Aerial: "You cannot use the Aerial screen saver with this version of OS X"

[danielsamuels]

[TuncTaylan]

How about go ahead and update your os to the release version. It is working fine on 10.11.1.

[danielsamuels]

Thanks for the suggestion. You should work on your tone when speaking to people in issue comments, you come across as very aggressive and it's quite unnecessary.

[TuncTaylan]

Yes, I'm sorry. I've noticed it too, after I've typed it... didn't mean anything negative or aggressive actually.

Sorry again.

[bonny]

I have 10.11.1 (15B42) and I get the same message.

[brandonguigo]

me too

[jamesfoley]

Working fine for me on 10.11.1 (15B42)

[DJay-X]

Strange. I'm on 10.11.1 (15B42) as well and here everything works as expected. Great project by the way. Would be cool to see configuration possibility that the night views only show after sunset or a specific time.

[TuncTaylan]

How did you build it? Which version of Xcode?

Can you post the console logs?

[ryck]

I am getting the same error in OSX 10.10.4, using the precompiled saver.

[TuncTaylan]

Maybe the following will help debug the issue:

Type in the terminal
open /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app to activate the screensaver. Be sure it is selected beforehand.
And grep your system.log for ScreenSaverEngine and post it here:
tail -f /var/log/system.log|grep ScreenSaverEngine

[ryck]

Weird: now it works, but I haven't done anything yet...

[bonny]

Wierd! It works for me too now. Perhaps you need to close the screensaver-preferences pane, browse some random pages, then open up the preferences pane again? :)

Now I also get the button "Screen saved options", it was dimmed before.

[JohnCoates]

That is seriously weird!

[llahnoraa]

It worked fine on 10.11.1 (15B42). Great job!!!

[mrabrams]

In case it helps someone, it seems Little Snitch is blocking internet access by default, making it so the screensaver just shows a white screen.

[shaungrady]

Not working for me, says "You cannot use the Aerial screen saver with this version of OS X"

MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012)
OS X 10.11.1 (15B42)
2x external monitors (if that's of any consequence)

[bradmcnally]

To get this to work, I set it as the screensaver (even though it said it wasn't compatible) closed the preferences, opened it back up and it worked. 10.11.1

[shaungrady]

No such luck in my case

[macbookandrew]

:+1: for what @br-ad said.

iMac 21.5", late 2013
OS X 10.11.1 (15B42)
one external monitor

[llahnoraa]

Off topic but triple monitors worked flawlessly.

Sent from my [REDACTED]

On Oct 27, 2015, at 10:54 AM, Josh Abrams [email protected] wrote:

In case it helps someone, it seems Little Snitch is blocking internet access by default, making it so the screensaver just shows a white screen.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[alistairmcmillan]

@danielsamuels @Cataklix @DomingoCP @ryck @shaungrady Did you get the screensaver to work?

[shaungrady]

I no longer have access to the machine it was broken on, so I can't report.

[alistairmcmillan]

This "cannot use the Aerial screen saver with this version of OS X" error is caused by a bug in OS X.

http://alistairmcmillan.github.io/2016/04/25/OSX-Swift-screensaver-bug.html

[AlexPasternak]

Would be great to have this fixed. Broken for me on El Capitan 10.11.6.

Understood that it's possibly a macOS bug with Swift though at this point, as per link above.

[alistairmcmillan]

@AlexPasternak Select Aerial, close System Preferences, re-open System Preferences, the preview should now work. Let us know if it doesn't.

I logged a bug with Apple about it ten months ago but they haven't responded. radr://25569037 for anyone that's interested.

[AlexPasternak]

I was almost about to post that it didn't work, because I closed SP and went back in, but I missed the fact that you said select this screensaver, then exit, then re-open. That did the trick, thanks.

I wish there was a "Me too" button for Apple bugs like there is for Sonos sw issues, for example. Or any sort of a vote, really.

