So, a recap of what I found so far:

Your cache folder will likely get wiped on upgrade to 10.15. Backup what you need!
Because of the new readonly macOS volume, /Library/Caches is no longer really ours to play with. There's a session about that later this week which should clarify, but it looks like macOS 10.15 simply does a symbolic link to ~/Library/Caches (the user one) for /Library/Caches, and the user one is the only one really useable. This will require some changes in Aerial (I kinda reluctantly moved the default to /Library, I do regret that now :D).
macOS 10.15 seems to be able to load/play HDR videos ! But beta1 literally crawls (mouse pointer not updating, everything hanging, beachballing) even if you just load (not play) a HDR file with QuickTime/Safari ! Hopefully this will get fixed in beta2 but this is a good news and I should be able to get HDR support in Aerial
There seems to be some new restrictions to how bundles are accessed and this is the crashing bug right now, we fail to load our xib for the control panel. This one I'll try to get too tomorrow.
Tried to grab the tvOS13 url from simulator, but it looks like simulator doesn't have a working screensaver (?)

glouel on 4 Jun 2019

👍7

hopefully a quick fix... shame anoint the caches lockdown!

JonoHaysom on 4 Jun 2019

Sadly not, been digging for about 3 hours and there's a thread crash in the system when opening our nib file. I filed a radar and posted on the developper forum, we'll see if I get any feedback.

glouel on 4 Jun 2019

Just a note - it looks like Aerial, the screensaver still works, but the control panel crashes ! In the logs, it talks about 'legacyScreenSaver' as a process - I had older version 1.4.9 and after updating to Catalina I updated via Homebrew to 1.5.0 - now the screensaver doesn't work because it's blocked as untrusted developer, by doing Open anyways it just deep-links me to screen saver where it's blocked by system again. Not sure if there is a way how to make the app trusted or via signed developer certificate. :)

Kaspik on 4 Jun 2019

👍2 😕1

Just a note - it looks like Aerial, the screensaver still works, but the control panel crashes ! In the logs, it talks about 'legacyScreenSaver' as a process - I had older version 1.4.9 and after updating to Catalina I updated via Homebrew to 1.5.0 - now the screensaver doesn't work because it's blocked as untrusted developer, by doing Open anyways it just deep-links me to screen saver where it's blocked by system again. Not sure if there is a way how to make the app trusted or via signed developer certificate. :)

Ha, they ALSO force notarization now, which is probably why you see that (I don't notarize yet).

Can you try a manual install by putting the .saver in ~/Library/Screen Savers/ and see what it does? A last resort would be to remove the quarantine bit on the .saver file, and install it normally (it will bypass gatekeeper).

Sorry about that, will try to solve that one too but might take some time.

glouel on 4 Jun 2019

I tried all options, it simply doesn't allow me to run .saver by untrusted developer. :) Which is probably expected as option Anyone from the settings was removed too and now you can use Only AppStore and trsuted developers. Notarize will be probably the only way!

Screenshot 2019-06-04 at 21 26 48

Kaspik on 4 Jun 2019

👍3

What happens if you unlock your System Preferences and click on the "Open Anyway" button that will then not be greyed out?

gregarios on 4 Jun 2019

@Kaspik did you try removing the quarantine bit ?

In terminal, type xattr -c Aerial.saver then install. More information here if you want : https://superuser.com/questions/526920/how-to-remove-quarantine-from-file-permissions-in-os-x

glouel on 4 Jun 2019

What happens if you unlock your System Preferences and click on the "Open Anyway" button that will then not be greyed out?

Opens Settings - Desktop and Screen Saver and shows pop-up "Blocked" again. Circle. :)

@Kaspik did you try removing the quarantine bit ?

In terminal, type xattr -c Aerial.saver then install. More information here if you want : https://superuser.com/questions/526920/how-to-remove-quarantine-from-file-permissions-in-os-x

Yep I did - nothing has changed.

I also believe the nib crash in settings is because it tries to run but it's blocked by system as well as it is for me.

Kaspik on 4 Jun 2019

Ok, sorry about that. I'll try to fix this tomorrow and get back to you. As for the nib, as far as I can tell it is probably something else (by compiling myself I bypass quarantine) and I've isolated the crash in some Apple Framework (I can load the file fine, just not map it to our controller without crashing).

glouel on 4 Jun 2019

No worries, it's beta! Just reporting some observations for you to debug and be ready for upcoming releases.

Kaspik on 4 Jun 2019

Can't wait for HDR. Thanks for the updates so far!

cmfrazier on 4 Jun 2019

No worries, it's beta! Just reporting some observations for you to debug and be ready for upcoming releases.

So just as a FYI, this worked here to have downloaded versions work in the meantime :

Install by double clicking (Aerial 2.saver here is the downloaded version, the other my local compile)
SysPref will complain and error, close error and SysPref

glouel@iMac-de-Guillaume-2:~/Library/Screen Savers$ ls -l@
total 0
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 glouel  staff  96 11 oct  2018 Aerial 2.saver
    com.apple.macl  72
    com.apple.quarantine    69
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 glouel  staff  96 19 avr 14:46 Aerial.saver
    com.apple.lastuseddate#PS   16
glouel@iMac-de-Guillaume-2:~/Library/Screen Savers$ xattr -c "Aerial 2.saver"
glouel@iMac-de-Guillaume-2:~/Library/Screen Savers$ ls -l@
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  3 glouel  staff  96 11 oct  2018 Aerial 2.saver
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 glouel  staff  96 19 avr 14:46 Aerial.saver
    com.apple.lastuseddate#PS   16

Then it's all good and you can open SysPref. You'll still crash when trying to open options but the screensaver itself works !

glouel on 5 Jun 2019

I can now see the difference and the problem I had! :)

Jakub-iMac-5K:~ kaspik$ cd ~/Library/Screen\ Savers/
Jakub-iMac-5K:Screen Savers kaspik$ ls -l@
total 0
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 kaspik  staff  96 May 31 11:14 Aerial.saver
    com.apple.macl  72 
    com.apple.quarantine    66 
Jakub-iMac-5K:Screen Savers kaspik$ xattr -c "Aerial.saver"
Jakub-iMac-5K:Screen Savers kaspik$ ls -l@
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  3 kaspik  staff  96 May 31 11:14 Aerial.saver

This still didn't work. But notice the path - ~/Library/Screen\ Savers/. If you move the screen saver to /Library/Screen\ Savers (not Library of current user, but system one), then you can apply the xattr -c "Aerial.saver" hack and then it works.

TLDR: Copy the Aerial to /Library, not to ~/Library! :)

Kaspik on 5 Jun 2019

👍2

Did you by any chance install for all users instead of just your user previously ? Normally, if you install for all users, it goes to /Library/Screen Savers, and just for you in ~/Library/Screen Savers. But because of the new OS lockdown of the filesystem in 10.15, it looks like they are doing some weird things with paths (/Library/Caches/Aerial and ~/Library/Caches/Aerial are the same thing now). In any case, glad it worked for you !

I think I got the solution for properly distributing the screensaver from now on, I can't use a zip, signed xip (like xcode betas) are Apple reserved, and signed dmg didn't work either. pkg is the only way apparently for components like screensaver (thanks to this answer : https://stackoverflow.com/a/31929663), then those pkgs can be signed and notarized. I'll try to get one up later today if you don't mind trying.

glouel on 5 Jun 2019

I probably copied it only to my folder manually instead of installing for all users. But I thought it would work for both cases and it doesn't 😄

Sure thing, I can try the notarized version. :)

Kaspik on 5 Jun 2019

@Kaspik

This took me a while but I think I finally got it, this .saver should be both signed and notarized, and still in zip format : https://github.com/glouel/Aerial/releases/download/v1.5.1beta1/Aerial.zip

Please let me know if it works for you, crossing fingers (it seems to work here).

glouel on 5 Jun 2019

Removed the old one, started with clean plate, downloaded, installed for all users, tried. Everything works great! (Except it runs only on one screen out of 3 I have, but it's Catalina bug for all screen savers).

The settings still crashes but I believe it's expected. :)

Thanks!

Kaspik on 5 Jun 2019

🎉1

Woohoo 🎉 I've been chasing that signing bug for about a year now, glad it's finally fixed ! And we'll have notarization on top now.

As for the settings yep, sorry, still haven't found a workaround. I tried removing stuff from the nib to see if I could pinpoint the issue but still nothing, I'll wait for the radar/beta2 now and start working on HDR and trying to find that tvOS url for the new undersea videos.

glouel on 5 Jun 2019

🎉4 ❤2

New cache/settings location in Catalina and how to move your settings/cache

So a bit more feedback, as you may have seen on the top post (I try to update a tldr with what's important), screen savers are now running under a sandboxed app (called legacyScreenSaver). Because of this, we don't have access to the filesystem outside of a container.

This has a lot of implications for Aerial and because a screen saver is not an app (we are a plugin run by legacyScreenSaver) we can't ask for entitlements for, say, accessing filesystem.

So to recap:

~~Having your cache in /Library/Caches/Aerial will no longer work. And 3rd party locations (somewhere else on disk, external drive, network, etc) will likely no longer work either.~~ Restored in beta6
Both your old settings AND your old Cache folder will be ignored
Some features like location, updates, may not work

You can move manually your settings from :
/Users/glouel/Library/Preferences/ByHost

to:
/Users/glouel/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Preferences/ByHost

You want to move a file called com.JohnCoates.Aerial.{UUID}.plist

In order to make it work with the new path, you need to edit the plist and remove the cacheDirectory(open plist in Xcode, look for cacheDirectory, click the minus right of the key name), so that Aerial can recompute the correct containerized one.

You can do the same thing for your Aerial Cache if you don't want to lose your videos (use same paths as above, change Preferences/ByHost by /Caches/Aerial and move the content. The control panel crash prevents you to change settings, know that you can edit the plist mentionned above to change settings if you need to. I'll push a new beta tonight with some minor changes to fix the path mess a bit (no longer defaulting to /Library/Caches)
Check beta6 further down.

glouel on 6 Jun 2019

👍1

Here's 1.5.1beta2 : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/tag/v1.5.1beta2

Signed/notarized/with the fix for the container thing.

glouel on 6 Jun 2019

Installed working fine as well as Beta 1 did. :) (no change, still one screen, no settings etc.)

Kaspik on 7 Jun 2019

👍1

Great, by the way not sure if I mentioned it but you are completely right, all 3rd party screensavers running under legacyScreenSaver (the new container thing) only get called on a single screen on multiple configuration (at least some of the system ones seems to run correctly under the old system).

The way screen savers work is our view is initialized once per screen by the system. Here we are only initialized once, and wrong, because system tells us we are in the tiny preview window of system preferences instead of fullscreen !

I filed a radar for that bug (and all the others, crossing fingers) and tried to get some attention in devforums with all the issues so far (usually kinda futile but who knows: https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/117136 ) !

glouel on 7 Jun 2019

cd ~/Library/Screen\ Savers && xattr -c Aerial.saver works for me with Aerial 1.5.0 (Homebrew) and Catalina 👍 (Obviously no settings too)

kabouzeid on 8 Jun 2019

👍1

that works here too.
cheers
Peter

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cd ~/Library/Screen\ Savers && xattr -c Aerial.saver works for me with
Aerial 1.5.0 (Homebrew) and Catalina 👍

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moooooooo on 8 Jun 2019

To the Catalina people, if you are feeling audacious, can you try this link in Safari and see if you get the HDR video to play ? Let me know which mac model you have too, that would be super helpful.

Before clicking, understand that, on my Late 2015 iMac, clicking the link makes the system laggy/unresponsive for about two minutes (and closing the tab too). When the system comes back, the playback works fine, thankfully. It definitely looks like a GPU driver bug which may or may not happen on all system. Should you attempt this, please make sure you save everything and are not in a hurry !

Here's the link : https://sylvan.apple.com/Aerials/2x/Videos/DB_D011_C009_2K_HDR_HEVC.mov

FYI I get the same thing with Safari, Quicktime Player or my WIP on Aerial. HDR videos do look glorious on my iMac here but the bug makes it completely unworkable. Thanks !

Edit : I found out the reason for my slowdown, disabling crash reporter (maybe) and (definitely) spindump fixed the slowdown for me and HDR now plays perfectly too (and I do feel it everywhere, this made my iMac a lot more usable !) 🎉

Couple links on how to do that :
https://www.gregoryvarghese.com/reportcrash-high-cpu-disable-reportcrash/
https://www.macobserver.com/tips/how-to/disable-tailspind-spindump-macos-cpu-speed/

glouel on 8 Jun 2019

Plays fine in Safari (macOS Catalina) on my 13 inch 2015 MacBook Pro.

kabouzeid on 8 Jun 2019

Same thing in QuickTime

kabouzeid on 8 Jun 2019

Plays fine in safari and QT.

On 8 Jun 2019, at 10:26 pm, Karim Abou Zeid notifications@github.com wrote:

Plays fine in Safari (macOS Catalina) on my 13 inch 2015 MacBook Pro.

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JonoHaysom on 8 Jun 2019

That was quick, thanks for the answers !

Glad to hear the slowdown is not universal. I'll try to get a HDR build up tomorrow then, if you want to give it a shot.

glouel on 8 Jun 2019

Cache videos again from command line

So for those who lost their cache folder after upgrade and want to recache their videos, here's an easy way to cache from command line(assuming you have homebrew):

Preliminary, install wget and jq (I'm sure you can do this in pure bash+curl too) :

brew install jq
brew install wget

then it's super easy:

cd ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Caches/Aerial/

This is the new containerized, unchangeable, cache location used in Catalina. You should see entries.json there if you run Aerial at least once in Catalina. Then simply do, for 4K SDR videos from tvOS12 :

cat entries.json | jq -r '.assets[]."url-4K-SDR"' | xargs wget -nc -i

(this will obviously take a while 😅)
Replace url-4K-SDR with url-1080-H264 or url-1080-SDR for 1080p H264 (default) or 1080p HEVC (and url-4K-HDR for 4K HDR if you want to be ready for next beta).

As a reminder, your Aerial settings in Catalina are now stored in:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.JohnCoates.Aerial.{UUID}.plist

You can move your old plist with settings there from ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost. (make sure you delete the cacheDirectory preference though !!)

If you want to change the video mode in the plist manually, open the plist (you need xcode or some other tool) and find key videoFormat(it's of type "number" if you create manually) and change it to 0, 1 or 2 (1080pH264, 1080pHEVC, 4KHEVC).

glouel on 9 Jun 2019

Beta3 with HDR support

File is here : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/download/v1.5.1beta3/Aerial.saver.zip

(Homebrew people, you can simply double click the .saver and install to user directory to overwrite your homebrew version, you'll still be able to update via homebrew when finale is out but that may take a while).

