Yasu

If you’ve landed on this page, you’re either a Yasu user from long ago, or have heard about Yasu from someone who once was a user themselves.

Whichever the case, I’m humbled my little app was interesting enough for you to go looking for it.

If you simply landed here hoping to download the latest version for an old Mac you have, they’re still available on the old Yasu for Mac site. More on that in a bit.

The History

I first created Yasu (short for “Yet another system utility”) in 2001 as an answer to Cocktail moving to a shareware model. I thought I’d be able to make something just as useful, so challenged myself to build a Mac maintenance utility app.

The very first version was really, really ugly, but it laid the groundwork for something that eventually grew into a successful app over the next 15+ years.

I eventually took Yasu to a shareware model myself. I was blown away by people actually asking if they could give me money for my hobby project. I didn’t get rich from it, but I was able to use the earnings to pay for hosting and other related costs to maintaining the app.

It also lead to speaking gigs at Mac User Groups and a couple of small local Mac conferences. The app was even featured in print magazines a few times. I still have my cherished copy of MacWorld with the article on Yasu. I considered myself pretty damn lucky and thought I’d made the big time when this issue dropped.

But, as times changed, and Mac OS became macOS, it became harder to maintain the app thanks to Apple moving to a sandboxed operating system. Where it was once easy to issue Unix commands to clean a system level cache became a total obstacle. There were more and more roadblocks to overcome to keep the app alive.

This led me to turn the app over to another developer back in 2017 who promised me he would keep it going, but sadly, that’s not what ended up happening. He updated it a time or two and then just let it sit for the years since, doing nothing.

I’ve tried to get it back from him, but have received no response to many, many attempts.

I think the existing binaries might still usable on older Macs. To be honest, I haven’t tried them lately myself. If you’re daring, give it a shot and let me know what happens.

The Future

I’ve often toyed with the idea of taking Yasu back and resurrecting development – hence this site.

It means a complete rewrite in a completely different language which would be a small challenge, but if there was enough interest, I might be persuaded to give it a try. It would give me a passion project to work on again if nothing else.

This is where you come in…

If you’re interested in seeing a Yasu resurrection, contact me or let me know on Mastodon. Your message or toot just might be the motivator to push me over the edge and get off my butt.

Whatever the future holds, thanks so much for being curious about Yasu. It means a lot that there are still people like you looking for it. ✌🏻