[APPLE] Version for apple M1

[Alberto]

Dear all,
will be released a version native (not under Rosetta 2) for Apple M1?

Thank you
Kind regards
Alberto

[Zenju]

Maybe? What are the advantages of native M1 support vs Rosetta as far as FreeFileSync is concerned? Currently it's still being developed on an Intel machine.

[giffut]

Hi, there.

I am using the paid version and in general I am very satisfied with its utility under macos.

But I would absolutely prefer a M1.native version, as the current one has some kind of memory leak and consumes way to much RAM, up to 6GB are used by the Rosetta 2 environment for Freefilesync on a oneway file sync and pushes my machine into memory pressure and general slowdowns everytime I use it. This does not happen with most other x86 macos apps I still use.

We experienced similar memory related behaviours from some other Rosetta 2 dependant apps. Adobe Lightroom is a prominent example here. Some of them have finally gone native and those problems are completely gone, including much more general performance improvements.

Freefilesync would tremendously profit from this move. But I see the problems regarding the amount of stack which has to be rewritten and the connected workload.

I understand that it´s not happening now or in the near future, as there are probably much more x86 based users of the app than macos ones, especially M1 based.

Best regards!

[Zenju]

I've cross-compiled FFS with support for the ARM64 architecture used by M1! Here it is:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/w3eybis4bjf2h99/FreeFileSync_11.12_beta_macOS.zip

Unfortunately I don't have an M1 at the moment, so cannot test it. But hopefully it will work. What are your results when running it on your M1?

[alph-ffs]

I was facing the same issues. I've just installed the M1 beta.
Let me know if you need me to test anything specific. Huge thanks for this!!

[alph-ffs]

Update:
As soon as I launch the app it just shows this window "running arm64 build natively" and nothing happens afterwards. Tried running a batch created with older version without success. It pops the same window!

I've uninstalled the old version and installed this one. It kept the preferences for full disk access and such, so no idea what is causing this.

[Zenju]

Looking good! ARM64 is detected correctly and the right binary is being selected.

Here's a regular FFS version compiled for testing real synchronization on ARM64:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/9coq9m66ll69vtb/FreeFileSync_11.12_beta2_macOS.zip

Is there any indication if an app runs natively or under Rosetta 2 on macOS? If so, how is FFS represented in this regard?

[Zenju]

Can you post a screenshot of what is shown if you right-click on the app and select "Get info"?

[alph-ffs]

Hey, it is indeed running as ARM64. I've attached a screenshot from Get info and also from about-storage-manage-apps, where those selected as universal are running natively. All checked out.

[Zenju]

Awesome. This will be included in the next release.

[alph-ffs]

As a side note, just copied 3GB in under 20 sec locally, and 138GB in about 1 hour remotely. Everything seems to work fine, no slowdowns or random crashes, so far so good! Excited to hear that, thank you