With this version, HDR is enabled by default. HDR is only available for tvOS11 and tvOS12 videos, see my post above about how to cache them. HDR is only available if your videoFormat is set to 1 or 2 (please see post above). You won't see HDR if you stay in videoMode 0.

To disable HDR, open plist (again look at post above) and set/create useHDR (type bool) to NO.

If like me you experienced a massive slowdown with HDR playback, please see the end of this post for the fix I used : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/issues/801#issuecomment-500148202)

If you want to compare videos in Safari:

glouel on 9 Jun 2019

Quick update, with macOS Catalina beta2:

Panel still broken
Screensaver still shows on one screen only on multiple display configurations (and still the isPreview bug)

So, no change as far as I can see :(

glouel on 17 Jun 2019

So bit of an update:

I saw a status change on one of my radars, the one about the control panel not showing up. That status change says "Resolution: Investigation complete - Change required from 3rd party" which I could live with... if it came with some sort of feedback on what to change. Now, feedback seems to be bugged in Feedback Assistant on macOS so maybe they did write some message that I can't see yet. Hopefully this will have a positive outcome soon (maybe tonight ? half expecting a round of beta today despite odds definitely against that).

Next, in order to try and fix the container mess and let us still use outside path, I'm splitting the cache logic with 2 directories, here's what I'm going with for next beta :

Aerial will create an Aerial dir in ~/Library/Application Support/ (or it's containairized version which is ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Application Support, really rolls off the tongue !)
this appSupport path will NOT be user changeable.
Aerial.log, and the JSONs will go there.
Any new video download will go there (let's say only on Catalina+)
Cache path is still a thing, is still user changeable BUT considering readonly restrictions on Catalina, Aerial will look both in appSupport directory AND cacheDirectory to see if a video file exists.
I'm leaving the default cacheDirectory for new users to ~/Library/Caches/Aerial for now to try to avoid changing too many things at once

At some point in the future:

default cacheDirectory for new users will be appSupport (still user changeable to whatever, with same caveat as noted above)

This should fix a bit the path situation with Catalina, so you'll be able to run Aerial with a cache folder outside the container, but just for the already downloaded videos (and you can manually move stuff there). And Aerial will still have a writable directory to do its business.

As to moving to Application Support, it's not likely to get wiped by either OS install (Catalina beta) or 3rd party tool so should save me some issues with people who keep seeing their videos disappearing. There's an issue about this here for more info : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/issues/805#issue-452516288

I'll post beta5 with this probably tonight/tomorrow.

glouel on 24 Jun 2019

👍1

Just curious (never built screensaver for macOS) - you are not able to build debug build for macOS from XCode to see what is the crash, right?

Have you tried to create super simple native macOS app that would "use" your screen saver framework and try to interact with the XIB pane from that? It would mean XCode could potentially detect the crash. :)

Kaspik on 24 Jun 2019

Hey @Kaspik ! So we are exactly doing this with Aerial's Xcode project. You can build it either as a screensaver or as an App (two separate schemes, Aerial, and AerialApp).

When running as an App, the crash is the same, it happens in Foundation FYI:

Crashed Thread:        0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION (SIGILL)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000001, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Signal:    Illegal instruction: 4
Termination Reason:    Namespace SIGNAL, Code 0x4
Terminating Process:   exc handler [6316]

Application Specific Information:
dyld3 mode
Crashing on exception: launch path not accessible

Application Specific Signatures:
Aerial

Application Specific Backtrace 1:
0   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff2e5d4c63 __exceptionPreprocess + 250
1   libobjc.A.dylib                     0x00007fff63a9d06b objc_exception_throw + 48
2   Foundation                          0x00007fff30be81a0 -[NSConcreteTask launchWithDictionary:error:] + 5073
3   Aerial                              0x00000001104f1181 Aerial + 516481
4   Aerial                              0x00000001104ee964 Aerial + 506212
5   Aerial                              0x00000001104ecb5c Aerial + 498524
6   Aerial                              0x00000001104a6e9d Aerial + 212637
7   Aerial                              0x00000001104ab4db Aerial + 230619
8   AppKit                              0x00007fff2b8a9ce5 -[NSIBObjectData nibInstantiateWithOwner:options:topLevelObjects:] + 1540
9   AppKit                              0x00007fff2b8a7d17 loadNib + 401
10  AppKit                              0x00007fff2b8a72ce +[NSBundle(NSNibLoading) _loadNibFile:nameTable:options:withZone:ownerBundle:] + 693
11  AppKit                              0x00007fff2ba0ac8c +[NSBundle(NSNibLoadingInternal) _loadNibFile:externalNameTable:options:withZone:] + 156

At first I thought the "launch path" thing was a container issue, but in app mode we're out of the container so that's not it.

I reported this in beta dev forums and in the radar with even more info, but since the crash happens in foundation, not really sure what to do to fix. If you have any suggestion let me know !

Edit : I remember I did check a lot of various things, like checking old versions back to 1.2 but they all had the same issue if I remember correctly.

glouel on 24 Jun 2019

Annnnnd I found the bug, which had nothing to do with the loadNib. It's actually because of the rare command line stuff I'm running which is:

untar for the ressources.tar (tvos12.json) (maybe, although in container maybe not since it couldn't download anyway so unlikely it tried to untar)
nightshift because... /usr/bin/corebrightnessdiag is no longer a thing !

Trying to square things up and will have a beta out asap.

glouel on 24 Jun 2019

Heh, I just cloned repo and started digging in. (Even tho I wasn't able to run the preferences window 😂 ).

Nice findings!

Kaspik on 24 Jun 2019

Kinda feel dumb for submitting that radar now though 🥺

I'll let you know when I push the fix to the repo if you want to have a look.

glouel on 24 Jun 2019

Just merged the changes from my repo, really quick and dirty as I basically disabled the whole Time tab right now, but at least it works:

Capture d’écran 2019-06-24 à 13 53 53

This contains the AppSupport changes too, as a work in progress (jsons go there/downloaded there). Also when running the AerialApp from Xcode, you will be loading your old preferences (from your user directory, not from the container). Same goes for AppSupport and default cache directory which will be set in your user dir if/when needed.

glouel on 24 Jun 2019

Catalina people, beta5 with control panel fix (and the split cache thing) :

https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/download/v1.5.1beta5/Aerial.saver.zip

You will probably want to reset your cache location which was forcibly changed in previous beta. Aerial will load from a read only directory that is outside the container, and the JSONs and AerialLog.txt go inside Application Support inside the container (the show in finder button in Advanced will show you that path).

Right now only the cache location is considered for videos, and downloads will likely fail, I'll fix that asap but at least this version will be "useable".

glouel on 24 Jun 2019

👍2

Changing cache folder in Catalina, and Aerial beta6

So I cleaned up most of the issues including downloading to AppSupport correctly in Catalina, and the ability to store video files in both folders. You can move them from one folder to another if that's your thing, too. So that's kind of good and beta6 implements this.

BUT !

There's a new issue linked to sandboxing/entitlements. While Aerial can read local files, we cannot show a panel to pick the cache folder. So the change folder button as of right now just doesn't work. We get this error in console.

legacyScreenSaver ERROR: Unable to display open panel: your app is missing the User Selected File Read app sandbox entitlement. Please ensure that your app's target capabilities include the proper entitlements.

We can't add it by ourselves. So, my guess is right now the only people on Catalina are developers that have Xcode (or at least can install it). (welcome public beta users I guess, you're gonna need Xcode too, any version will do! And some patience too...).

So to change your cache folder in Catalina, you have to open the preferences plist which is stored in your container at: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Preferences/ByHost

~~Open com.JohnCoates.Aerial.{UUID}.plist~~

~~Look for a key called cacheDirectory, you may have to add it again (type String) if you removed it previously.~~

Change the string content to the path you want, but MAKE SURE YOU DON'T ADD A / AT THE END. So for example :
/Users/glouel/Library/Caches/Aerial GOOD
/Users/glouel/Library/Caches/Aerial/ BAAAAD

~~While I'm not sure about this, I do think paths have to be full formed, so no ~/Library/Caches/Aerial either.~~

Please have a look at @Kiran-B 's message below for how to easily edit your path 👍

Beta 6 : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/download/v1.5.1beta6/Aerial.saver.zip

glouel on 24 Jun 2019

Manually editing preference could be tricky. I would recommend using the command as below

defaults -currentHost write /Users/kiran/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.JohnCoates.Aerial.plist cacheDirectory -string /Volumes/TimeMachine/Extra/Aerial_copy

I was getting a blank screen saver on my attempt 1 of setting custom cacheDirectory. Not really sure why. I did the following things(one of these steps) which fixed the problem.

I chose a built-in screensaver as current and quit system preference.
Executed the above command to set my cacheDirectory
Launched System Preferences app and chose 'Aerial'. Clicked 'Screen Saver Options...'. For a moment I saw an empty list in videos tab. Once populated I clicked Done and checked the Preview

It was working.

Kiran-B on 25 Jun 2019

👍1

Interesting feedback thanks ! I updated the answer above to point to yours, definitely simpler.

As for the blank screen, that's intriguing, could it be you were on a slow/intermittent network connexion ? I'm saying this because of your point about the blank list, this happens only when Aerial tries to fetch the JSONs online and until that's done, the list won't be populated. It's usually instantaneous (a few kb) but some congestion somewhere could make it lag a bit.

Could explain your blank screen too, as it also tries fetching there if the JSONs are missing, which they would in beta6 as I moved them in the Application Support directory in the container.

glouel on 25 Jun 2019

As an alternative, I created a symbolic link in...

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Caches/

to:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Application\ Support/Aerial

Seems to work.

ankushnarula on 25 Jun 2019

As for the blank screen, that's intriguing, could it be you were on a slow/intermittent network connexion ? I'm saying this because of your point about the blank list, this happens only when Aerial tries to fetch the JSONs online and until that's done, the list won't be populated. It's usually instantaneous (a few kb) but some congestion somewhere could make it lag a bit.

I had the setting Never steam videos (in 'Cache' tab) enabled. So the blank scan is probably due to the fact that Aerial was using the default cache path (which contained no videos). So once I chose a different SCR and updated the cacheDir and set Aerial back as SCR, I felt it sort of re-initialized. Those 3 steps were me trying to randomly figure out what's not working. I just put these steps here if any others face a similar situation.

Kiran-B on 25 Jun 2019

As an alternative, I created a symbolic link in...

Interesting. I had tried this approach in earlier betas and it didn't work. Soft links did not work and tools that would create hard links did not work in Catalina. Perhaps the splitting of JSON and video in the last Beta makes this approach possible.

Kiran-B on 25 Jun 2019

Never stream videos could definitely explain the blank screen yep.

The list lagging, that's definitely waiting for the JSONs to be loaded (from network, or disk, but from Application Support and not from whatever your Cache is in any case).

Thanks for your insights !

glouel on 25 Jun 2019

@ankushnarula I'm not sure I fully understand what your symlink does ? This is a symlink of Caches/Aerial (the real folder) to Application Support/Aerial (the link) ? With your cacheDirectory set to the first ? And both are in the container ?

This would avoid the JSON redownloading if it works. But both path should be writeable to Aerial in any case as they are in the container. Maybe you can only do symlinks from/to container too and that's why it didn't work for @Kiran-B ?

In any case thanks all for trying to figure this out with me, definitely not easy this year with all the uncertainty, really appreciate it !

glouel on 25 Jun 2019

👍1

@glouel I created the symlink in the latest beta's default folder ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Caches/ since the "Change Cache Folder" button didn't work - and before I saw this entire thread and @Kiran-B's solution.

ankushnarula on 25 Jun 2019

Thanks @ankushnarula ! Did you do that before launching the beta at least once? Those should have created the Application Support folder for you but maybe I have a bug there! In any case, if this works for you, stay with it :)

glouel on 25 Jun 2019

No @glouel. I had launched it and had already downloaded many videos before I noticed that the cache folder was empty. I did a little browsing and found the newer cache folder - but then the button didn't work. So creating a symlink seemed logical.

ankushnarula on 25 Jun 2019

👍1

Ok makes sense, thanks !

glouel on 25 Jun 2019

👍1

So now on Catalina, you'll get this when clicking the button:

Capture d’écran 2019-06-25 à 12 13 08

I'll release beta7 with this tonight with other tweaks.

glouel on 25 Jun 2019

@glouel I was just browsing the code for 1.5.1beta6 and noticed that the logic to compute the cache directory seems quite complex. Was this done to avoid re-downloading videos?

ankushnarula on 25 Jun 2019

@ankushnarula a lot of it is historic.

To give you a bit of background, Aerial always needed one folder that was writeable to just not crash. By default it was ~/Library/Caches/Aerial. Since Aerial needs that folder to not crash, it would try to create that folder if it didn't exist. That includes the possibility that you download and install Aerial, never go into configuration panel, and launch it. Then, Aerial would need to create that folder, grab the JSON, then stream a video.

If you go into config panel, you can override that folder to something else, but if that path doesn't exist, Aerial tries to fallback and find a directory to work with, and that's the code you saw.

Bit by bit I tried to change the mechanism to add a bit of flexibility. Some of it was misplaced 😱 One request was to move to /Library/Caches/Aerial which was not a great idea as on some people systems (I guess with some different type of accounts) Aerial would try to create that folder when it didn't exist, that would fail, and Aerial would crash.

So right now the logic is:

Check if there's a customCacheFolder set by user, and if it exists at the moment (drive may not be connected, etc). If it does, use that
If not, check if /Library/Caches/Aerial exists, if so use that
If not, check if ~/Library/Caches/Aerial exists, if so use that
If not, create ~/Library/Caches/Aerial, as that is safe and can always be done (and if not, crash but that doesn't seem to happen)

Since in Catalina you can only write in the container (but can read outside), I split the mechanism in beta6 in two paths (mostly to make sure it works):

At first startup or if missing, Aerial will create ~/Library/Application Support/Aerial (or it's container version in Catalina) -> this will be used for everything that needs the ability to write (download JSONs, save log files, download new videos) and ensure we don't crash.
Then Aerial will look for a Cache folder, if there's one. This is completely optional in theory as we don't need a second path at all. All your files can live in Application Support but many people want to store videos outside of their main disk (and now outside of the container). That's why I'm keeping that cache.

