New EFI Partition Mounter tool

[ITzTravelInTime]

Hi guys i start this new thread to annunce you my new tool, an EFI Partition Mounter tool.

 

Why a new tool? I am creating this new tool because i don't like the UI of existing tools and i want to make something which is mostly future proof and easy to use, and also i already have most of the code done from my other tool TINU, so because of that i just ported the needed to code to a new app and added what's missing to make it a standalone app.

 

The tool is designed to work on both macs and hackintoshes and it's made to be fast, future proof and easy to use, the goal is to make a new generation of tools, with simple and easy to use user interface and grat performance, and also to have the app translated in multiple languages.

 

The app will also work as a windowed app or as a toolbar app, for quick EFI partition mounting, and also it will have very low memory usage and cpu usage (and almost 0% cpu usage when running in background)

 

The app will be pubblished on github as an open source app and under the GNU GPL v3 license.

 

There will be soon a first release of the app, meanwhile i have some screenshots for you of an early version of the app running on my macbook with an usb thumb drive, and an extrernal hard drive connected.

 

 

Edited September 29, 2018 by ITzTravelInTime

[ITzTravelInTime]

2 minutes ago, Moviemakergr said:

Nice.. we need a tool to working on Mojave. 

 

it works on mojave and because i am using the latest xcode beta you also get the dark mode support for it

[ITzTravelInTime]

some updates, i have opened a discussion in the insanelymac's italian subforum for people who speacks italian:

 

https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/335142-cè-un-nuovo-tool-per-montare-la-partizione-efi-in-città/

 

And i have also opened a github repo for this project:

 

https://github.com/ITzTravelInTime/EFI-Partition-Mounter

 

In the meanwhile the work on the tool is going very well, i have implemented all the basic features it needs to be a standalone tool, now i need to work on details, and tests and to implement the tool bar mode for the app and also the icon is missing, if you want to purpose an icon fell free to do it

[Pavo]

1 minute ago, ITzTravelInTime said:

some updates, i have opened a discussion in the insanelymac's italian subforum for people who speacks italian:

 

https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/335142-cè-un-nuovo-tool-per-montare-la-partizione-efi-in-città/

 

And i have also opened a github repo for this project:

 

https://github.com/ITzTravelInTime/EFI-Partition-Mounter

 

In the meanwhile the work on the tool is going very well, i have implemented all the basic features it needs to be a standalone tool, now i need to work on details, and tests and to implement the tool bar mode for the app and also the icon is missing, if you want to purpose an icon fell free to do it

Github saying it's  a empty repo.

[ITzTravelInTime]

13 minutes ago, Pavo said:

Github saying it's  a empty repo.

 

it will be filled when i will upload the 1st version and it's source code, now it's quite experimental for some things so i just prefere to leave the repo empty for now

 

EDIT: i have just initialized the repo now, but without code inside of it

Edited August 10, 2018 by ITzTravelInTime

[ITzTravelInTime]

test are going on the application seems to work fine, just few things are missing for the relase.

 

But one of those things missing is the icon, so i'd like that you try to make some icons an then post them here, together with other ones, and the icon that i think is the best and more appropriate, will be used as the app icon and the author will be credited in the credits of the app (for the credits i prefer having both the real name and the nickname of the author, or at least the real life name, because it's always better to have real people to credit and not some virtual avatar that may change).

 

For the icon i prefer something of simple, and clean which is like an icon of a system app and also should not be linked to any forum or other stuff, the icon have to tell to the user what your tool does or the aim of the tool, the ideal icon makes you understand what the tool is made for, just by looking at it, and also should be unique and easly recognizable.

 

Thank you for your help.

Edited August 12, 2018 by ITzTravelInTime

[Pavo]

50 minutes ago, ITzTravelInTime said:

test are going on the application seems to work fine, just few things are missing for the relase.

 

But one of those things missing is the icon, so i'd like that you try to make some icons an then post them here, together with other ones i will choose the beast one as the icon of the app and the icon that i think is the best and more appropriate, will be used as the app icon and the author will be credited in the credits of the app (for the credits i prefer having both the real name and the nickname of the author, or at least the real life name, because it's always better to have real people to credit and not some virtual avatar that may change).

 

For the icon i prefer something of simple, and clean which is like an icon of a system app and also should not be linked to any forum or other stuff, the icon have to tell to the user what your tool does.

 

Thank you for your help.

How does this look?

 

Edited August 12, 2018 by Pavo

[ITzTravelInTime]

1 minute ago, Pavo said:

How does this look?

 

 

 

It looks great, but the icon that i want for this tool should tell what the use is made for, which is the aim of the tool

[Gigamaxx]

Nice, personally I like the icons you show above they are familiar.   Maybe a USB icon if possible to detect versus a USB external drive.   

 

Is is there a way to enable the drives to show up on desktop without using “Show Disks” option in Finder/Prefrences/Show Disks?    I know I always use that manual option to edit or transfer EFI folders.    It’s really handy when you can see the partitions on the desktop.    

[headkaze]

I think Paragon NTFS has a nice interface. Here are some screenshots that may inspire you.

[ITzTravelInTime]

18 hours ago, Gigamaxx said:

Nice, personally I like the icons you show above they are familiar.   Maybe a USB icon if possible to detect versus a USB external drive.   

 

Is is there a way to enable the drives to show up on desktop without using “Show Disks” option in Finder/Prefrences/Show Disks?    I know I always use that manual option to edit or transfer EFI folders.    It’s really handy when you can see the partitions on the desktop.    

 

for the icon i can do something, like adding a tag with a label inside which tell you which kind of disk it is.

for the show disks option i can do something too, i just have to do some research to figure out how to do it via terminal or system apis and then find a way to implement it in the use interface.

