For $\mathscr {B} \subseteq \mathbb {N} $, the $ \mathscr {B} $-free subshift $ X_{\eta } $ is the orbit closure of the characteristic function of the set of $ \mathscr {B} $-free integers. We show that many results about invariant measures and entropy, previously only known for the hereditary closure of $ X_{\eta } $, have their analogues for $ X_{\eta } $ as well. In particular, we settle in the affirmative a conjecture of Keller about a description of such measures [G. Keller. Generalized heredity in $\mathcal B$-free systems. Stoch. Dyn. 21(3) (2021), Paper No. 2140008]. A central assumption in our work is that $\eta ^{*} $ (the Toeplitz sequence that generates the unique minimal component of $ X_{\eta } $) is regular. From this, we obtain natural periodic approximations that we frequently use in our proofs to bound the elements in $ X_{\eta } $ from above and below.

We find sufficient conditions for bounded density shifts to have a unique measure of maximal entropy. We also prove that every measure of maximal entropy of a bounded density shift is fully supported. As a consequence of this, we obtain that bounded density shifts are surjunctive.

In this work, we treat subshifts, defined in terms of an alphabet $\mathcal {A}$ and (usually infinite) forbidden list $\mathcal {F}$ , where the number of n-letter words in $\mathcal {F}$ has ‘slow growth rate’ in n. We show that such subshifts are well behaved in several ways; for instance, they are boundedly supermultiplicative in the sense of Baker and Ghenciu [Dynamical properties of S-gap shifts and other shift spaces. J. Math. Anal. Appl.430(2) (2015), 633–647] and they have unique measures of maximal entropy with the K-property and which satisfy Gibbs bounds on large (measure-theoretically) sets. The main tool in our proofs is a more general result, which states that bounded supermultiplicativity and a sort of measure-theoretic specification property together imply uniqueness of the measure of maximum entropy and our Gibbs bounds. We also show that some well-known classes of subshifts can be treated by our results, including the symbolic codings of $x \mapsto \alpha + \beta x$ (the so-called $\alpha $ - $\beta $ shifts of Hofbauer [Maximal measures for simple piecewise monotonic transformations. Z. Wahrsch. verw. Geb.52(3) (1980), 289–300]) and the bounded density subshifts of Stanley [Bounded density shifts. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys.33(6) (2013), 1891–1928].