What Aerial should do (in next beta) is this :

Check if there's a customCacheFolder set by user, and if it exists at the moment. If it does, use that
If not, check if /Library/Caches/Aerial exists, if so use that
If not, check if ~/Library/Caches/Aerial exists, if so use that
If not, check if ~/Library/Application Support/Aerial exists (and it will because we created it above), if so use that
~~If not, create ~/Library/Caches/Aerial, as that is safe and can always be done (and if not, crash but that doesn't seem to happen)~~

Since you could never set a custom path in settings, I kinda need to keep the checks for the Caches paths to not break things for them. But ideally that should go away now that we have a safe writeable path to not crash.

And the other big change I made is that if now, when it comes to looking for a video, I look both in the safe, always there, Application Support path, and also, just in case, in a "cache" path.

I know that's a bit weird but a lot of it was historical and things that changed little by little. And I probably never documented it. Hope that makes sense ?

glouel on 25 Jun 2019

👍1

@glouel My understanding is that for macOS 10.15 the DownloadManager model will download videos into the VideoCache.appSupportDirectory. But it seems elsewhere (e.g. PWC+Videos controller) there are calls to load the videos from VideoCache.cachePath.

This might explain my particular situation. I suspect that the VideoCache.cachePath is being set to ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Caches/Aerial while the VideoCache.appSupportDirectory is set to ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Application\ Support/Aerial. Not sure if I'm 100% correct, but it would explain the divergence.

ankushnarula on 25 Jun 2019

@glouel My understanding is that for macOS 10.15 the DownloadManager model will download videos into the VideoCache.appSupportDirectory.

Yes ! There may be some things that are not working, still mapped to cacheDirectory (saving file after streaming, customvideos.json) but I'm trying to fix that.

But it seems elsewhere (e.g. PWC+Videos controller) there are calls to load the videos from VideoCache.cachePath.

Well, nope on that one. The complicated code I mentioned is VideoCache.cacheDirectory (again, lot if it is before my time maintaining it). VideoCache.cachePath(forVideo:) is what gives you the path to the cached file for a video, in the current video format (so H264, HEVC, HDR, 4K, etc), wherever it is (so if you check that code, which I changed a lot in beta 5/6, that's the one that looks in either appSupportDirectory then cacheDirectory if not in the first path).

This might explain my particular situation. I suspect that the VideoCache.cachePath is being set to ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Caches/Aerial while the VideoCache.appSupportDirectory is set to ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Application\ Support/Aerial. Not sure if I'm 100% correct, but it would explain the divergence.

appSupportDirectory, in Catalina will always be ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Application\ Support/Aerial

If you want to know exactly what your cacheDirectory is, check the debug log for this line:

2019-06-24 16:23:15.716 : cache to be used : Optional("/Users/glouel/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Caches/Aerial")

That one is cacheDirectory. cachePath can return anything. Can you check what this says ? It would be helpful to really understand what's going on in your case as I want to try and give the smoothest upgrade path possible (the earlier betas did make some of it worse and I apologize for that, as I likely did reset your cacheDirectory to the container).

glouel on 25 Jun 2019

👍1

No need to apologize. This was my first beta 😉 And foolishly, I did disable debug logging at some point while early on when I was downloading videos and playing with the options (before realizing the cache problem). However I did manage to capture the startup.

Here's my debug log.

First it appears the appSupportDirectory is created prior to handling the customvideos.json:

03:34:58 : creating app support directory
03:34:58 : custom file : file:///Users/ankush/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Application%20Support/Aerial/customvideos.json
03:34:58 : No customvideos.json Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=260 "The file “customvideos.json” couldn’t be opened because there is no such file." UserInfo={NSFilePath=/Users/ankush/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Application Support/Aerial/customvideos.json, NSUnderlyingError=0x60000095aa90 {Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=2 "No such file or directory"}}

Then the userCachePath is set shortly after:

03:35:01 : userCachePath : ["/Users/ankush/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Caches"]
03:35:01 : create user cache
03:35:01 : cache to be used : Optional("/Users/ankush/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Caches/Aerial")

ankushnarula on 25 Jun 2019

No need to apologize. This was my first beta 😉 And foolishly, I did disable debug logging at some point while early on when I was downloading videos and playing with the options (before realizing the cache problem). However I did manage to capture the startup.

No worries ! I did go pretty fast explaining the change and unless you followed the early Catalina stuff my explanation was quite confusing.

Here's my debug log.

Yeah that's still 1.4.6 but that's fine, what you captured below is exactly what I need.

First it appears the appSupportDirectory is created prior to handling the customvideos.json:

03:34:58 : creating app support directory
03:34:58 : custom file : file:///Users/ankush/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Application%20Support/Aerial/customvideos.json
03:34:58 : No customvideos.json Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=260 "The file “customvideos.json” couldn’t be opened because there is no such file." UserInfo={NSFilePath=/Users/ankush/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Application Support/Aerial/customvideos.json, NSUnderlyingError=0x60000095aa90 {Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=2 "No such file or directory"}}

So that error I need to change, but let's say it's normal ;) It shouldn't say error just file not there and move on ;) But the path is correct.

Then the userCachePath is set shortly after:

03:35:01 : userCachePath : ["/Users/ankush/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Caches"]
03:35:01 : create user cache
03:35:01 : cache to be used : Optional("/Users/ankush/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Caches/Aerial")

So that's about what I'd expect. If you have a few moments, would you mind trying this :

Close system preferences if open
Delete your symbolic link (so there won't be any /Application Support/Aerial existing or pointing to something else)
Relaunch Aerial

What I'd expect:

You'll see Aerial create the Application Support/Aerial folder in place of your symbolic link in the container.
Aerial will grab again fresh JSON files and store them there. Also AerialLog.txt if you enabled it.
All your videos that are in your cache folder will still show up as downloaded as Aerial should magically find them (because the complex code we talked about above will find your old cache)

Can you confirm that's what you see ?

As to things that don't work in beta6, it's loading default text descriptions which may be missing for some videos, but streaming (surprisingly) works and customvideos.json (as you saw, that's the new feature in 1.5.0 to add your own videos) seem to kind of work too (at least file read/save).

glouel on 25 Jun 2019

I think you have it in reverse. My Application Support/Aerial folder was fully populated with JSON, logs, video files, etc. I created the symlink TO that folder in the container's Library/Caches/ folder (which had an empty Aerial folder that I deleted).

ankushnarula on 25 Jun 2019

Indeed completely reversed 😅

So, just delete your symlink, beta6 will create an empty folder there which it will not use (and in next beta, won't create at all and ignore completely). Everything should work from Application Support with no symlink needed.

Correct ?

glouel on 25 Jun 2019

Yes @glouel. It should work - assuming it detects the Application Support/Aerial folder or I can manually select it. I will try this when the beta7 build is available.

ankushnarula on 25 Jun 2019

Yes it will, no need to manually select. Good to wait for beta7 should be out in 2/3 hours max, this way we can be sure.

Thanks

glouel on 25 Jun 2019

👍1

Beta 7

This fixes some bugs introduced like POIs not working. Also, Aerial will no longer try to create a cache folder if you don't have one set, and just use Application Support. There's also a box that gives a long recap of the current catalina issues and cache folder, which should help everyone :

Capture d’écran 2019-06-25 à 18 23 08

Download : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/download/v1.5.1beta7/Aerial.saver.zip

glouel on 25 Jun 2019

I'm running the public beta and running into an issue on Beta 7 with videos displaying on my 4K external display and MBP display. I have all displays selected, yet with both displays on, it only plays a video on the MBP. If I shut the MBP and use "clamshell" mode, video will play on my 4K display.
1.5.1B7 debug.txt

cmfrazier on 28 Jun 2019

I'm running the public beta and running into an issue on Beta 7 with videos displaying on my 4K external display and MBP display. I have all displays selected, yet with both displays on, it only plays a video on the MBP. If I shut the MBP and use "clamshell" mode, video will play on my 4K display.
1.5.1B7 debug.txt

I assume you are running Catalina. Check the top post, it's a bug in Catalina beta1 and 2, with all third party screensavers.

glouel on 28 Jun 2019

@glouel I even read the top post...yet missed that somehow 😩

cmfrazier on 28 Jun 2019

😄1

The "allow right arrow key to skip" option doesn't work for me (beta7 on macOS 10.15 Beta (19A487m). Instead of skipping the screensaver is terminated (password prompt appearing).

fok on 29 Jun 2019

The "allow right arrow key to skip" option doesn't work for me (beta7 on macOS 10.15 Beta (19A487m). Instead of skipping the screensaver is terminated (password prompt appearing).

Totally well spotted, indeed that doesn't work either. And I just confirmed that Electric Sheep has the same issue too.

So looks like "legacy" screensavers may not be able to intercept keyboard anymore, bah... Will fill another radar on that one and update the TL;DR, thanks.

Edit : Also per another issue, mounted volumes (so network drives, external drives) cannot be used for cache.

glouel on 29 Jun 2019

Here is a link to another issue I commented on where we addressed the nonfunctional arrow-key problem. The workaround I found may help. Perhaps it needs to be in the documentation:
https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/issues/768#issuecomment-491473659

gregarios on 29 Jun 2019

Here is a link to another issue I commented on where we addressed the nonfunctional arrow-key problem. The workaround I found may help. Perhaps it needs to be in the documentation:
#768 (comment)

Thanks ! But sadly it looks like this is a separate issue, with sandboxing we no longer have direct access to the keyboard so no workaround at the moment for this one.

Hopefullly they will document the .appex/XPC format for screensaver so we can at least ask users for those permissions, if they wish to use those features...

glouel on 30 Jun 2019

Thanks ! But sadly it looks like this is a separate issue, with sandboxing we no longer have direct access to the keyboard so no workaround at the moment for this one.

No I understand this isn't for you to fix... this is a MacOS issue we encountered before I believe. My workaround isn't anything you can incorporate into the screensaver... this is just something that may need to have a note in the documentation — maybe as a FAQ or something. My comment was mainly for @fok. :-) The arrow key issue affects all screensavers. Or are you completely unable to use the arrow keys in Catalina?

gregarios on 30 Jun 2019

So beta3 of Catalina is here, I don't have an external monitor near me right now, but the isPreview bug is still here

2019-07-02 22:53:10.029 : <AerialView: 0x7f941dc01f90> isPreview : true

So I doubt that multimonitor is fixed either, but someone else might be able to test that. Will have a more thorough look tomorrow, none of my radars moved either for what it's worth.

Edit: HDR playback is fully fixed on my 2015 iMac in Catalina beta3 (it was never truly fixed as the bug would come back a few hours after running in beta1/2, a reboot would temporarily fix it). I think the graphics driver had many issues for that model (simple things like the brightness control overlay would just lag too) but that's all good in beta 3.

glouel on 2 Jul 2019

The arrow key issue affects all screensavers. Or are you completely unable to use the arrow keys in Catalina?

Again maybe I wasn't clear but this is not the same issue as the one you linked, while it does look similar yes.

You cannot intercept the keyboard at all now as a legacyScreenSaver in Catalina, independent of which key/settings you pick, because of sandboxing. It's part of the same class of issues we have with external drives, read only local access, etc. We simply are no longer allowed this as sandboxed app simply cannot do that without proper authorization (which we don't have). I did fill a couple more radars so there's always hope :)

glouel on 4 Jul 2019

So, if the cache is split, does that mean videos in one folder and settings in another folder?

That would actually be handy, as I could sync the videos across my various computers using Resilio Sync or something.

tjluoma on 10 Jul 2019

So, if the cache is split, does that mean videos in one folder and settings in another folder?

That would actually be handy, as I could sync the videos across my various computers using Resilio Sync or something.

So settings were already split. Settings are stored by macOS into ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.JohnCoates.Aerial.{UUID}.plist

(or the container version of this)

I would recommend against syncing the plist if you have more than one monitor on one of your macs.

If you want to sync the cache folder in previous versions, the only issue previously would have been the logs which would have become messy if enabled.

Barring that, you can definitely sync the cache folder now as it will only contain what you put in it (so videos only).

glouel on 10 Jul 2019

So just updated to beta4, I'm still on a single monitor setup but the isPreview bug is still there, so it's unlikely they fixed multiple monitors either. Someone can probably confirm.

2019-07-16 21:45:36.720 : <AerialView: 0x7fab2ac0fda0> isPreview : true

glouel on 16 Jul 2019

Hey guys. I am using Catalina and I am trying to open the settings fro Aerial Screen saver. But when I click on on the button, it does nothing. I have been looking thru forum for solution. But I have not come across a solution yet. Perhaps someone can send me to the correct post for a fix?

Repins55 on 18 Jul 2019

@Repins55
According to the OP, this should have been fixed in beta5. Are you using the latest beta (https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/issues/801#issuecomment-505519486)?

erikgaal on 18 Jul 2019

As @erikgaal said, @Repins55 you need the latest Aerial beta for Catalina : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/download/v1.5.1beta10/Aerial.saver.zip

glouel on 18 Jul 2019

@glouel Thank you @erikgaal and @glouel. I am using the latest beta, but I am still unable to get into the Screensaver options. Very odd.

Repins55 on 19 Jul 2019

@Repins55 do you see the screensaver running in the preview ? Or do you have a blank screen there ?

Capture d’écran 2019-07-19 à 10 17 49

Can you clarify exactly what happens when you click the button below the preview ? Nothing ? Does the screensaver quit ? Please make sure you don't have 2 Aerial.saver installed. Would be nice to know also if it was the first time you installed Aerial or if you upgraded from Mojave to Catalina with Aerial already installed.

In order to help me debug this for you, I would suggest you open "Console.app" and filter (in the top right) with Aerial before clicking the button, and paste any output you see after clicking, it will show me whatever error you are facing.

glouel on 19 Jul 2019

@glouel When I navigate to the screensaver settings in the System Pref's. I can see the preview window just fine. When I click on the Options Button Nothing happens. Then the preview goes blank.
AerialConsole.pdf

Repins55 on 20 Jul 2019

@glouel When I navigate to the screensaver settings in the System Pref's. I can see the preview window just fine. When I click on the Options Button Nothing happens. Then the preview goes blank.
AerialConsole.pdf

According to that log, that's the crash I fixed in beta5.

I would highly suggest you remove Aerial files (look in both locations, see instructions here : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/blob/master/Documentation/Installation.md#uninstallation ), as it's very likely you are not running the latest beta. Then please reinstall beta10 : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/download/v1.5.1beta10/Aerial.saver.zip

glouel on 20 Jul 2019

👍1

@glouel @erikgaal Thank you so very much for all of your help. Deleting the files in all of the locations seems to have worked. After deleting the files I reinstalled the Latest beta. and voila....It is working. You guys rock!!!