 

3 hours ago, headkaze said:

I think Paragon NTFS has a nice interface. Here are some screenshots that may inspire you.

 

it has a great user interface, very detailed and well done, but paragon is a company with professional designers, i am just myself, but i am working to make my tool to look well and to be easy to use as i can, and also tool made by large companies, can be a great source of inspiration for possible features, thank you!

 

[headkaze]

1 hour ago, ITzTravelInTime said:

it has a great user interface, very detailed and well done, but paragon is a company with professional designers, i am just myself,

 

I think the menubar dropdown window is something that could be relatively easily replicated. It's more about the positioning of elements and with Mojave's dark mode you don't need to worry about any custom color scheme. I don't think you even need a separate windowed app for this. Check out this tutorial for creating the drop down window with an arrow (popover). The rest you've pretty much done already.

Edited August 15, 2018 by headkaze

[ITzTravelInTime]

1 hour ago, headkaze said:

 

I think the menubar dropdown window is something that could be relatively easily replicated. It's more about the positioning of elements and with Mojave's dark mode you don't need to worry about any custom color scheme. I don't think you even need a separate windowed app for this. Check out this tutorial for creating the drop down window with an arrow (popover). The rest you've pretty much done already.

 

yes i know about that and in fact my app will support mojave and dark mode and in one app you will have the windowed and the menu modes, i am just working because i want to add those features and others and because i am still finishing the making of this app a standalone thing from tinu, some menus still needs to be completed and i still need an icon, so i still need to do a lot of work but thanks for the help and suggestions, if you want to suggest features or tutorials to implement some feature, feel free to do it

[prcmelo]

Waiting this little nice tool!!!!

 

I would like to leave an icon idea that I quickly made.

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

the first version of the app is near to be released, it has finally an icon, and it's only missing some unecessary features and some bug fix, to release it i will at least wait until xcode 10 GM is released, because the entire app is made using it to have fully supported mojave dark mode.

 

for the icon i have worked together with @prcmelo and he has created some really good icons, that i want to show to you.

 

As a prize he recived a special early access to the unfinished app and also the mention in the credits of the app.

 

 

[prcmelo]

It was really good and fun to work for an app so nice as EFI mounter!

I really enjoyed it!

[Wppley2]

Hi all! Where I can find this app for download?

[ITzTravelInTime]

9 minutes ago, Wppley2 said:

Hi all! Where I can find this app for download?

 it has not been released yet, because it's not ready, the development is stillg oing on, i think i will release it in september when i can compile it using xcode 10 gm and when i will do a final test using mac os mojave gm, for now i am working to solve all the issues i am finding, and i still have to add some secondary fetures requested by some of you.

[Wppley2]

Oh, ok! Thank you for the reply. I will wait...

[ITzTravelInTime]

just an update, finishing the work on this app is taking some time because of varius issues, but i am working on some interesting new features like this one, if the app detects the config.plist file inside the efi aprtion of a drive when it's mounted, it will disaply you button to open it with clover configurator

[ITzTravelInTime]

Guys i am testing a closed pre-release version of this tool which includes all the basic features i have already shown to you and also things like fully supported mojave dark mode and menu bar support inside a single app with dinamyc switching. i will use the feedback from the closed beta testers to prepare the app for a public pre-release and then the first official release.

 

Then i have also features planned to add to the app in future releases:

-An eject button for each drive, so to safely eject all the volumes of the drive

-A free space indicator for each volume

-multi language support

-quick setting to activate viewving the efi partition and removable drives on the desktop

-other kind of info about drives and volumes

-sligth redesign of the UI to let all the new features to fit inside of it

 

If you hase gussting for anything, icluding design and other features, let me know, i am always open for that.

 

I als attach some screenshots of the app running on mojave in dark mode as a normal windowed app and also as a menu bar app

Edited September 30, 2018 by ITzTravelInTime

[ITzTravelInTime]

Hey guys i am here after a lot of time, to talk about this tool, first of all there is a verion you can try right now as part of  my other app tinu, that you can check right now, then i want to talk about why i haven't released the standalone tool yet.

 

To be short, the aswer is that i had just a lot of problems making some features i wanted for the standalone tool to work and also it was suffering from some some performance and optimization issues, and also i didn't had time to work on it because i had to work on tinu and also to study for the university, and also at the beginning of december i got injured in a motorbike incident.

 

Now after some months i can say that i recovered from the incident and also that i have less study to do and also that i decided to focus on this tool rather than on tinu for some time, so what i started to do is just fixing the knows inssues that i can fix and working on performance, i just got it to work mutch faster now because i redesigned and optimized the efi partition management routines and now it works fast enought on each of the machines i used for testing, and it seems to be also quite reactive on machines like my old mac mini running yosemite. now i have to improove the ui and the menus and to make some more testing before rolling it out, but i want to release it absolutely, and i think that for the first release i will leave out some features i couldn't get to work right, for example the menu bar app mode, but i promise you that you will get it and in future verions i will add the missing features, and all the feautures that you will get are all the essentials for an efi mounter tool like you have seen in the screenshots

[Tobiko]

This looks really cool. I haven't tried it yet. Does it have an option to save your password so it doesn't have to be typed in on every mount?

[ITzTravelInTime]

38 minutes ago, Tobiko said:

This looks really cool. I haven't tried it yet. Does it have an option to save your password so it doesn't have to be typed in on every mount?

 

Hi, i have still to relase this app and for recurity and also for  practial reasons it can't store the password, or have any athuntication tokens or everything like that, so iam sorry, but if you use it on macos/ osx versions before 10.13.6, so up to 10.13.5, you don't need the password to mount the efi partition, so it needs the pw to mount the partition, but just forn that any other thing is done pw free

[kingnalz]

Hi, what is the update for this tools?