DropDMG 3.7b1 Public Beta

DropDMG
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Here’s a new beta version of DropDMG. The changes are:

  • When running on macOS Tahoe 26, DropDMG now breaks the application icon out of “squircle jail” in the Dock, about window, and elsewhere in the app. This only takes effect while the app is running. Longer term, hopefully Apple will change how icons are handled or we will redesign the icon.
  • Added support for the new Apple Sparse Image Format (ASIF).
    • Like the old .sparseimage format, the .asif format uses a single file and only consumes disk space based on the amount of data stored (rather than the disk image’s logical capacity). It is much faster than either the .sparseimage or .sparsebundle format but requires macOS Tahoe 26 or later.
    • Most of DropDMG’s feature set works with ASIF disk images. You can:
      • Create blank ASIF disk images, using the APFS file system, and specify the capacity and volume name.
      • Create new ASIF images from folders, packages, and individual files, with various options for specifying the destination, filename, and volume name.
      • Create new ASIF device images from attached disks.
      • Enable 256-bit AES encryption. When creating a batch of encrypted ASIF images, you only have to enter the passphrase once. Or you can have DropDMG read it from a pre-existing keychain entry.
      • Convert .dmg, .sparseimage, and .sparsebundle disk images to the ASIF format. When doing this, DropDMG can add a license agreement, code signing, or optimize the image for restores, if the destination format supports that. This works even if both the source and destination images are encrypted, whether or not the passphrases are the same.
      • Convert archives (.zip, .tar, .tar.bz2, etc.) to the ASIF format.
      • Convert ASIF disk images to other disk image (.dmg and .sparsebundle) or archive (.zip, .tar, .tar.bz2, etc.) formats.
      • Convert an ASIF disk image to a new ASIF disk image (e.g. to change the encryption).
      • Mount Image… with an ASIF disk image. You can control whether or not the disk image is mounted with ownership information, whether changes are saved to a shadow file, and whether the disk image is mounted on the desktop or at an arbitrary location in the filesystem. If you bulk mount multiple encrypted disk images, you only have to enter the passphrase once if it’s the same for all of them.
      • Change Image Passphrase… for an ASIF disk image.
      • Get Image Info… for ASIF disk images.
      • Use the dropdmg command-line tool or AppleScript to control or automate DropDMG.
    • Some features do not work with ASIF disk images, due to macOS’s more limited support for them. You cannot:
      • Directly convert ASIF disk images to the .sparseimage, bzip2 .dmg, .cdr, or .iso formats or to a segmented .dmg format. However, this is possible by first converting to a different intermediate format.
      • Use the Compact Image… command with ASIF disk images.
      • Choose the less secure 128-AES encryption when creating an ASIF disk image or directly converting one to another format. If you really want to use it with an older format, you can do a two-step conversion.
      • See a determinate progress bar during operations on ASIF disk images.

If you have not installed a beta version of DropDMG before, first click here to enter the beta key. Thereafter, you can just launch DropDMG or choose Software Update from the DropDMG menu to auto-install the beta. DropDMG will also notify you about future betas automatically. You can click here to stop receiving in-app notifications of beta versions.