Repins55 on 20 Jul 2019

@Repins55 happy to hear ! Enjoy !

glouel on 20 Jul 2019

Just updated to beta5, sadly still the isPreview bug is here, and probably the multiple monitor bug too.

2019-07-31 21:13:55.991 : <AerialView: 0x7fafc1415ce0> isPreview : true

One good news though, my bug report regarding this precise issue has moved today to "Possible fix identified - For an upcoming OS release", so... maybe beta6 ? 😅

The other bug reports haven't moved one inch.

glouel on 31 Jul 2019

👍1

macOS Catalina, Version 10.15 Beta (19A526h) - Aerial is working on all 3 monitors! 🎉

Kaspik on 6 Aug 2019

macOS Catalina, Version 10.15 Beta (19A526h) - Aerial is working on all 3 monitors! 🎉

Finally ! Didn't expect they'd fix that and not the isPreview bug ! isPreview is a flag that the screensaver gets to know if it runs in the tiny preview in System Preferences. We get it all the time in Catalina, I think the only drawback from this is that the silent update thing, if enabled, would be broken. Great news, updating top post, thanks for letting me know @Kaspik !

glouel on 6 Aug 2019

@glouel Interesting bug found today! All screens are showing the same video (expected), but every screen shows different (and mostly wrong) labels. 😄

Kaspik on 6 Aug 2019

@Kaspik that's... weird !

Can you give me a log maybe ? I'm wondering if they changed how each screen gets initialized, and it's throwing things off...

And maybe I'm tired, but I thought in mirroring mode I was only displaying the text on main screen before ? I really need to get a mini-DP -> DP adapter to check that out here.

glouel on 6 Aug 2019

For me, currently running Catalina Beta 19A526h. In my case for Viewing Mode, "independent" works, "mirror" works but the "spanned" option "mirrors" all displays.

For text display "independent" works. But "mirrored" and spanned" is showing the same bug as @Kaspik.
Hope that helps.

wmszeto on 8 Aug 2019

Couple questions: I use, under security privacy preference, log off after X minutes. When I wake the macbook pro I simply get a black screen and end up having to force shutdown the computer so it can restart fresh. Anyone else seeing this?

Also, when clicking the "update" button for the app in settings I get an error -- is that because there are no updates or because I'm not reaching the update server?

AsydRayn on 9 Aug 2019

Ok so works great on 3 thunderbolt displays, but still can't get it spanned. That might be a bug that's still there. Or is it a know bug that I missed?

solelo on 9 Aug 2019

@AsydRayn

Couple questions: I use, under security privacy preference, log off after X minutes. When I wake the macbook pro I simply get a black screen and end up having to force shutdown the computer so it can restart fresh. Anyone else seeing this?

Hmm nope, haven't. But logging off is probably a big issue because of sandboxing, I'm not sure we're allowed to run at all in that situation. A log would be helpful to see if Aerial starts at all in that situation (enable debug log in Advanced tab, and run once the way you described, then paste that content). With no user logged in, I have no idea what sandboxing does/what we are supposed to do.

Also, when clicking the "update" button for the app in settings I get an error -- is that because there are no updates or because I'm not reaching the update server?

Can you tell me what the error says ? As far as I know that's not broken.

@solelo

Ok so works great on 3 thunderbolt displays, but still can't get it spanned. That might be a bug that's still there. Or is it a know bug that I missed?

Multi monitor support in Catalina is still weird, it's on Apple's side as far as I know. Can you paste me an Aerial.log so I can have a look ? Also, does the preview of the spanned mode look right in the Displays tab of Aerial or not ?

My guess is the isPreview thing that they haven't fixed messes up the screen detection. I can maybe workaround that, still waiting on my mini DP adapter here to check it out.

glouel on 9 Aug 2019

@solelo & @Kaspik

finally got my mini DP cable, so it's exactly what I thought, the fact that each screen gets initialized with isPreviewwhile it shouldn't. I made a temporary workaround and everything should be back to working to normal (for multi monitor functionality, I mean !).

Please confirm it works for you : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/download/v1.5.1beta11/Aerial.saver.zip

My workaround ends up fixing some of the weird things (no auto updates, that weird double fade in at startup, etc) too which is nice for 1 display users too ;)

glouel on 9 Aug 2019

@glouel works like a charm now. I just updated and booooom. You my friend are a genius.

solelo on 10 Aug 2019

👍1

@AsydRayn
Hmm nope, haven't. But logging off is probably a big issue because of sandboxing, I'm not sure we're allowed to run at all in that situation. A log would be helpful to see if Aerial starts at all in that situation (enable debug log in Advanced tab, and run once the way you described, then paste that content). With no user logged in, I have no idea what sandboxing does/what we are supposed to do.

Hey @glouel sorry, maybe I wasn't clear, sorry about that. I'm not expecting it to operate when I"m logged out, I think the point I was trying to make, albeit poorly is that perhaps the screensaver is running at the time the logout period arrives and it's at that point that perhaps it locks thing. Under normal circumstances when that log out routine runs, it shuts down everything and maybe locks up if the screensaver routine is running. When I go to wake the computer in the morning, all I get is a black screen, mouse pointer and beachball. So maybe the routine is unable to stop the screensaver as it does for other apps. Hopes that's a bit more clear.

Also, when clicking the "update" button for the app in settings I get an error -- is that because there are no updates or because I'm not reaching the update server?

Here's the error message received when I click the automatic update button:

Desktop___Screen_Saver_and_About_macOS_10_15_compatibility___tvOS_13_videos_·_Issue__801_·_JohnCoates_Aerial

Can you tell me what the error says ? As far as I know that's not broken.

OK, was watching news and the screensaver kicked in. Then I got to onee and the screen was blank. I tried to wake and basically got a black screen...the time away wasn't enough to kick in the log out. This probably happned between 12:15-12:45am EDT. Here's the log, maybe you can tell or see what's going on:

12:44:35 AM : avInit1 (0.0, 0.0, 296.0, 184.0)
12:44:35 AM : AerialView setup init (V1.5.1beta11)
12:44:35 AM : Time Management initialized
12:44:35 AM : Display Detection initialized
12:44:35 AM : Display Detection
12:44:35 AM : 1 display(s) detected
12:44:35 AM : 1cm = 58.66141820384076 points
12:44:35 AM : npass: dict [__C.NSDeviceDescriptionKey(_rawValue: NSDeviceBitsPerSample): 8, __C.NSDeviceDescriptionKey(_rawValue: NSDeviceIsScreen): YES, __C.NSDeviceDescriptionKey(_rawValue: NSDeviceSize): NSSize: {1680, 1050}, __C.NSDeviceDescriptionKey(_rawValue: NSDeviceResolution): NSSize: {144, 144}, __C.NSDeviceDescriptionKey(_rawValue: NSScreenNumber): 69733568, __C.NSDeviceDescriptionKey(_rawValue: NSDeviceColorSpaceName): NSCalibratedRGBColorSpace]
12:44:35 AM : bottomLeftFrame (0.0, 0.0, 1680.0, 1050.0)
12:44:35 AM : src orig : (0.0, 0.0)
12:44:35 AM : left 0.0 below 0.0
12:44:35 AM : [id=69733568, width=1680, height=1050, bottomLeftFrame=(0.0, 0.0, 1680.0, 1050.0), topRightCorner=(1680.0, 1050.0), isMain=true, backingScaleFactor=2.0]
12:44:35 AM : (0.0, 0.0, 1680.0, 1050.0)
12:44:35 AM : Display Detection Done
12:44:35 AM : isPreview : true
12:44:35 AM : Using : nil
12:44:35 AM : no local player
12:44:35 AM : setupPlayerLayer
12:44:35 AM : setting up player layer with bounds/frame: (0.0, 0.0, 296.0, 184.0) / (0.0, 0.0, 296.0, 184.0)
12:44:35 AM : Using dot workaround for video driver corruption
12:44:35 AM : Manifest init
12:44:35 AM : app support exists
12:44:35 AM : No customvideos.json at : file:///Users/rel12561/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Application%20Support/Aerial/customvideos.json
12:44:35 AM : isManifestCached 10 true
12:44:35 AM : isManifestCached 11 true
12:44:35 AM : isManifestCached 12 true
12:44:35 AM : 2019-08-09
12:44:35 AM : Interval : Optional(-89075.54646897316)
12:44:35 AM : No need to check for new videos
12:44:35 AM : Manifests files were not loaded in class
12:44:35 AM : Files were not already loaded in memory
12:44:35 AM : Manifests are cached on disk, loading
12:44:35 AM : Poi Strings Provider initialized
12:44:35 AM : Defaulting to bundle
12:44:35 AM : path : /Users/rel12561/Library/Screen Savers/Aerial.saver/Contents/Resources/en.json
12:44:35 AM : Community JSON : 73 entries
12:44:35 AM : No local or user cache exists, using ~/Library/Application Support/Aerial
12:44:35 AM : cache to be used : Optional("/Users/rel12561/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Application Support/Aerial")
12:44:36 AM : Could not determine duration, video is not cached in any format
12:44:36 AM : Could not determine duration, video is not cached in any format
12:44:36 AM : Could not determine duration, video is not cached in any format
12:44:36 AM : Could not determine duration, video is not cached in any format
12:44:36 AM : Could not determine duration, video is not cached in any format
12:44:36 AM : Could not determine duration, video is not cached in any format
12:44:36 AM : Could not determine duration, video is not cached in any format
12:44:36 AM : Could not determine duration, video is not cached in any format
12:44:36 AM : Total videos processed : 73 callbacks : 0
12:44:36 AM : Setting player for all player layers in []
12:44:36 AM : initvideocache
12:44:36 AM : cached video file with length: 180460150
12:44:36 AM : playing video (OFFLINE MODE) : file:///Users/rel12561/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Application%20Support/Aerial/comp_N013_C004_PS_v01_HDR_PS_20180925_F1970F7193_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov
12:44:36 AM : observing current item >
12:44:36 AM : observeValue Optional("readyForDisplay")
12:44:36 AM : AssetLoaderDelegate deinit
12:44:36 AM : backing change 2.0 isDisabled: false
12:44:36 AM : observeValue Optional("readyForDisplay")
12:44:36 AM : observeValue Optional("rate")
12:44:36 AM : video started playing
12:44:36 AM : startAnimation
12:44:36 AM : observeValue Optional("rate")
12:44:36 AM : video started playing
12:44:40 AM : stopAnimation
12:44:40 AM : observeValue Optional("rate")
12:44:40 AM : pwc init2
12:44:40 AM : Callback after manifest loading
12:44:40 AM : Looking for outdated files
12:44:40 AM : comp_A083_C002_1130KZ_v04_HDR_PS_FINAL_20180725_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_C004_C003_PS_v01_HDR_PS_20180925_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_L012_C002_PS_v01_HDR_PS_20180925_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : DB_D011_C009_4K_HDR_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_LA_A006_C004_v01_HDR_FINAL_PS_20180730_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_LA_A006_C008_PSNK_ALL_LOGOS_v10_HDR_PS_FINAL_20180801_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_LA_A011_C003_DGRN_LNFIX_STAB_v57_HDR_PS_20181002_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_L010_C006_PS_v01_HDR_PS_20180925_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_H004_C007_PS_v02_HDR_PS_20180925_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_H007_C003_PS_v01_HDR_PS_20180925_HDR_4K_tuned.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_CH_C002_C005_PSNK_v05_HDR_FINAL_20180709_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_N008_C009_PS_v01_HDR_PS_20180925_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_GMT329_117NC_401C_1037_IRELAND_TO_ASIA_v48_HDR_PS_FINAL_20180725_F0F6300_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_GL_G002_C002_PSNK_v03_HDR_PS_20180925_HDR_4K_tuned.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_C001_C005_PS_v01_HDR_PS_20180925_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_A105_C003_0212CT_FLARE_v10_HDR_PS_FINAL_20180711_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_GMT307_136NC_134K_8277_NY_NIGHT_01_v25_HDR_PS_20180907_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_N008_C003_PS_v01_HDR_PS_20180925_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_GMT110_112NC_364D_1054_AURORA_ANTARTICA__COMP_FINAL_v34_PS_HDR_20181107_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_A001_C004_1207W5_v23_HDR_FINAL_20180706_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_A006_C003_1219EE_CC_v01_HDR_PS_FINAL_20180710_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_DB_D011_C010_PSNK_DENOISE_v19_HDR_PS_20180914_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_DB_D001_C001_PSNK_v06_HDR_PS_20180824_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_GMT026_363A_103NC_E1027_KOREA_JAPAN_NIGHT_v18_HDR_PS_20180907_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_A012_C014_1223PT_v53_HDR_PS_FINAL_20180710_F0F8700_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_H012_C009_PS_v01_HDR_PS_20180925_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_HK_H004_C001_PSNK_DENOISE_v14_HDR_PS_FINAL_20180731_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_A009_C001_010181A_v09_HDR_PS_FINAL_20180725_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_CH_C007_C004_PSNK_v02_HDR_FINAL_20180709_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_A114_C001_0305OT_v10_HDR_FINAL_22062018_Bert_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_N013_C004_PS_v01_HDR_PS_20180925_F1970F7193_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_A015_C018_0128ZS_v03_HDR_PS_FINAL_20180710_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_HK_H004_C008_PSNK_v19_HDR_PS_20180914_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_CH_C007_C011_PSNK_v02_HDR_FINAL_20180709_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_A008_C007_011550_CC_v01_HDR_PS_FINAL_20180710_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_LA_A005_C009_PSNK_ALT_v09_HDR_PS_20180914_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_L004_C011_PS_v01_HDR_PS_20180925_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_LW_L001_C003__PSNK_DENOISE_v04_HDR_PS_FINAL_20180803_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_GMT314_139M_170NC_NORTH_AMERICA_AURORA__COMP_v22_HDR_20181206_v12CC_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_A108_C001_v09_HDR_PS_FINAL_22062018_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_GL_G010_C006_PSNK_NOSUN_v12_HDR_FINAL_20180709_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_DB_D001_C005_COMP_PSNK_v12_HDR_PS_20180912_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_1223LV_FLARE_v21_HDR_PS_FINAL_20180710_F0F5700_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_DB_D008_C010_PSNK_v21_HDR_PS_20180914_F0F16157_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_LA_A009_C009_PSNK_v02_HDR_FINAL_20180709_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_DB_D002_C003_PSNK_v04_HDR_PS_20180914_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_GMT312_162NC_139M_1041_AFRICA_NIGHT_v14_HDR_FINAL_20180706_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : HK_H004_C013_4K_HDR_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_HK_H004_C010_PSNK_v08_HDR_PS_20181009_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_A007_C017_01156B_v02_HDR_PS_20180925_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_HK_B005_C011_PSNK_v16_HDR_PS_20180914_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_LW_L001_C006_PSNK_DENOISE_v02_HDR_FINAL_20180709_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_GMT306_139NC_139J_3066_CALI_TO_VEGAS_v08_HDR_PS_20180824_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_C003_C003_PS_v01_HDR_PS_20180925_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_A013_C012_0122D6_CC_v01_HDR_PS_FINAL_20180710_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_L007_C007_PS_v01_HDR_PS_20180925_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_N003_C006_PS_v01_HDR_PS_20180925_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_GL_G004_C010_PSNK_v04_HDR_FINAL_20180709_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_GMT329_113NC_396B_1105_CHINA_v04_HDR_FINAL_20180706_F900F2700_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_GMT329_113NC_396B_1105_ITALY_TO_ASIA_v03_HDR_PS_20180824_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_H005_C012_PS_v01_HDR_PS_20180925_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_A103_C002_0205DG_v12_HDR_FINAL_20180706_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_LA_A008_C004_ALTB_ED_FROM_FLAME_RETIME_v46_HDR_PS_20180917_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_GMT308_139K_142NC_CARIBBEAN_DAY_v09_HDR_PS_FINAL_22062018_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : comp_H004_C009_PS_v01_HDR_PS_20180925_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov NOT FOUND in manifest
12:44:40 AM : 65 old files found
12:44:41 AM : Aerial control panel V1.5.1beta11
12:44:41 AM : Cache size : 39.05 GB
12:44:42 AM : cvcinit2
12:44:42 AM : cvcawake
12:44:42 AM : wdl

AsydRayn on 10 Aug 2019

@AsydRayn
Hmm nope, haven't. But logging off is probably a big issue because of sandboxing, I'm not sure we're allowed to run at all in that situation. A log would be helpful to see if Aerial starts at all in that situation (enable debug log in Advanced tab, and run once the way you described, then paste that content). With no user logged in, I have no idea what sandboxing does/what we are supposed to do.

