Amethyst: Time Machine.app unusable when Amethyst is running

[sebroeder]

The Time Machine.app (the space themed one to restore files from backups) behaves very wired when Amethyst ist running. Time Machine.app always runs in (a special?) fullscreen mode but Amethyst fails to detect this and tries to tile the window anyways (see attached screenshot). This issue may be related to #254.

Observations (tested on OS X 10.9.5 in clamshell mode with one external monitor attached):

• The menu bar becomes invisible, making it almost impossible to get out of this situation.
• The Time Machine window does not respond to the mod1 + t (toggle whether or not the focused window is floating) keyboard shortcut, probably because one can not really focus this special fullscreen window.
• The Finder window in the screenshot that is located above the Time Machine window actually belongs _inside_ the fullscreen Time Machine window. Closing this Finder window will also close Time Machine.app
• It does not help to add the Time Machine.app (com.apple.backup.launcher) to the list of windows that should always float in the Amethyst Preferences.

As a workaround one can temporarily disable Amethyst if one wants to restore some files from Time Machine but it would still be nice if this confusing behavior could be fixed.

Thanks for the great app btw, I really get used to it. Keep up the great work.

Trello Card

[tuananh]

Add Time Machine app to whitelist ?

[caskolkm]

@tuananh that's a temporary fix. timemachine goes in fullscreen mode i think. There are more issues related to fullscreen mode

[ianyh]

Not being able to undo things is probably fullscreen related, but the other failures are probably Time Machine-specific. It should probably be globally ignored like the login window is.

[deizel]

+1 for having this globally ignored.

Adding /Applications/Time Machine.app (com.apple.backup.launcher) to whitelist doesn't seem to work.

[ianyh]

Well, at least in 10.11 you can actually exit Time Machine even if Amethyst messes it up.

Having looked into it, though, entering Time Machine doesn't actually appear to be an application at all, which is why having it ignored doesn't fix the problem. Need to investigate more.

[ianyh]

It appears that Time Machine is also not technically a space, so I'm not entirely sure how to detect it.

[cjbehm]

There is a workaround, although whether it is a better or worse option than disabling Amethyst temporarily probably depends a lot on how you use your system.

You can add com.apple.finder to the floating list, which will allow Time Machine's UI to work properly. I don't use the Finder UI much, so for me it will be fine.

In terms of the Amethyst behavior, that suggests that Amethyst mostly needs to detect that Time Machine is being entered and just suspend managing windows until it's closed.

The logs command shows that LaunchServices is used (com.apple.launchservices:cas); so maybe there's a way to be notified that it's being started and then ignore com.apple.finder.

[PatrikSeal]

Does anyone know about a window title for the time machine fullscreen? Would be nice to limit the floating as much as possible.

[ianyh]

FYI I checked and the Time Machine window has no title.