You are viewing an historical archive of past issues. Please report new issues to the appropriate project issue tracker on GitHub.

Bug #192: Icon shows in Dock when running on Tiger

Kind bug
Product Synergy
When Created , updated
Status closed
Reporter Greg Hurrell
Tags no tags

Description

From a user email:

"Since you didn't mention this, maybe you don't know. Under Tiger, Synergy 1.8 shows up as a running app in the dock. I went back to 1.6 and the behavior is what I expect. Synergy runs without an additional running app in the dock."

Thanks for reporting this. I only have one machine so I am not willing to install a pre-release version on my one-and-only product machine. Once I get my hands on the retail version I'll investigate.

Comments

  1. Greg Hurrell

    Marking as ASSIGNED.

  2. Greg Hurrell

    Well, I can't reproduce this and no one else has reported the issue so I am going to mark this as WORKSFORME.

  3. Greg Hurrell

    I have now had a couple people report this issue on Tiger although I still cannot reproduce it myself. This is how I replied to the last person who wrote in:

    Can you look inside at its Info.plist file and check that "LSUIElement" is set to "1"; this is what tells the OS to not show the icon in the Dock.

    The preference pane will either be in:

    /Library/PreferencePanes/

    or:

    ~//Library/PreferencePanes/

    Depending on where you installed it.

    And the Info.plist file will be inside the bundle here:

    Synergy.prefPane/Contents/Resources/Synergy.app/Contents/Info.plist

    You should see an entry in the plist file like this:

    LSUIElement 1

    If everything appears to be ok there (it should be) I would try uninstalling and reinstalling. And I'd also check to see if it made any difference whether launching manually (by clicking the "Start" button) or setting Synergy to launch at login (there shouldn't be any difference).

  4. Greg Hurrell

    I am going to reopen this bug as a number of people are reporting it. Still can't reproduce it though.

    https://wincent.dev/a/support/forums/showflat.php?Number=756

  5. Bryan Schwegler

    I'm having this same issue running Tiger and Synergy Classic 1.9. I did not have this issue when running 1.8.

  6. Bryan Schwegler

    (In reply to comment #5)

    I'm having this same issue running Tiger and Synergy Classic 1.9. I did not have this issue when

    running

    1.8.

    I also wanted to add that when I went to go check the plist file in the Prefpane the LSUIElement string wasn't even there. When I added it, Synergy once again behaved as expected.

  7. Greg Hurrell

    Damn. I had just typed a massive reply and I lost it because I hit Command-R (refresh) by mistake instead of hitting Command-T (new tab)... Sigh... here we go again:

    I downloaded Synergy Classic 1.9 from the server to be sure that I am looking at the *exact* same file as you and I can confirm that the LSUIElement key *is* in the plist. Which file were you looking at? This one?

    Synergy.prefPane/Contents/Resources/Synergy.app/Contents/Info.plist

    I think the behaviour of the Launch Services database must have changed on Tiger. In fact, I think it's an Apple bug. I found this article about rebuilding or updating the database:

    http://67.15.54.122/article.php?story=20031215144430486&query=launch+services

    Those who are seeing the problem, can you try the following and then report back here?

    1. Stop Synergy

    2. Open the Terminal

    3. cd to the directory where you installed the Synergy.prefPane. This will be either:

    ~/Library/PreferencePanes

    Or:

    /Library/PreferencePanes

    4. Type the following command (all on one line, even though it might wrap across multiple lines here):

    /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/ Support/lsregister -R Synergy.prefPane

    5. Restart Synergy

    If the above doesn't work, try it all over again but with a different step 5:

    5. Log out, log in, and restart Synergy

    And if that doesn't work, try it all over again but with this step 5:

    6. Restart your Mac, then start Synergy

    You can use that same command line tool to look at a dump of the database like this:

    /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/ Support/lsregister -dump | less

    Notice that I pipe the output through less because the database can be huge. You can bring up a search prompt by typing "/" and then entering a search string (like "Synergy.app"). I am going to attach a sample of what Synergy.app's entry should look like in the database. Notice that the following line contains the "ui-element" flag: 

           flags:         relative-icon-path  ui-element  ppc

    I would be very interested to hear reports from people about the contents of their database before and after trying to tweak their database. If the tweak above works then I will add it as an automatic step in the Synergy installer.

    If the tweak above doesn't work then there are some more extreme interventions you could try with the lsregister tool. For example, rebuilding your entire Launch Services database:

    /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/ Support/lsregister -kill -v -r /

    That will rescan your entire root volume and find all the apps on it. Another one is this:

    /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/ Support/lsregister -kill -v -R /

    Exactly the same but will look inside packages and invisible directories as well.