Hey @glouel sorry, maybe I wasn't clear, sorry about that.

Hey, no worries, my previous post was mostly me thinking out loud and rambling about what could be happening, I should have given you a clearer answer so, sorry about that !

I'm not expecting it to operate when I"m logged out, I think the point I was trying to make, albeit poorly is that perhaps the screensaver is running at the time the logout period arrives and it's at that point that perhaps it locks thing. Under normal circumstances when that log out routine runs, it shuts down everything and maybe locks up if the screensaver routine is running. When I go to wake the computer in the morning, all I get is a black screen, mouse pointer and beachball. So maybe the routine is unable to stop the screensaver as it does for other apps. Hopes that's a bit more clear.

Ok I get what you see, I'll answer more in depth below.

Also, when clicking the "update" button for the app in settings I get an error -- is that because there are no updates or because I'm not reaching the update server?

Here's the error message received when I click the automatic update button:

This should work fine, I haven't had any other reports of it not working (and a double check here works ok).

So this might be some firewall/proxy thing. Are you behind some kind of firewall or proxy, either personal (like Little Snitch) or corporate ? You may need to set some rules.

FYI the auto-update tries to reach this url to check for updates:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/master/beta-appcast.xml
(without beta- if you disable beta updates)

After that it gets the file directly from this repository (you can see the link in the xml file). Those are the only two network interactions the auto update thing does.

Can you tell me what the error says ? As far as I know that's not broken.

OK, was watching news and the screensaver kicked in. Then I got to onee and the screen was blank. I tried to wake and basically got a black screen...the time away wasn't enough to kick in the log out. This probably happned between 12:15-12:45am EDT. Here's the log, maybe you can tell or see what's going on:

12:44:35 AM : avInit1 (0.0, 0.0, 296.0, 184.0)
12:44:35 AM : AerialView setup init (V1.5.1beta11)

So that's the wrong part of the log, that shows you opening the control panel. The issue is probably just before before this. Can you paste me what comes before that ? Thanks !

Now back to the whole thing, just to try and replicate, can you tell me:

After how long did you set the screen saver to start (that's in desktop & screensavers, bottom left). Also, do you usually let it get there on it's own, or start the screensaver yourself (with a hot corner for example) ?
In Power Savings (or something like that, the one with a lightbulb icon, bottom row), what time is set for shutdown screen after (on top) ?
Now the log off thing, are you talking about this setting (sorry about the french but that should tell you what I'm talking about):

Capture d’écran 2019-08-10 à 12 26 46

If so I had it wrong, this just ask for your password again but your user is still running in the background with your apps, so from the screensaver point of view, that should be totally fine (I have it set to 5 mins without issues here). If you're talking about another setting please let me know where to find it!

So, assuming you were talking about that setting, this is probably completely unrelated. Can you check the instructions in this post : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/issues/681#issuecomment-443729062 (the top part) to look for a crash log in Console ? This should tell me more about what happened. Thanks !

It's pretty rare to see a crash, most of the time it's linked to some weird interaction with a third party utility in general (things that modify the keyboard/may steal focus like Little Snitch) so if you are running one of these, can you let me know ? Thanks !

glouel on 10 Aug 2019

@glouel thanks and appreciate your attentiveness -- now lets see if I can answer your questions without making another long post:

Yes, I do use Little Snitch and I will check that to see what, if anything might be up.
The log I pasted was all that was there, I just clicked copy to clipboard, after clicking show logs. But here's the larger file --
AerialLog.txt
Screensaver is set to start after two minutes of inactivity. I never use hot corners to start the saver, but I do have it setup for hot corners.
Energy Save (power saver) I have it set to turn off display after 15 minutes when attached to Power adapter and one minute on battery power.
As for the the log off thing, no, not talking about what you have circled, but you are in the right location. If you click the padlock in the lower left and then the Avancé button on the right you will see the setting I use. Now, my settings for the part you have circled is identical.
My console doesn't seem to have anything and doesn't look like the pic you have there. Maybe changed in catalina or i'm not opening the correct console.

AsydRayn on 10 Aug 2019

@glouel thanks and appreciate your attentiveness -- now lets see if I can answer your questions without making another long post:

Yes, I do use Little Snitch and I will check that to see what, if anything might be up.

You probably need to make a rule for Aerial then as you are probably filtering outgoing TCP connections by default. Someone had that problem here : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/issues/814#issuecomment-511051452

It's quite possible that the crash is due to that filtering too, they had to press space to dismiss Little Snitch I think when it tried to auto update. and couldn't leave the screensaver.

The log I pasted was all that was there, I just clicked copy to clipboard, after clicking show logs. But here's the larger file --
AerialLog.txt

Ok thanks ! The show log button only shows the latest stuff since you launched the control panel (not super obvious). I tried to backtrack a bit but didn't found much, possibly an abrupt end at 00:07 your time.

Screensaver is set to start after two minutes of inactivity. I never use hot corners to start the saver, but I do have it setup for hot corners.

Energy Save (power saver) I have it set to turn off display after 15 minutes when attached to Power adapter and one minute on battery power.

Ok.

As for the the log off thing, no, not talking about what you have circled, but you are in the right location. If you click the padlock in the lower left and then the Avancé button on the right you will see the setting I use. Now, my settings for the part you have circled is identical.

Ha, never knew that was there ! Which time did you set here ? I'm mostly wondering if it's higher than the display off you set or not (I'm 90% sure System kills the screensaver when the screen is off). Trying to get the sequence of events to get a better picture of what might be happening.

My console doesn't seem to have anything and doesn't look like the pic you have there. Maybe changed in catalina or i'm not opening the correct console.

It did change yes ! So "console.app", it looks like this now:
Capture d’écran 2019-08-10 à 18 22 06

It's called "blocking report" in french, the one with the warning sign. Apparently these get pruned frequently.

Let me know if you see anything there and if making the rule in Little Snitch fixed the crash. If not I'll try and replicate your settings here. Thanks !

glouel on 10 Aug 2019

Nothing in console that I can see...lots of Touchbar hiccups though.
Changed some settings in Snitch and that seems to have fixed the check for update issue:
As for that new setting that you've just find that's hidden under "advanced" I originally had it set to 120 minutes, but reduced it to 45 minutes for testing purposes.

I think I've responded to everything asked, if not, let me know. Je profite beaucoup de cet économiseur d'écran.

AsydRayn on 10 Aug 2019

Nothing in console that I can see...lots of Touchbar hiccups though.

Ok so maybe it's not Aerial that crashes, guess we'll see.

Changed some settings in Snitch and that seems to have fixed the check for update issue:

Perfect !

As for that new setting that you've just find that's hidden under "advanced" I originally had it set to 120 minutes, but reduced it to 45 minutes for testing purposes.

Ok great, so it was higher. I'll give it a shot when I have a sec and let you know if I can reproduce. Let me know if you still see the crash after changing your Little Snitch settings, it's quite possible it was linked.

I think I've responded to everything asked, if not, let me know. Je profite beaucoup de cet économiseur d'écran.

You did ! Glad you enjoy it, merci !

glouel on 10 Aug 2019

So it took them 6 betas but behold:

2019-08-19 20:03:18.992 : <AerialView: 0x7fca06d11e90> isPreview : false

Finally, they fixed the isPreview bug for which I had introduced a workaround in Aerial beta 11 ;) No new Xcode and nothing new about the other bugs it seems.

glouel on 19 Aug 2019

So after weeks without problems even with HDR enabled, I updated to latest macOS beta today. Then screensaver started, and everything went wrong... after couple of mins with super-freezing iMac, I ended up with hard-restart and then disabling HDR videos. This was Activity Monitor before I killed Mac, but I believe HDR is broken again. 😂

Screenshot 2019-08-20 at 15 38 36

Kaspik on 20 Aug 2019

So after weeks without problems even with HDR enabled, I updated to latest macOS beta today. Then screensaver started, and everything went wrong... after couple of mins with super-freezing iMac, I ended up with hard-restart and then disabling HDR videos. This was Activity Monitor before I killed Mac, but I believe HDR is broken again. 😂

That's... wow ! I had it running for a while in beta6 and weirdly enough, didn't experience any issue here with HDR (after having so many in previous betas !). kernel_task and swift (?!!!) makes me think this is probably a bad driver for your iMac in beta6.

Which GPU do you have ? I do have this "AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4 Go" on my late 2015 iMac FYI.

glouel on 20 Aug 2019

I didn't have latest beta version of Aerial because the "auto-update" didn't update - it downloaded, restarted, then found new version again. I needed to download manually and update manually.
Can try with latest beta. :)

I have AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4on Late 2014 iMac.

Two questions:

if I have all videos downloaded locally, and then turn on HDR - will they re-download for supported? Because turning it on doesn't show download indicator or anything.
if I have all videos downloaded locally, and then turn off HDR - will the app correctly not start HDR video, even if it's downloaded already?

Kaspik on 20 Aug 2019

I didn't have latest beta version of Aerial because the "auto-update" didn't update - it downloaded, restarted, then found new version again. I needed to download manually and update manually.

Auto update was broken in beta10 and earlier yeah, sorry about that !

Can try with latest beta. :)

Please do, I doubt this will fix the issue but you never know !

I have AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4on Late 2014 iMac.

Ok thanks!

if I have all videos downloaded locally, and then turn on HDR - will they re-download for supported?

if I have all videos downloaded locally, and then turn of HDR - will the app correctly not start HDR video, even if it's downloaded already?

So unlike what happens with HEVC/H.264, Aerial will never substitute HDR for non HDR or the other way around. I do treat it as exclusive and never substitute, because it's too much of a mess.

If you select HDR, and you don't have the HDR versions of those videos, they will be streamed/redownloaded (based on your settings).

If you unselect HDR, and you don't have the "regular" versions of those videos, again, those will be streamed/redownloaded.

Do bear in mind that you need to restart Aerial settings to see the video list update itself... But if you start the screensaver your settings will be applied even if you don't restart the syspref panel. Make sense ?

glouel on 20 Aug 2019

Do bear in mind that you need to restart Aerial settings to see the video list update itself... But if you start the screensaver your settings will be applied even if you don't restart the syspref panel. Make sense ?

Is this true for all cases? If I remove local cached videos, the list doesn't update even when switching between tabs until I restart the settings panel. But it's probably allright.

Btw. without HDR selected, my screensaver started on timer, and I ended up with restart iMac again because it was so frozen that I wasn't able to log in.... 😂 (videos are all downloaded)
Also seeing weird thing.

Tab Cache - Show in Finder - opens folder default by Aerial - empty
Tab Advanced - Show Logs file in Finder - opens folder default by Aerial with Logs file (and with videos etc)
Even tho the Cache folder is empty, all videos are (based on the list) downloaded
Huh?

Screenshot 2019-08-20 at 16 33 00
Screenshot 2019-08-20 at 16 34 16

Here is the log if it helps: AerialLog

Kaspik on 20 Aug 2019

Do bear in mind that you need to restart Aerial settings to see the video list update itself... But if you start the screensaver your settings will be applied even if you don't restart the syspref panel. Make sense ?

Is this true for all cases? If I remove local cached videos, the list doesn't update even when switching between tabs until I restart the settings panel. But it's probably allright.

Yes ! The list is not dynamic, Aerial only look for those files at startup. Restarting syspref, or starting the real screensaver will update the list internally.

Btw. without HDR selected, my screensaver started on timer, and I ended up with restart iMac again because it was so frozen that I wasn't able to log in.... 😂 (videos are all downloaded)

Damn. Are you saying it crawled while playing regular non HDR videos ??

Also seeing weird thing.

Tab Cache - Show in Finder - opens folder default by Aerial - empty

Tab Advanced - Show Logs file in Finder - opens folder default by Aerial with Logs file (and with videos etc)

Even tho the Cache folder is empty, all videos are (based on the list) downloaded
Huh?

It's still a bit of a mess but to clarify, the advanced folder is in "Application Support" in the container, this one will always store your Aerial.log, jsons, and newly streamed/downloaded videos.

The cache folder in Catalina can be anything, it can be outside the container (but will only work readonly, on a local disk). So Aerial can't write there, but can still look for your videos there. Aerial will look in both locations for the file. Some people want to move their files outside the container, so they can use that folder and set it to what they want.

In your case, hit the reset to default for cache, it will set cache to Application Support if I remember correctly (you may have to remove the Caches folder manually). In any case, it just works. The fact that you have the empty caches folder is an artifact of previous betas, sorry about that !

glouel on 20 Aug 2019

Btw. without HDR selected, my screensaver started on timer, and I ended up with restart iMac again because it was so frozen that I wasn't able to log in.... 😂 (videos are all downloaded)

Damn. Are you saying it crawled while playing regular non HDR videos ??

