I’ve been looking into ways to regain some disk space on OS X. While on hunt, I found this nice little program that removes unused languages called Monolingual.

Monolingual is a misleading name though. While it does indeed remove specific language packs from OS X applications, it also can remove binaries for other processors in Universal applications. Meaning, most newer OS X applications have code for both PPC and x86 built in. Since most computers only have one type of chip architecture, you can often get rid of the other architectures with out any negative impact. (Some people say the applications load faster with the other architectures removed. I can’t tell.)

If you have a newer Mac, you probably don’t need this application. However, if you’re running on the tight side of disk space, this application is totally awesome. Oh, and it’s free.

I want to give mention to the application Xslimmer which is a non-free application that does the same thing. The UI looks nicer, and it appears to be “safer”. But I am cheap.

If you are going to use this application, here are a few gotchas.

First, if you run it against most any Adobe or Microsoft product, those products will likely fail to work afterwards, or they wont update anymore. It has something to do with the way the applications check if they are cracked or not. Monolingual has a way to specify which applications to skip, but I don’t have any Adobe or MS products on this particular installation so I haven’t tried that feature.

Second, you need to run the program to get minimized at least once before Monolingual can “see” it. I found this out the hard. I ran the application right after install and it only saved about 70MB, but after I launched a few apps it found another 278MB – not too shabby.

And lastly, it won’t hurt the ability to type in another language (unless you remove the language’s input method). What it removes is the ability to display the help files and the UI in another language. Something most people don’t need.

As I said before if you have a modern Mac, with a 80GB or 160GB drive, you probably don’t need this application, but it is an invaluable tool if you are trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole.