FSMonitor Changelog

Version 1.2

Released 7/7/2020

  • Filters now have an option to permanently discard non-matching events while recording. This can improve performance quite a bit. With a restrictive enough filter rule, it is now more realistic to have FSMonitor running in the background.
  • You can now manually select light or dark mode appearance form the view menu, independently from the system appearance (macOS 10.14 and later only).
  • Event times now get displayed with millisecond precision.
  • There is now a column for the inode number in both the list view and the text view.
  • The export format slightly changed. Times are now exported with millisecond precision, and the date/time format now conforms to the ISO8601 standard. Furthermore, the inode number is now included. Scripts that parse the exported files might have to be adjusted.
  • The text view is now non-wrapping.
  • Fixed a bug where when the kernel was overwhelmed with the amount changes, we would not display all changes that the kernel did managed to report.
  • Various user interface, stability, and performance improvements.

Version 1.1.1

Released 9/14/2019

  • FSMonitor is now notarized by Apple.
  • Small visual fixes for dark mode.
  • Updated filter to ignore events from the macOS file icon system. It should now work correctly on macOS Catalina.

Version 1.1

Released 4/23/2019

Major new features:
  • FSMonitor now uses a completely new way to gather the file system events, and now knows the PID of the process that caused it. This allows the program to display (most of the times) the process name, path, the user id and more of the processes that initiated a file system change.

  • FSMonitor now is a document based Application, which means you can save and reopen the report right in FSMonitor. You can also resume recording of events after reopening.

Other Improvements:
  • In the tree view, you can now hide children of nodes that you are not interested in. Just select a node and press ⌫ (or right click to show the contextual menu item and click "Hide Children"). To show them again, use ⌘⌫ (or the contextual menu).

  • Much better and detailed inspector. It now shows detailed information about the file, the process, and the host computer.

  • You can now filter for PID or process path.

  • You can save and reload filters.

  • You can collapse the filter view, which leaves more room to display the actual content.

  • On macOS Mojave, FSMonitor supports darkmode.

  • You can now drag or copy paths from all views. For example you can select a node in the tree view, and paste its path into a filter field.

  • You can also drag files from the Finder into a filter field now.

  • You can now choose to export to plain text without emoji.

  • Files created by the process iconservicesagent are now ignored, because displaying them could cause a feedback loop and generate thousends of changes.

  • There is now documentation for FSMonitor (also accesible form the help menu)

  • By popular request, FSMonitor now has an official EULA.

  • Performance improvements.

  • Many bug fixes.

Version 1.0.7

Released 9/18/2017

  • Minor compatibility fixes for macOS 10.13 High Sierra.