Found the issue completely unrelated to Aerial - because it happened multiple times again without Aerial running. Found it's doing previous beta of XCode, so currently downloading the new one from yesterday.... LOL. Apple never required new XCode + new macOS, it's really tightened up together this year.

Kaspik on 20 Aug 2019

Btw. without HDR selected, my screensaver started on timer, and I ended up with restart iMac again because it was so frozen that I wasn't able to log in.... 😂 (videos are all downloaded)

Damn. Are you saying it crawled while playing regular non HDR videos ??

Found the issue completely unrelated to Aerial - because it happened multiple times again without Aerial running. Found it's doing previous beta of XCode, so currently downloading the new one from yesterday.... LOL. Apple never required new XCode + new macOS, it's really tightened up together this year.

Ha, good to hear you fixed it ! And indeed this beta cycle this year is probably the worst in years. Swift UI on device was unusable on beta6/7 until Xcode beta6 finally came out! So many things are just shaky this year with the new stuff especially.

glouel on 20 Aug 2019

Woohoo 🎉 I've been chasing that signing bug for about a year now, glad it's finally fixed ! And we'll have notarization on top now.

Hi @glouel (I'm interloping from the issue on my repo from a couple days ago), would you mind sharing how you got the saver to be signed? I'm currently using the "make a pkg" workaround for my screensaver, but I wonder if that won't work in Catalina. Besides, I'd rather just distribute the saver itself.

amiantos on 21 Aug 2019

Hi @glouel (I'm interloping from the issue on my repo from a couple days ago), would you mind sharing how you got the saver to be signed? I'm currently using the "make a pkg" workaround for my screensaver, but I wonder if that won't work in Catalina. Besides, I'd rather just distribute the saver itself.

Wooops, very sorry @amiantos somehow I didn't see your message 🥺

So in general I followed this but there are some caveats : https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/notarizing_your_app_before_distribution/customizing_the_notarization_workflow#3087734

First thing to remember is to make sure you throughly read the app specific password part, once that's done, it's easy from there.

So first step, you build with the Archive command in Xcode, then pick "Distribute" on the right column, then leave as is, then pick a folder, that will export your .saver file. In my case in a bunch of subfolders (never found why, if you know how to remove them let me know :)).

Then it's fairly easy, I've made a notarize.sh script:

/usr/bin/ditto -c -k --keepParent "Aerial.saver" "Aerial.zip"

# Notarize signed install
xcrun altool --notarize-app --asc-provider "GuillaumeLouelBlabla" --primary-bundle-id "com.glouel.Aerial.zip" -u [email protected] -p "@keychain:AC_PASSWORD" -f Aerial.zip

What you need to do first is do a zip of the file (I don't remember why but you must use ditto I think and these flags for some reason), then send that zip to be notarized (the files inside the zip are notarized, not the zip). If all works ok you get an email like that a couple of minutes later from Apple :

Dear Guillaume,
Your Mac software has been notarized. You can now export this software and distribute it directly to users.

Now extra fun part, you can staple the notarization to the zip, so your users can open it even offline, I use this :

#!/bin/bash

# Staple package with receipt

xcrun stapler staple "Aerial.saver"

rm "Aerial.zip"

/usr/bin/ditto -c -k --keepParent "Aerial.saver" "Aerial.saver.zip"

As you can see, you staple the .saver, then rezip it properly. That's how I got it to work in the end, if you have some issue with it please let me know and I'll try not to ignore you next time, super sorry again !

glouel on 11 Sep 2019

So, here's beta12 : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/download/v1.5.1beta12/Aerial.saver.zip

One important fix for Catalina, I fixed Night Shift detection which now works again ! I also fixed a bug for High Sierra and previous versions of macOS with textfields, but forgot to add again the OS detection on that part of the code. So beta12 shipped with the workaround activated for everyone. What I'm talking about is on fields like the extra message in the Text panel, you'll have to use the "..." button to edit the field. Will fix for next build.

I think I might release this soonish as 1.5.1, beta 11 fixed some ugly stuff in multi monitor setups that may include some crashes from 1.5.0 (still unsure about what exactly happened). This is probably as good as it will get for Catalina though regarding missing features.

glouel on 11 Sep 2019

Just a heads up, tvOS 13 is out. It looks like this is the same build as the latest beta (11 ?), I still don't see any of the new videos on that machine. I also checked if the tvOS 12 JSON changed, but nothing.

Will see if things change by tomorrow. If anyone spots anything, let me know !

Edit : Not exactly the same build, I did remove the beta profile and got the new build, yet no changes. In the UI you still only can pick "Aerial" as a screensaver, and nothing else, and right now it keeps showing the old videos...

Edit2 : Xcode 11.1 GM is out with yet another build (ends with a 9, release ends with a 6), same thing, only Aerial shows there (and screensavers don't work in simulator in tvOS 13).

Edit3 : Still nothing, people complain on twitter that it's not showing for them so I'm not alone. Someone pinged applesupport who replied with this link : https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208992

There's a (tiny) sneak peak, and they might keep the name "Aerial" after all for those underwater seascapes. Their reply is completely ignoring the issue though ! tvOS 12 JSON still the same in any case.

glouel on 24 Sep 2019

Just a heads up, tvOS 13 is out. It looks like this is the same build as the latest beta (11 ?), I still don't see any of the new videos on that machine. I also checked if the tvOS 12 JSON changed, but nothing.

Will see if things change by tomorrow. If anyone spots anything, let me know !

You beat me to it haha! I really can't wait to see these ocean screensavers

alextfife on 24 Sep 2019

FWIW: I just heard from someone in a Slack that I'm part of that they saw at least one of the new underwater screensavers.

holgr on 25 Sep 2019

@holgr yep, got the url from Benjamin Mayo (many thanks to him !), working on update for later today !

glouel on 25 Sep 2019

🎉1

Yep saw an underwater screenssavre video on tvOS 13, with mammals.. Have it setup to download daily. So hopefully a new one tomorrow

jerome71 on 25 Sep 2019

@glouel Nice, I missed his tweet. :-)

holgr on 25 Sep 2019

You can check the new videos here in the meantime if curious :

https://9to5mac.com/2019/09/25/apple-tv-underwater-screensavers/

glouel on 25 Sep 2019

Build with tvOS 13 videos : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/download/v1.5.1beta13/Aerial.saver.zip

The new 10 underwater seascapes are in a Sea group, and there are 5 new Space videos. They look gorgeous so enjoy !

Let me know if you see any issue, was a bit of a rush release but I think I got it mostly right ;)

glouel on 25 Sep 2019

Weird, I download and unzip and click to install and its still showing beta 12. Auto update shows there's an update and when I click install it fails as well.

AsydRayn on 26 Sep 2019

Weird, I download and unzip and click to install and its still showing beta 12. Auto update shows there's an update and when I click install it fails as well.

That's bad, let me double check stuff here and I'll get back to you !

Edit: Oh for $!$$é"é)% sake ! Just did check the auto update, it looks like there's something new in Catalina Sandboxing :

Sandboxed application with pid 14461 attempted to lookup App:"Préférences Système"/"system preferences"/"com.apple.systempreferences" 14440/0x0:0x377377 sprf1010 sess=100019 but was denied due to sandboxing.

I'm getting irritated at that point ! I posted about it here but this may not be fixable if this is what I think it is : https://github.com/sparkle-project/Sparkle/issues/1476#issue-498789983

Manual install does work however here, I'll check on another machine. When you unzip, you absolutely need to close down System Preferences first, if you don't it won't reload the plugin properly and will still show beta12 and generally malfunction.

You need to restart System Preferences to get it to load the latest build (it keeps the UI ressources in memory, it's super weird and a long standing bug with macOS Swift screensavers). Please let me know if you can try the manual update with SysPref closed down, that should work.

glouel on 26 Sep 2019

The new 10 underwater seascapes are in a Sea group, and there are 5 new Space videos. They look gorgeous so enjoy !

Let me know if you see any issue, was a bit of a rush release but I think I got it mostly right ;)

Location information only shows me what looks like the file name. Or is it not the actual location of the video? Besides that, Yes they look gorgeous, my favourite feature of TVos 13.

Duckbilled on 26 Sep 2019

me know if you see any issue, was a bit of a rush release but I think I got it m

Location information only shows me what looks like the file name. Or is it not the actual location of the video?

Can confirm, I'm fixing this right now sorry :)

glouel on 26 Sep 2019

🎉1

@glouel No worries, I saw the screensaver before, but wanted to have the videos downloaded (using savehollywood). Yesterday when searching for the new videos I couldn't find a page without a link to this one and thought "Okay then, I'll give it a try". Should've done that earlier, Thanks!

Duckbilled on 26 Sep 2019

@Uffje and all, I just pushed version 1.6.0 which includes fix for the bug you saw and a few others.

I've kept this in beta for a while but it's more than time to have a stable release. One massive change I made is to the cache UI to clarify what is now happening :

Capture d’écran 2019-09-26 à 15 23 45

I think this makes the situation clearer about the fact that we now have one mandatory cache location, and one, optional, location that can be used to try and workaround the Catalina limitations. This includes a new button to go to the Application Support directory. Let me know how that version goes for all of you.

glouel on 26 Sep 2019

Ok, so I just saw 1.6.0 was available and installed it.

I am running Mojave, not Catalina.

Aerial says that my cache is 0.01 GB. Previously it was many, many GB.

Did the old cache get deleted when I installed 1.6.0?

I have Time Machine and Clone backups. Can I get the old cache back and copy them to the new location? Or do I just have to let everything re-download?

tjluoma on 26 Sep 2019

Ok, so I just saw 1.6.0 was available and installed it.

I am running Mojave, not Catalina.

Aerial says that my cache is 0.01 GB. Previously it was many, many GB.

Did the old cache get deleted when I installed 1.6.0?

I have Time Machine and Clone backups. Can I get the old cache back and copy them to the new location? Or do I just have to let everything re-download?

Nope it wasn't. Please go to this page :

Capture d’écran 2019-09-26 à 15 23 45

Do you see any path on the optional one ? You may need to set again the location of that cache. It's likely you were using either /Library/Caches/Aerial or ~/Library/Caches/Aerial.

To know if your videos are cached, the main list shows a + sign when a video is downloadable.

glouel on 26 Sep 2019

It shows ~/Library/Application Support/Aerial/

There's nothing at ~/Library/Caches/Aerial/

Aha! There's 19GB in /Library/Caches/Aerial

So… do I just move/copy the .mov files from there to ~/Library/Application Support/Aerial/?

Thanks!

tjluoma on 26 Sep 2019

I would recommend you do, yes ! That's the best solution.

The change was made so the files don't get wiped when you install Catalina (as they were for me).

glouel on 26 Sep 2019

@glouel, I know this may have been asked/suggested previously, but what are the chances you can detect an old/invalid path(because of Catalina), and display a notice to move files?

dVIAN13 on 26 Sep 2019

@glouel, I know this may have been asked/suggested previously, but what are the chances you can detect an old/invalid path(because of Catalina), and display a notice to move files?

I probably should have done this, yes. Previously Aerial will try to find a path if it exists, I did disable that though as part of the changes, which may not have been the best idea. I may push a quick update, let me check.

glouel on 26 Sep 2019

OK, one last (I think) question.

/Library/Caches/Aerial now has these files/folders:

TVIdleScreenStrings.bundle/  
backups/  
entries.json  
resources.tar  
tvos10.json  
tvos11.json

Should I move any of these files as well, or should I just delete them?

tjluoma on 26 Sep 2019

@tjluoma delete the whole Aerial folder and you are done. Sorry about that.

Edit: @dVIAN13 Ok so unlike what I said, the detection WAS here. But it was bugged, it did detect correctly ~/Library/Caches/Aerial but not /Library/Caches/Aerial. I'll push a 1.6.0a right now, super sorry again. Thankfully I haven't updated the appcast yet so will do it with the fixed version.

glouel on 26 Sep 2019

No worries. I'm extremely grateful for this project that you've clearly devoted a lot of time to, simply for the enjoyment of others, including working around some fairly restrictive changes to macOS.

Would hardly seem fair to get upset you about it not working exactly the way I'd like 100% of the time… (although, sadly, I realize there are many people on the Internet who don't seem to grasp that concept).

tjluoma on 26 Sep 2019

❤1

@dVIAN13 : fixed version here : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/download/v1.6.0a/Aerial.saver.zip

The update is also now available for everyone with auto updates working (so not on Catalina beta9 ;)). Brew update coming soon.

glouel on 26 Sep 2019

Thank you @glouel !! great work, as always!

dVIAN13 on 26 Sep 2019

Running 1.6.0a on 10.15 beta 10 (19A578c) and I have "Show with clock" enabled
I'm finding two issues:

The time on the clock stops updating
I'm often unable to interrupt the screensaver no matter what keys I hit. The only way to get back in to my system is to close the display clamshell and reopen it.

potzer111 on 1 Oct 2019

Hi @potzer111

Running 1.6.0a on 10.15 beta 10 (19A578c) and I have "Show with clock" enabled
I'm finding two issues:

The time on the clock stops updating

Like, all of a sudden, it works THEN not works ? Or never works at all ? I assume you have the clock showing at all times then. I'll change my setting to that and let you know if I see anything.

I'm often unable to interrupt the screensaver no matter what keys I hit. The only way to get back in to my system is to close the display clamshell and reopen it.

I would suggest disabling auto updates for this one (they don't work anyway because of Catalina, again, trying to fix that with the Sparkle people but we don't have a lot of luck so far), this might be the cause.

1.6.1 is out also.

glouel on 1 Oct 2019

The time on the clock stops updating
Like, all of a sudden, it works THEN not works ? Or never works at all ? I assume you have the clock showing at all times then. I'll change my setting to that and let you know if I see --anything.

—
It’s when I step away for a bit. Right now it’s behaving.

I'm often unable to interrupt the screensaver no matter what keys I hit. The only way to get back in to my system is to close the display clamshell and reopen it.
I would suggest disabling auto updates for this one (they don't work anyway because of Catalina, again, trying to fix that with the Sparkle people but we don't have a lot of luck so far), this might be the cause.

1.6.1 is out also.

—
Just disabled auto updates. We’ll see what happens.
I was unable to figure out how to a download of the Aerial.saver file for the new version.
What the heck is a Sparkle person?

Cheers!
… Jsn

potzer111 on 1 Oct 2019

@potzer111 download here : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/download/v1.6.1/Aerial.saver.zip

I always put the link to the latest version in the first post on this thread if you are looking for it.

Then double click the .saver file. It will install.

