Jettison 1.9.7 Mac

Jettison 1.9.7 corrects a bug that could prevent the eject or mount progress window from appearing, or leave it stuck onscreen. A related fix now offers a Quit button when the app identifies a blocking application, and the menu bar drive count updates immediately as disks come and go.

The utility lives in the menu bar, where you can eject or mount individual disks with a click. Before your MacBook goes to sleep, Jettison unmounts every external drive — including Time Machine backup volumes and file server connections — so you can unplug and go without seeing the "disk not ejected properly" warning. When you open the lid and log back in, the app checks which drives are still connected and remounts them. You can also exempt specific disks from automatic handling or include only the ones you name. It is a small tool aimed at anyone who carries a Mac between a desk setup and a bag, and who would rather not think about manual unmounting every time.

Unmounting before sleep, but built for more than just drives

Mac users who juggle external drives have a few options, but they approach the problem differently. Mountain is the closest alternative; it unmounts volumes before sleep and can remount them afterward, though its feature set leans toward managing a larger collection of drives across multiple mounts. Where Mountain offers more detailed controls for network shares and a broader preferences pane, Jettison keeps things spare — a menu bar icon and a handful of checkboxes. For someone with one or two external disks and a Time Machine drive, that minimalism works in Jettison's favor.

Semulov, a free utility from the developer of Mountain, handles the ejection side but skips automatic remounting. It gives you a menu bar list of connected volumes and ejects them with a single click, yet waking the Mac still means reconnecting disks by hand. Ejectify takes the opposite tack: it watches for idle periods and unmounts drives after a set time, regardless of sleep. That helps if you leave a drive spinning overnight but does nothing for the grab-and-go laptop scenario. Jettison sits between these extremes — sleep is the trigger, and remounting is the payoff. None of the three require configuration files or scripting, but Jettison's exemption list and per-disk toggles give it an edge for mixed setups where one drive should stay put while the others unmount.

Workflow: using an external SSD for photo edits on the move

Picture a typical afternoon. A 2 TB Samsung T7 holds a Lightroom catalog and raw files, a separate WD drive handles Time Machine, and the MacBook Pro spends the day moving between a desk, a coffee shop, and a meeting. Before Jettison, the routine involved hunting down open files, ejecting both volumes, and hoping nothing complained. With Jettison in the menu bar, the steps shrink.

1. Finish edits in Lightroom and close the application — or leave it running; Jettison will prompt if it blocks ejection.
2. Click the Jettison menu bar icon and verify both drives are listed. The Time Machine volume shows a small clock icon, the Samsung shows a disk icon.
3. Close the MacBook lid. Jettison unmounts both drives. The progress window, fixed in version 1.9.7, appears briefly and disappears.
4. At the coffee shop, open the lid and log in. Jettison checks for the drives — neither is connected, so the menu bar remains clear. Work from the internal SSD as usual.
5. Back at the desk, plug in both drives before waking the Mac. Log in, and Jettison remounts them automatically. Lightroom reconnects to the catalog without manual intervention.

The difference is most noticeable during rushed departures. Close the lid, toss the laptop in a bag, and walk out — no warnings, no corrupted file system prompts later. For anyone who has seen the "disk not ejected properly" notification one too many times, a jettison for mac workflow like this eliminates a small but persistent friction.

Version 1.9.7 addresses several bugs. The progress window that appears during eject or mount operations no longer fails to show or stays stuck onscreen. A rapid eject-remount sequence that could leave drives in a stuck state is fixed, and the menu bar drive count now updates immediately as disks are ejected or mounted. When a blocking app is found, the utility now provides a Quit button to clear the obstacle.

• macOS 10.13 or later
• Intel processor