    You may wish to try a more conservative approach, such as using only "/Applications" instead of your entire root volume "/" as the path argument to lsregister.

    Anyway, I hope people find this useful. Please report back with how you go. Seeing as I cannot reproduce the problem here, I am 100% dependent on other to isolate the causes/solutions which work.

  8. Greg Hurrell

    Created an attachment (id=24) Sample Launch Services database entry for Synergy.app

  9. Greg Hurrell

    Bafflingly, another user just emailed me and told me that their file:

    Synergy.prefPane/Contents/Resources/Synergy.app/Contents/Info.plist

    Does not contain a "LSUIElement" key! Could the OS be deleting the key? (A bizarre proposition)

  10. Greg Hurrell

    Another user email:

    "I think I found the culprit .. it's either Clear dock from unsanity which I replaced by Transparent Dock or the 10.4.1 update that did the trick..."

    I've also received reports that uninstalling and then reinstalling worked.

    Personally I suspect some weirdness in Tiger's Launch Services. Still haven't got any concrete proof though of exactly what the cause is or the best workaround. Please add your comments here if you have have gathered information about this issue.

  11. awatt

    I had this problem with my LSUIElement present and set correctly. I uninstalled and reinstalled Synergy, and from the installer chose to launch Synergy as my final step. It launched and appeared in the dock with Synergy's icon this time (previously it had a generic app icon). I then went into the preference pane and stopped and started Synergy from there. Then the problem disappeared.

  12. Greg Hurrell

    From a user email:

    I don't know if this helps, but I noticed that when I went to check the file at

    Synergy.prefPane/Contents/Resources/Synergy.app/Contents/Info.plist

    I noticed a different Info.plist file at

    Synergy.prefPane/Contents/Info.plist

    Interesting thing is that I saw an entry in that article where someone said they couldn't even find the LSUIElement string there. I noticed the same problem when I opened the wrong file. I'm assuming they saw the same wrong file I did. When I opened the right file, it is indeed there. So, to make a long story short, I deleted the wrong Info.plist file, reinstalled, and everything works great...all I need now is some more button sets to look really cool with it. Any suggestions or requests?

  13. Greg Hurrell

    All bundles on Mac OS X should have an Info.plist file so this is why the .prefPane bundle has one and why the .app bundle has a different one. The one in the .app bundle is the one that counts here because that's the one that the system should be reading to determine the attributes of the app (like whether or not to show its Dock icon).

    I suspect that it wasn't deleting the plist file that fixed your problem but the reinstall... Deleting the plist file (or any other) could make the bundle in question behave unpredictably or even prevent it from working.

  14. habesct

    Sorry, but I posted another topic in the discussions before I noticed all the comments below. I too had the plain application icon in the dock after upgrading to 2.0. I just now uninstalled it, then re-installed 2.0, and when the install was done I clicked "Launch". This again gave me an icon in the dock except this time it was a Synergy icon. I saw in someones comments below how this same thing happened, and they went to the Prefs and closed then re-launched Synergy and that solved there problem. And I am happy to report that it worked for me as well. I have no idea why, but this worked...

    Thanks, Brian

  15. Greg Hurrell

    As I stated above I suspect this is caused by stale entries (or a bug) in Apple's Launch Services database on Tiger. If I am to implement a work around in the installer (such as flushing the cache) I need people who are seeing the problem to undertake some investigation using the command line as described in comment

    1. 7. Without that information there won't be any work around, so thanks for your collaboration.
  16. Greg Hurrell
    • ** Bug 270 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
  17. GLH

    Bug filed with Apple about this: rdar://4179796

  18. GLH

    The bug report I filed with Apple has been marked as a duplicate, so this is a known issue with Tiger and they are aware of it.

  19. Greg Hurrell

    Michael Moen did the necessary work in bug #279 to collect information about this issue. I've already implemented a work around for Synergy Advance and will do the same for Synergy. It will be somewhat easier with Synergy because Synergy has an installer and I can do it from the installer rather than having to embed the logic in the app itself.

  20. Greg Hurrell

    Adding "fixed-in-prerelease" keyword.

  21. Greg Hurrell

    This fix is now available in the just-released version 0.4b. For more information:

    https://wincent.dev/a/news/archives/2006/03/synergy_advance_4.php

    Marking as FIXED/CLOSED.

Add a comment

Comments are now closed for this issue.

Menu