Sparkle is the name of the auto-updater we are using ;) More info here if you are curious : https://sparkle-project.org

glouel on 1 Oct 2019

Installed. Thanks!

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 1, 2019, at 12:16, Guillaume Louel notifications@github.com wrote:

@potzer111 download here : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/download/v1.6.1/Aerial.saver.zip

I always put the link in the first post on this thread if you are looking for it.

Then double click the .saver file. It will install.

Sparkle is the name of the auto-updater we are using ;) More info here if you are curious : https://sparkle-project.org

—
You are receiving this because you were mentioned.
Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

potzer111 on 1 Oct 2019

I'm often unable to interrupt the screensaver no matter what keys I hit. The only way to get back in to my system is to close the display clamshell and reopen it.

I came here to report the same thing but with 1.5.0. When this happens, I can get the password prompt by pressing the Power button on my keyboard. Will see if the same issue occurs under 1.6.1.

fongd on 2 Oct 2019

I came here to report the same thing but with 1.5.0. When this happens, I can get the password prompt by pressing the Power button on my keyboard. Will see if the same issue occurs under 1.6.1.

@fongd are you using Catalina or Mojave ?

And are you using a firewall like little snitch ?

Can you disable auto updates and let me know if that fixes it or not ?

Thanks

glouel on 2 Oct 2019

Sorry, forgot this was a 10.15 thread. The behaviour I was replying to happens under 10.14.6. Little Snitch is installed but there don't seem to be any blocked connections reported.

fongd on 2 Oct 2019

Sorry, forgot this was a 10.15 thread. The behaviour I was replying to happens under 10.14.6. Little Snitch is installed but there don't seem to be any blocked connections reported.

No worries !

Little Snitch may have a rule blocking raw.githubusercontent.com (or not allowing Aerial to connect to the internet, depending on how you configure it). I would strongly suggest checking that. Auto update checks this file on this repository : https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/master/appcast.xml to know when a new update is up.

What happens is that it wakes up Little Snitch in the background and it steals the focus from the screensaver, making it unresponsive to you.

So please check for that, if you think it's fine, then disable auto updates and see if it resolves the issue. If it does, double check Little Snitch.

glouel on 2 Oct 2019

I had the samen issue (#2) as fongd. The issue was resolved by powering off the external monitor.

Could this be a multimonitor issue?

hth

TheCodingGrey on 4 Oct 2019

I had the samen issue (#2) as fongd. The issue was resolved by powering off the external monitor.

Could this be a multimonitor issue?

hth

Hi @TheCodingGrey

Interesting about the multi monitor issue, hmm. There was a specific bug that I fixed in 1.6.1 relating to them but it presented itself differently, are you running that ? And are you running Catalina ?

And are you running Little Snitch or another firewall ?

Can you disable auto updates ? In Aerial settings, Updates tab, then in the bottom uncheck "Auto install while screen saver runs". Please let me know what that does with the external monitor.

Thanks !

glouel on 4 Oct 2019

Catalina is out. :) Let's update this thread and close it then? :)

Kaspik on 7 Oct 2019

Catalina is out. :) Let's update this thread and close it then? :)

@Kaspik, there's already one : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/download/v1.6.1/Aerial.saver.zip

You may have missed it since auto updates are broken ;) I've tried to troubleshoot this with the people behind the auto update system but we haven't fixed it yet !

Edit : I replied to your stable release before edit ;) I did update the first post to clarify what's happening now, I may close this but I do link to it from the main page (which I also updated for today).

glouel on 7 Oct 2019

So please check for that, if you think it's fine, then disable auto updates and see if it resolves the issue. If it does, double check Little Snitch.

FWIW since disabling auto updates, I haven't had an issue waking up my Mac from the screensaver. Still no alerts from Little Snitch either, though. Do I need to add an exception to ScreenSaverEngine?

fongd on 7 Oct 2019

So please check for that, if you think it's fine, then disable auto updates and see if it resolves the issue. If it does, double check Little Snitch.

FWIW since disabling auto updates, I haven't had an issue waking up my Mac from the screensaver. Still no alerts from Little Snitch either, though. Do I need to add an exception to ScreenSaverEngine?

@fongd Thanks for answering and confirming the issue ! Since I don't use Little Snitch I have no idea, some people said that the issue was that there was a rule blocking globally raw.githubusercontent.com. Would you be kind enough to check if that's the case ?

I did put this in the front page, that's the best info I have at the moment :

Are you using Little Snitch ? You may need to configure your firewall to allow Aerial to connect to the internet. Also Little Snitch may include a rule that forbids connexions to raw.githubusercontent.com. This will block Aerial's automatic updates and can cause the screensaver to misbehave. We highly recommend you either remove that rule or disable Aerial's automatic updates. You can find more information in our FAQ.

If you can confirm what is happening with Little Snitch I'd be grateful !

glouel on 7 Oct 2019

Update: Restarting preferences apparently fixed the issue 😛

Could use some help.. just installed Catalina final release and have been having issues getting Aerial working again. Tried reinstalling Aerial (v1.6.1), but do not see any videos in the video list.

https://pastebin.com/cqRt8wq9

ls /Users/macuser/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Application Support/Aerial

AerialLog.txt                TVIdleScreenStrings13.bundle resources.tar                tvos11.json                  tvos13.json
TVIdleScreenStrings12.bundle resources-13.tar             tvos10.json                  tvos12.json

I dont see any entries.json file that was mentioned earlier.

desimaniac on 8 Oct 2019

👍1

Update: Restarting preferences apparently fixed the issue 😛

Great ! FYI when you install a new version, if you don't kill System Preferences first, System Preferences will not fully reload the new version (and we can't do anything about that) so you get a mess like you had.

So next time you need to install (auto updates are broken for now), please close Sys Pref first.

AerialLog.txt                TVIdleScreenStrings13.bundle resources.tar                tvos11.json                  tvos13.json
TVIdleScreenStrings12.bundle resources-13.tar             tvos10.json                  tvos12.json

I dont see any entries.json file that was mentioned earlier.

What was entries.json was renamed to tvos12.json in order to support tvos13 (all those files are named entries.json on Apple servers ;)) I probably need to update the FAQ or some other documentation !

glouel on 8 Oct 2019

❤1 👍1

Custom Videos & Add Folder are broken on Catalina. It seems related to sandbox & system API changes.

Pingren on 8 Oct 2019

Custom Videos & Add Folder are broken on Catalina. It seems related to sandbox & system API changed.

Hi @Pingren

Damn, forgot that one ! I can confirm, the issue is we are no longer allowed to show a folder selection box (!) based on the lack of entitlements we are running under in the sandbox. So I need to put a manual field where you copy your path (just like changing cache location), it's ugly but it's the best I can do right now.

I'll have a fix soonish, thanks for reporting this.

glouel on 8 Oct 2019

👍1

Custom Videos & Add Folder are broken on Catalina. It seems related to sandbox & system API changed.

Hi @Pingren

Damn, forgot that one ! I can confirm, the issue is we are no longer allowed to show a folder selection box (!) based on the lack of entitlements we are running under in the sandbox. So I need to put a manual field where you copy your path (just like changing cache location), it's ugly but it's the best I can do right now.

I'll have a fix soonish, thanks for reporting this.

It could have better user experience if it supports drag & drop a folder or files.

Just like this one:
drag drop

Thank you for your work! :-)

Pingren on 8 Oct 2019

It could have better user experience if it supports drag & drop a folder or files.

Just like this one:

Is that a third party screensaver under Catalina too ? I'll have a look to add this as a enhancement if that's possible, off the top of my head I didn't think we could do that.

glouel on 8 Oct 2019

It could have better user experience if it supports drag & drop a folder or files.
Just like this one:

Is that a third party screensaver under Catalina too ? I'll have a look to add this as a enhancement if that's possible, off the top of my head I didn't think we could do that.

It is and it is open source on: https://github.com/packagesdev/savehollywood
Its file panel is also broken on Catalina but this drag & drop feature is still working.

I didn't look into the code but I guess drag & drop is just passing the file path internally so does not violate Catalina security limitation.

Pingren on 8 Oct 2019

@Pingren so I had a look at savehollywood but it looks like the API they are using isn't available in Swift. Took me a while but I finally got it, you can now drag folders directly to the left column to add them. I still don't allow to drag individual files though, you need to drag a folder.

This version also fix the hang people keep reporting in Catalina by disabling the auto install updates in Catalina.

https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/download/v1.6.2/Aerial.saver.zip

glouel on 8 Oct 2019

🎉2 😄1

@Pingren so I had a look at savehollywood but it looks like the API they are using isn't available in Swift. Took me a while but I finally got it, you can now drag folders directly to the left column to add them. I still don't allow to drag individual files though, you need to drag a folder.

This version also fix the hang people keep reporting in Catalina by disabling the auto install updates in Catalina.

https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/download/v1.6.2/Aerial.saver.zip

Drag & Drop works. However, the control panel crashes when I close the custom video window after customvideos.json is created. Reopening the system preference does not help and this time control panel button is disabled. Delete the customvideos.json will recover it.

Logs does not give any useful hints.

System Console:
Error 15:53:06.791337+0800 legacyScreenSaver AerialError: <private>
AerialLog.txt:

2019-10-09 15:53:03 : received drop file:///Users/ping/Downloads/1
2019-10-09 15:53:03 : processing dir
2019-10-09 15:53:03 : processing url for videos : file:///Users/ping/Downloads/1

example customvideos.json:

 {
  "folders" : [
    {
      "url" : "\/Users\/ping\/Downloads\/1",
      "label" : "1",
      "assets" : [
        {
          "accessibilityLabel" : "run-flow-showcase.mov",
          "id" : "2999415E-FAD2-4235-BB4C-A1AFD08215C8",
          "url" : "\/Users\/ping\/Downloads\/1\/run-flow-showcase.mov",
          "pointsOfInterest" : {

          },
          "time" : "day"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Pingren on 9 Oct 2019

@Pingren

Drag & Drop works. However, the control panel crashes

System Console:
Error 15:53:06.791337+0800 legacyScreenSaver AerialError: <private>

I'm all for privacy and sanitized logs but come on ;) I did disable that private thing here and apparently it's a mess now (too) in Catalina to disable it so let's try and avoid that route.

Please look in the reports section of console then (the sidebar may be hidden), you'll find a crash log for legacyScreenSaver, can you paste the log in a new issue ?

This seems non specific to Catalina, thanks !

glouel on 9 Oct 2019

I have an issue with the screensaver freezing on my Mac mini, worked perfectly before upgrade. Had to update manually to even get the screensaver to play again. After about 5 minutes it becomes a still image.

cterp1 on 9 Oct 2019

Hi @cterp1

I have an issue with the screensaver freezing on my Mac mini, worked perfectly before upgrade.

Please read first post of this issue, Catalina changed a lot of things for screensavers.

Had to update manually to even get the screensaver to play again.

Yes, you absolutely need 1.6+ under Catalina. Catalina won't run unnotarized screensavers now. And until further notice, yes, auto updates are broken because of changes in Catalina.

After about 5 minutes it becomes a still image.

Which version of Aerial are you using right now ?
Did you enable HDR ?
When it's "still", can you still quit the screensaver by pressing a key as usual ?

Any detail would help to figure this out.

glouel on 9 Oct 2019

So, I solved my problem. I downloaded all of the videos instead of streaming them. I upgraded to 1.6.2 yesterday. I enabled HDR, but my preferred video format is 1080p H264. When the screensaver becomes a still can press any key or shake the mouse like normal.

cterp1 on 10 Oct 2019

So, I solved my problem. I downloaded all of the videos instead of streaming them. I upgraded to 1.6.2 yesterday. I enabled HDR, but my preferred video format is 1080p H264. When the screensaver becomes a still can press any key or shake the mouse like normal.

@cterp1 thanks for following up! Looks like streaming was your issue then.

FYI, streaming can fail from time to time, and when that happens you just have a screen that doesn't move, as you described (the clock would still tick and descriptions still roll if you enabled that).

It doesn't have to be your connection being slow/intermittent either, Apple servers may stop to respond midway sometimes and there's not much we can do about that (they are not meant for streaming at all, Apple TV never streams for example, always downloads).

glouel on 10 Oct 2019

@Pingren

Drag & Drop works. However, the control panel crashes
System Console:
Error 15:53:06.791337+0800 legacyScreenSaver AerialError: <private>

I'm all for privacy and sanitized logs but come on ;) I did disable that private thing here and apparently it's a mess now (too) in Catalina to disable it so let's try and avoid that route.

Please look in the reports section of console then (the sidebar may be hidden), you'll find a crash log for legacyScreenSaver, can you paste the log in a new issue ?

This seems non specific to Catalina, thanks !

I just created #867. I can confirm this also happens on Mojave. Version 1.5.0 works on Mojave however.

Pingren on 10 Oct 2019

Upgraded to v1.6.2 but I still just get black screen plus "Screen Saver Options" are grayed out. Apple has no idea on how to fix. Any ideas?

Gairhumiston on 14 Oct 2019

Upgraded to v1.6.2 but I still just get black screen plus "Screen Saver Options" are grayed out. Apple has no idea on how to fix. Any ideas?

@Gairhumiston

Did you try this ?

"You cannot use the Aerial screen saver with this version of macOS." error: Select Aerial, close System Preferences with Aerial still selected, re-open System Preferences and Aerial should now work. This is a known bug with Swift screen savers in macOS/OS X reported (a long time ago...) to Apple as rdar://25569037.

glouel on 14 Oct 2019

Upgraded to v1.6.2 but I still just get black screen plus "Screen Saver Options" are grayed out. Apple has no idea on how to fix. Any ideas?

@Gairhumiston

Did you try this ?

"You cannot use the Aerial screen saver with this version of macOS." error: Select Aerial, close System Preferences with Aerial still selected, re-open System Preferences and Aerial should now work. This is a known bug with Swift screen savers in macOS/OS X reported (a long time ago...) to Apple as rdar://25569037.

Thanks for response! Yes, I have ... several times. Still no change in issue or behavior. I also previously deleted previous version of Aerial and manually installed v1.6.2 as somebody suggested. Still an issue. The previous version (v1.6.0?) at least loaded and allowed access to the options but was fraught with problems like not being able to get out of screensaver mode, many options not working, etc. I also tried installing it in both System library and (after removing) then into my User library, just in case that would make a difference. But didn't.

Gairhumiston on 14 Oct 2019

@Gairhumiston, first, sorry about all that.

Let me see if I can understand what you are seeing. When you go into settings, the preview is just black (you don't see the "You cannot use...") and the option button greyed out ?

