is a freelance writer who has been writing (mainly about Apple and technology) since 1999.

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