What's up with Aliases in the Finder?

[Shooshie]

Has anyone else discovered weirdness in the Finder when using aliases? I'm using OS X 10.9.4, and when I make aliases of pictures it creates a file that's bigger than most of the pictures.

I like to make slide shows from many folders of pictures, and I've always done that using aliases. Since aliases are just pointers, they typically were about 4K in size, which allowed me to make some great slide shows without ever disturbing the actual image files. Now, the average alias size for images is 2.6MB. Many of the pictures themselves are only in the 800K to 1.5MB range. Why on earth would it create a file that size to act as a pointer?

I tried hiding the original files to see if the images were actually stored in the "alias," but no; they're not. It's just a pointer. But it's a frigging 2.6MB pointer!!! Makes absolutely no sense.

I don't know when this behavior started, but I think it's possibly related to OS X 10.9. It may have started earlier, but it certainly doesn't go back TOO far. Has anyone else seen it?

Shoosh

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I don't use them much but hadn't noticed the size. Yeah, seems they are storing a lot more than just a directory location. I tried zipping one and it came out to the same 5.5MB of the alias, which seems to be the magic number for many large files and folders, 3.xx MB for smaller items. Crazy! So my old 20MB Atari HD could only hold 3 aliases based on that math.

[mikehalloran]

I use them and have 6 that I use every day. I've never looked at this before.

Alias size doesn't seem to correlate with folder size. One that holds 4MB of text files is 5.7MB... Huh? Another 3.3MB alias points to a 40GB folder.

OK... It's certainly not causing any issues. I'm a litt;e curious but not enough to research it. Life's too short.

[James Steele]

After a very cursory search I did find a thread that seemed somewhat useful here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3988292

I just tried one of the easier remedies described in this thread: a service you can add to a contextual menu called "Delete Data Fork". App is here:

http://mac.softpedia.com/progDownload/D ... 30596.html

I have a 33k JPEG file that I made an alias of. The alias ended up being 2.6MB. After deleting the data fork with the menu item above, the alias size dropped from 2.6MB to 1.7MB and still seems functional as before.

In the discussion thread I linked to, there was mention of a contextual menu item called "Shrink Alias" that you used (in conjunction I'm assuming with Delete Data Fork) that could probably shrink this the rest of the way, but contextual menu items are no longer supported on newer OSes and I didn't want to install all the third party stuff to make it work on Mavericks so I don't know. Someone DID post a Unix terminal command in that discussion that could create a linkfile that is only 4k but I'm not sure how to use it.

[Shooshie]

It was an interesting discussion. The upshot of it is that there are some very coarse workarounds which don't fix the problem but merely reduce it by some amount. Some of them appear a little dangerous to me in that you could screw up something if you're not careful and knowledgeable. The terminal script will make a link, but you cannot rename it. I can't have aliases with strange names running around on my desktop. My aliases usually have small names that tell me exactly what I want to know about that file. So, the script is not helpful to me. The discussion about icons being the cause is simply not true. I experimented with icons and got nowhere at all; totally without any relationship to the conclusion one or two over-confident people stated about icons causing the problem.

But the main thing that I took from that discussion is that nobody knows what's up with the aliases. We're all shooting in the dark. I presume that Apple is going to fix this some day. Otherwise, it makes you question the rest of their programming. An alias, after all, need only be a pointer with the barest minimum of code. 4K is a generous size. It should allow you to change the icon and change the name without losing the link. The Windows world at last has a major Mac faux-pas to laugh at.

My old aliases have been getting busted lately, and I have to figure out where on earth the linked file/folder might reside. The old aliases that are still working range in size from 128K to 650K, but if one breaks and I have to fix it, that size will jump to as large as 10 MB. That's the largest one on my desktop at the moment. The folder to which it links holds 250 files occupying 650 MB.

Meanwhile, a 128K alias (old one) links a folder that holds 100s of GB and thousands of files. There's no rhyme or reason. To emphasize the inconsistency, when you make a new alias, its size bears no visible relationship with the size of the linked file. One alias may be larger than the next, representing files with the opposite relative sizes, side by side in the same folder.

What the heck?

Shooshie

[Shooshie]

One other interesting factoid. If I duplicate an old alias occupying 128K, then move that alias to another drive, it still occupies only 128K. It still allows me to change its icon and rename it.

Changing the icon of OLD aliases does indeed change their size.

Changing the size of NEW aliases may alter their size somewhat, but not by any significant amount. Deleting custom icons will not reduce the size of a new alias by much if any.

Curiouser and curiouser!

[bayswater]

I see aliases have full preview images but a 5meg alias of a 2 meg file wouldn't arise for that. On zipping an alias: does that zip the alias or the original? It ought to do the original so with a picture file you wouldn't expect a lot of shrinkage.

[Shooshie]

I see aliases have full preview images but a 5meg alias of a 2 meg file wouldn't arise for that. On zipping an alias: does that zip the alias or the original? It ought to do the original so with a picture file you wouldn't expect a lot of shrinkage.

Even the old aliases at 120K have full preview images and naming privileges. This feels like maybe a programmer forgot to turn off the faucet before signing off.

Zipping an alias does not zip the original. In fact, these aliases are easily separated from their originals. They seem to be breaking a lot. I have to go and find the original and hook them back up periodically.

Shoosh

[tremo]

I did some googling on this when I first noticed it a few months ago. As I recall, the consensus seemed to be that (1) there are multiple icon files in the alias file (different sizes, e.g., 32x32, 64x64, etc. -- now including retina-ready icons) and (2) there are redundant copies of those icons -- something about a compatibility bridge between old and new systems. Even when a folder uses a generic OSX blue folder icon, the alias still contains all that extra junk.

If you think the original file or folder won't likely be moved or renamed, you can use a symbolic link -- symlinks are still only 4KB. When I right-click on an item, there's a "Make Symbolic Link" selection in the menu -- but I can't remember if that's part of the OS or if I installed a utility to add it...

[James Steele]

I think you may have installed a utility for that.

[tremo]

I think you may have installed a utility for that.

You're right, James, and I tracked it down -- SymbolicLinker.service:

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/10433/symboliclinker

Still working fine in Mavericks.

[James Steele]

I think you may have installed a utility for that.

You're right, James, and I tracked it down -- SymbolicLinker.service:

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/10433/symboliclinker

Still working fine in Mavericks.

Hey thank you, tremo, for that link! I installed it and it works like a champ! I used it on the same 33k JPEG file and got a 4k link file. Seems like a great solution to this problem. I don't know if it loses the link if you move the original file/folder it points to, but that's not much of an issue to me as I generally never do that!

[James Steele]

P.S. Shooshie... I'm think I'm going to move this to the General Macintosh forum.