And if you launch the screensaver (with a hot corner, say), what do you get ?

Hot take, could be a crash. Could you launch Console.app, look in the left column (which may be hidden) for something called "Blocking report" (or crash report maybe) to list the recent crash reports. Then on the list look if you have crashes with the name "legacyScreenSaver". If you do, can you open a new issue and paste the content there so I can have a look ?

glouel on 14 Oct 2019

Thanks for looking for the log. Sadly it doesn't contain enough info but that's not your fault.

Could I ask you one more thing, with Console.app open, left column, click again on your mac (first item), you'll see the rolling log. Top right corner in the search field, type legacyscreenand press return. You should see an empty window now (if not there's a clean button, 3rd icon from the left). Then reopen syspref. This should fill up with stuff.

If you could please open a new issue too (from this link : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/issues/new ) and paste the content there (it will be much easier for me to track it and get back to you).

Many thanks and again sorry about all that.

Edit : I did fix a crash that happened if you had added previously some custom video with HDR enabled. There's a build here with the fix if you're willing to give it a shot afterwards : https://github.com/glouel/Aerial/releases/download/v1.6.3test2/Aerial.saver.zip

glouel on 14 Oct 2019

OK, submitted per your instructions as a new issue.

Thanks!
Gair

Gair Humiston
760-710-7920
[email protected]

On 10.14.2019, at 2:28 PM, Guillaume Louel notifications@github.com wrote:

Thanks for looking for the log. Sadly it doesn't contain enough info but that's not your fault.

Could I ask you one more thing, with Console.app open, left column, click again on your man (first item), you'll see the rolling log. Top right corner in the search field, type legacyscreenand press return. You should see an empty window now (if not there's a clean button, 3rd icon from the left). Then reopen syspref. This should fill up with stuff.

If you could please open a new issue too (from this link : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/issues/new https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/issues/new ) and paste the content there (it will be much easier for me to track it and get back to you).

Many thanks and again sorry about all that.

—
You are receiving this because you were mentioned.
Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/issues/801?email_source=notifications&email_token=ANPRLW6KBZMVPOUBHSKJ4T3QOTP6HA5CNFSM4HSSTHY2YY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOEBGTUHQ#issuecomment-541932062, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ANPRLW7HSESRU6J6XWLFULLQOTP6HANCNFSM4HSSTHYQ.

Gairhumiston on 15 Oct 2019

I'm getting a similar issue to @Gairhumiston and v1.6.3test2 seems to have fixed it.

seansegundo on 24 Oct 2019

I'm getting a similar issue to @Gairhumiston and v1.6.3test2 seems to have fixed it.

@seansegundo sorry about that, I should have released the stable 1.6.3 for everyone earlier. I just did. You can keep using the test build, it's the same.

For everyone else : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/download/v1.6.3/Aerial.saver.zip

glouel on 24 Oct 2019

Ever since the Catalina update the screensaver has been really choppy/stutter. This was on both 1.6.2 and now today 1.6.4. Is this a known issue or something new? I love Aerial, but I just want it to work like it did before...

crander7 on 8 Nov 2019

Ever since the Catalina update the screensaver has been really choppy/stutter. This was on both 1.6.2 and now today 1.6.4. Is this a known issue or something new? I love Aerial, but I just want it to work like it did before...

Hi @crander7

There are two known issues to me that can cause choppiness:

first one is, you are streaming because your videos aren't cached. When you upgraded to Catalina, you likely lost your cache so please double check if your videos are cached or not.
second one, if you have a Mac with AMD graphics (like an iMac), there can be stuttering in the playback if you enabled HDR. The bug disappear if you disable HDR. It's a graphics drivers bug as far as I know (I do suffer from it on my iMac, it was way worse during Catalina beta but still not solved, like many things !).

Please let me know if you fall in one of these, if not we'll have a look at what's happening to you with logs. Thanks!

glouel on 8 Nov 2019

Hey @glouel

So my videos appear to be cached. I actually wiped my whole machine with the Catalina update. The "Cache" tab indicates my cache size is 21.5 GB.

I turned off HDR videos and the issue seems to be fixed! I am running a mid 2015 MBP with intel i7 and intel graphics, but the choppiness is gone and that's all I really care about.

Now I just need to re-download non-HDR versions of the videos.

Thanks!

crander7 on 8 Nov 2019

👍1

Hey @crander7

Thanks for following up, and glad to hear you got it fixed ! It's interesting that you experienced stutter with HDR on an Intel graphics mac, maybe it's more of a bug with playback of HDR videos then! The latest Catalina beta released today didn't fix the stuttering bug with HDR for me in any case.

FYI, there's another known bug that pops sometimes on Intel graphics machines, you should have a look at this thread just in case : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/issues/871

glouel on 8 Nov 2019

👍1

Hello, I've downloaded the latest version from the top of this page, but I am still having problems running it. if I select it on it's own it works, but if you use the random option, I just get a blank screensaver when this one is selected, but all the other Apple screensavers work ok.

Is there any way to resolve this?

Rob-Sherer on 13 Dec 2019

Hello, I've downloaded the latest version from the top of this page, but I am still having problems running it. if I select it on it's own it works, but if you use the random option, I just get a blank screensaver when this one is selected, but all the other Apple screensavers work ok.

Is there any way to resolve this?

Hi @Rob-Sherer

Are you talking about this :

Capture d’écran 2019-12-13 à 00 13 01

?

I did try and while I do get some black screens, I'm not sure it's Aerial. I did get Aerial to run multiple times. And the times I got a blank screen, there was no log produced at all (so Aerial was never initialized). I'll have a closer look tomorrow but the issue might be elsewhere.

glouel on 13 Dec 2019

Yes, that's the one. Whenever I add non-Apple screensavers and chose the random option, I get black screens, but by forcing it to run multiple times, I see the Apple ones work, so I can only assume the random option doesn't like non-Apple screensavers.

Rob-Sherer on 13 Dec 2019

Rough guess, probably a side effect of the new legacyScreenSaver thing. Interestingly enough, some Apple screensavers are behind that thing too so who knows. I'll have a look if there's anything reported in Console, but your best bet might be filling a radar with Apple in the meantime :(

glouel on 13 Dec 2019

Hi again @Rob-Sherer

So I did try to launch console and it looks like a huge mess !

erreur  11:59:06.857197+0100    legacyScreenSaver   Bootstrapping; external subsystem UIKit_PKSubsystem refused setup
erreur  11:59:06.870407+0100    iLifeSlideshows Bootstrapping; external subsystem UIKit_PKSubsystem refused setup

iLifeSlideshows seems to be the one that doesn't start here and throw a blank screen (I confirm that Aerial definitely works in random, I've had it run multiple times).

More info on the issue :

erreur  11:59:10.681493+0100    kernel  Sandbox: ScreenSaverEngin(24198) deny(1) appleevent-send com.apple.music
erreur  11:59:10.681505+0100    appleeventsd    Sandboxed application with pid 24198 attempted to lookup App:"Musique"/"music"/"com.apple.Music" 13302/0x0:0x214214 ????1010 sess=100016 but was denied due to sandboxing.
erreur  11:59:10.755393+0100    appleeventsd    Sandboxed application with pid 24198 attempted to lookup App:"Musique"/"music"/"com.apple.Music" 13302/0x0:0x214214 ????1010 sess=100016 but was denied due to sandboxing.
erreur  11:59:10.897435+0100    appleeventsd    Sandboxed application with pid 24198 attempted to lookup App:"Musique"/"music"/"com.apple.Music" 13302/0x0:0x214214 ????1010 sess=100016 but was denied due to sandboxing.
erreur  11:59:11.179023+0100    appleeventsd    Sandboxed application with pid 24198 attempted to lookup App:"Musique"/"music"/"com.apple.Music" 13302/0x0:0x214214 ????1010 sess=100016 but was denied due to sandboxing.
erreur  11:59:11.741584+0100    appleeventsd    Sandboxed application with pid 24198 attempted to lookup App:"Musique"/"music"/"com.apple.Music" 13302/0x0:0x214214 ????1010 sess=100016 but was denied due to sandboxing.
erreur  11:59:12.868026+0100    appleeventsd    Sandboxed application with pid 24198 attempted to lookup App:"Musique"/"music"/"com.apple.Music" 13302/0x0:0x214214 ????1010 sess=100016 but was denied due to sandboxing.
erreur  11:59:14.763972+0100    appleeventsd    Sandboxed application with pid 24198 attempted to lookup App:"Musique"/"music"/"com.apple.Music" 13302/0x0:0x214214 ????1010 sess=100016 but was denied due to sandboxing.

So, basically, that screensaver tries to access music to either play music or show playing track (I'm unclear which one it is), and that's denied because of sandboxing (I had to remove that feature from Aerial, see here : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/issues/846 ) and it looks like it crashes there.

erreur  11:59:15.461891+0100    runningboardd   RBSStateCapture remove item called for untracked item 441-174-2889 (target:xpcservice<com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver(501)>)
erreur  11:59:15.461976+0100    runningboardd   RBSStateCapture remove item called for untracked item 441-174-2887 (target:xpcservice<com.apple.ScreenSaver.Computer-Name(501)>)
erreur  11:59:15.462052+0100    runningboardd   RBSStateCapture remove item called for untracked item 441-174-2885 (target:executable<ScreenSaverEngine(501)>)
erreur  11:59:15.462076+0100    runningboardd   RBSStateCapture remove item called for untracked item 441-174-2888 (target:xpcservice<com.apple.ScreenSaver.iLife-Slideshow-Extension(501)>)
erreur  11:59:15.462096+0100    runningboardd   RBSStateCapture remove item called for untracked item 441-174-2891 (target:executable<ScreenSaverEngine(501)>)

I did have a quick look, I'm not sure which one iLifeSlideshows is in the list, but I managed to narrow it down by looking at a lot of random screensavers, none had pictures from my library ! So I think all the slideshows are actually behind this one. Now for the fun part :

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/PlugIns/iLifeSlideshows.appex

It's an .appex ! The supposedly new and improved screensaver thing that's still undocumented 🙈 (pretty please Apple !). What's crazy is that I get errors for iLifeSlideshows.appex AND legacyScreenSaver.appex.

So if I had to make a rough guess, I think that if you pick random screensaver, for some reason it tries to launch them all through legacyScreenSaver.appex (the extension that Apple uses to sandbox 3rd party savers) and that spectacularly fails with iLifeSlideshows.appex. I haven't tested yet removing all 3rd party savers to see if that's the thing that triggers legacyScreenSaver being used for iLifeSlideshows, but according to what you reported so far, I think that's it.

iLifeSlideshows.appex does have more entitlements that our legacy sandbox :

    <key>com.apple.private.tcc.allow</key>
    <array>
        <string>kTCCServicePhotos</string>
        <string>kTCCServiceSystemPolicyAllFiles</string>
    </array>
    <key>com.apple.security.assets.pictures.read-only</key>
    <key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.files.absolute-path.read-only</key>
    <key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.files.absolute-path.read-write</key>
    <array>
        <string>com.apple.cloudphotosd</string>
        <string>com.apple.photolibraryd</string>
        <string>com.apple.photos.service</string>
        <string>com.apple.ViewBridgeAuxiliary</string>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

So i guess that's it. I'll file one more radar on this, but with my luck with radars these days, I wouldn't get my hopes up for a fix soon :(

glouel on 13 Dec 2019

Quick update, no issues without a 3rd party screen saver installed, but no screensaver with pictures either. My bet is on the album illustration screensaver being the one that crashes (and that maybe is running behind the iLifeSlideshows.appex ? who knows what they are doing).

Update again, I think it might not be crashing at all, but it's just super slow to start. If I wait 6/7 seconds here on my iMac when I get a blank screen, the album artwork finally pops up.

Edit again : @Rob-Sherer, I'd try removing all your other 3rd party screensavers, I did here and kept only Aerial and can't reproduce any blank screen. I still get the errors in console but they don't seem to matter at all so my theory was for naught.

glouel on 13 Dec 2019

Yes, you're right, sorry for panicking, but it turns out it was some other screensaver that was causing this, and I assumed it was all third party screensavers. I have now managed to get Ariel working. It seems that Fliqlo is the only other screensaver that works in random mode. Sorry if I have given you additional work looking into the problem, and thanks for creating this screensaver in the first place.

Rob-Sherer on 15 Dec 2019

Yes, you're right, sorry for panicking, but it turns out it was some other screensaver that was causing this, and I assumed it was all third party screensavers. I have now managed to get Ariel working. It seems that Fliqlo is the only other screensaver that works in random mode. Sorry if I have given you additional work looking into the problem, and thanks for creating this screensaver in the first place.

No worries, it happens ;) Thanks for following up on this !

glouel on 16 Dec 2019

@Gairhumiston can you please edit your comment and collapse your ginormous log so we don't have to scroll past it to get down here? Thanks. You could use a paste like ghostbin.co as well. Here is an example of collapsable markdown:

Title

put your log here

Looks like this:

<details>
<summary>Title</summary>
<p>
markdown goes here
</p>
</details>

NSExceptional on 6 Jan 2020

@glouel Is there a way to make a screensaver without it being sandboxed? (i.e., are you choosing to make it sandboxed so people don't have to disable GateKeeper or SIP? Or is it truly the only method going forward?)

NSExceptional on 6 Jan 2020

@glouel Is there a way to make a screensaver without it being sandboxed? (i.e., are you choosing to make it sandboxed so people don't have to disable GateKeeper or SIP? Or is it truly the only method going forward?)

@NSExceptional as far as I know, nope, there isn't. The sandbox is not something I implemented, it's something Catalina imposes to all 3rd party .saver plugins. If you run Aerial in Mojave you'll see it's not sandboxed.

The sandboxing mechanism is done by Catalina by loading the plugin (all 3rd party screensavers) in a sanboxed container app extension called legacyScreenSaver.appex. That's what does it, we (all) live with the restrictions of that .appex.

Some (not all) of Apple screensavers are now bundled as an .appex too, with their own permissions. As far as I know that format is still not documented to this day nor available to 3rd parties.

glouel on 6 Jan 2020

@Gairhumiston can you please edit your comment and collapse your ginormous log so we don't have to scroll past it to get down here? Thanks. You could use a paste like ghostbin.co as well. Here is an example of collapsable markdown:

Title
Looks like this:
<details>
<summary>Title</summary>
<p>
markdown goes here
</p>
</details>

Log deleted

Gairhumiston on 8 Jan 2020

Closing this with the release of 1.7.0, with support for 11 new Sea videos.

glouel on 29 Jan 2020

Aerial: About macOS 10.15 compatibility & tvOS 13 videos

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