[Sediqa-Fahimi]

I get the same error. I'm using 10.12.3

[alistairmcmillan]

@fahimisediqa

1) Open System Preferences and select Aerial.
2) Leave Aerial selected and close System Preferences.
3) Reopen System Preferences, the error should be gone.

Let us know how you get on.

[MichaelDimmitt]

@alistairmcmillan, @JohnCoates, after alistair's previous comment I did some experimentation. Does not solve the underlying problem, but does create a solution where users will not have the issue any longer. relates to #349
terminal commands:

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver modulePath -string "/System/Library/Screen Savers/Shell.saver"; defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver moduleName -string "Shell"; defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver moduleDict -dict moduleName Shell path /System/Library/Screen\ Savers/Shell.saver/ type 0;

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver modulePath -string "~/Library/Screen\ Savers/Aerial.saver"; defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver moduleName -string "Aerial";defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver moduleDict -dict moduleName Aerial path ~/Library/Screen\ Savers/Aerial.saver type 0;

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/./ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine;

These are terminal commands. As terminal commands they are not currently very useful because as Alistair mentioned a user could manually close and reopen System Preferences. However, if incorporated into Aerial.saver as commands at the end. Then users should no longer see the problem and the fix will be automatically handled. Another benefit would be Aerial would by default be the screensaver. Which was the goal of #349.

This solved the problem for me which was still occurring as of: Sierra 10.12.4
which only had issue when clicking "Install for this user only".
This issue never presented itself when clicking "Install for all users of this computer".

[alistairmcmillan]

As I mentioned on another issue. If these commands were incorporated into the screensaver, the only way for them to take effect is for the screensaver to run. And if the screensaver is running, then people don't see this error.

Or to phrase it the other way around. This error means that macOS couldn't run the screensaver. If it can't run the screensaver then the commands wouldn't run.

The only way to fix this right now is by nagging Apple to get them to fix the bug in macOS.

[MichaelDimmitt]

@alistairmcmillan, "Aerial.saver" currently runs and sets everything up.
But then, I agree something with Apple causes issues.
However, turning it on and off should fix that.
And Aerial.saver can turn it on and off.

Maybe I need to make a pull request so that you can see what I am talking about?

[kennyluk]

Using the newest version on 10.12.4, same issue. However, I fixed it quickly by going into Terminal and changing the permissions to match the other Screensavers.

"chmod -R og+x Aerial.saver; chown -R root:wheel Aerial.saver"

[MichaelDimmitt]

@kennyluk, interesting. I wonder if that was the cause of the issue.
potentially all that needs to be changed is the permissions in a pull request.

Any others find this as a solution that works for them?

Do you really have to use chown? would the chmod command be enough?
chmod -R og+x Aerial.saver

The permissions might be an issue for zipped files. If that is true. I may have a workaround.
So let me know if the @ permission needs to be removed when the file is extracted from the zipped release file.

[alistairmcmillan]

@kennyluk @MichaelDimmitt It's not a permissions issue.

There are multiple versions of Swift. Swift applications including screensavers still include their version of the Swift libraries inside their bundle because of the different versions.

When macOS loads a Swift binary (for example when it loads a screensaver bundle into the System Preferences application) it loads the appropriate Swift libraries for the version of Swift that the binary was compiled against. If you then load another Swift binary (i.e. another screensaver) macOS does not attempt to load the appropriate Swift libraries because it already has Swift libraries loaded. Hence the error message.

You can confirm this by using Activity Monitor to look at the files loaded into the System Preferences application when you have a Swift screensaver selected. When you select a second Swift screensaver that was compiled against a different version you'll see that System Preferences doesn't unload the Swift libraries from the bundle of the first screensaver, they stay loaded and macOS tries and fails to load the second Swift screensaver and link them to those incompatible Swift libraries resulting in the "You cannot use the Aerial screen saver with this version of OS X".

This is a bug in macOS. It is not a permissions problem.

[diimdeep]

You have to use Xcode 8 (I tried 8.3.2 in High Sierra) and compile while change compiler to Swift 3.0
Problem will disapper.

[glouel]

Closing as this is solved now thankfully !