You can set esoteric DropDMG preferences by clicking the links on this page.
Unlike with regular settings, you must generally quit and re-launch DropDMG
in order for an esoteric preference to take effect.
- AppendDateWithSeconds
- When using the Append current date option, DropDMG usually uses the
YYYY-MM-DD format.
You can also set it to use the YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS format. This is
useful if you will be creating more than one dated disk image on the same
day and you want the files to have unique names.
- AppendToNameWhenConverting
- Normally, DropDMG only appends the date or version number to the filename
when you’re creating
a new disk image. You can also set it to do this when
converting.
- BlankBackgroundSize
- When creating a disk image with a layout, DropDMG normally sets the size of
the mounted image window to the size of the background picture. If you don’t
specify a background picture, it uses 640×480. You can also
set it to use 800×600.
- CreateDeviceImages
- DropDMG normally detects when you are trying to make a disk image of a
volume and creates a device image. Device images are exact
copies, and creating them is faster. You may, however, prefer that DropDMG
create regular disk images of volumes, as this will
give you control over the volume name.
- DisableRetinaBackgroundPictures
- Normally, DropDMG creates background pictures for your layouts that are
optimized for Macs with both Retina and non-Retina displays.
macOS 10.6 has a bug that prevents proper display of Retina background
pictures (regardless of the Mac’s display type). Thus, for optimal
deployment on 10.6 you can optionally set DropDMG to only create non-Retina background
pictures.
- HdiutilFilesystem
- Normally, DropDMG uses the macOS Extended filesystem (HFS+J) when creating
a disk image from a folder, as this is the most compatible. You can also
set DropDMG to use the APFS filesystem, as
this will make it faster for end users to copy files from your disk image.
Note that APFS should not be used when creating disk images that will be
used with macOS 10.11 or earlier or when creating NDIF disk images.
- HybridFSArgs
When creating a .iso disk image, DropDMG normally includes a hybrid
filesystem with HFS+, ISO 9660, Joliet, and UDF components. You can
change which filesystems are included by entering this command in Terminal
and removing the names of filesystems that you don’t want:
defaults write com.c-command.DropDMG HybridFSArgs -array "-hfs" "-iso" "-joliet" "-udf"
- LayoutBackgroundFolderName
When creating a disk image with a background picture, DropDMG normally
stores the picture file in an invisible folder called
.DropDMGBackground. You can change this, e.g. if you are using a
script that expects a certain folder name, by entering this command in
Terminal:
defaults write com.c-command.DropDMG LayoutBackgroundFolderName ".DropDMGBackground"
- LayoutViewGridSize
- DropDMG layouts ordinarily use a grid size of 16×16 points. You can
temporarily ignore the grid by holding down the Command key or change the
grid size to 8×8.
- MaxJobs
- Normally, DropDMG will let you queue as many operations as you want and
will execute two simultaneously.
This balances the desire to quickly finish the first operation while still
allowing other operations to complete. For example, encrypting a small
document that you want to e-mail would not have to wait until backing up
an entire hard drive had finished. You can also set it to execute only
one operation at a time (e.g. to
speed things up if you want to queue many operations that use the same
slow hard drive) or three (e.g. if
you are using fast SSD storage and your Mac has lots of processor cores).
- MJTUpdaterDeleteDiskImage
- Normally, the Software Update… feature will clean up after itself
after downloading a new version. You can also set it to leave the disk
image file in
your Downloads folder.
- ZlibLevel
- When creating disk images using the .dmg — smaller file, faster option,
DropDMG normally uses the maximum level of compression to produce a smaller disk image.
You can instead set DropDMG to faster compression. On some systems this will be
almost twice as fast, but the .dmg files will be larger.