mac

Yesterday, I was working on Transloader v3.0. In particular, on its push notifications and making sure everything syncs properly.
Today, I wanted to continue working on this, but found myself unable to. My Mac suddenly didn’t receive CloudKit push notifications anymore.
Even worse, neither of the delegate methods

- (void)application:(NSApplication *)application didRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithDeviceToken:(NSData *)deviceToken

and

- (void)application:(NSApplication *)application didFailToRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithError:(NSError *)error

weren’t called anymore – without any code changes. Something was wrong.

But here we are, a couple of hours later, and everything’s working again. Finally.
So, to save you some time should this happen to you, here’s what I did:

Restart

I restarted my Mac – the obvious solution. You might think. Only that it didn’t work, the problem persisted. But it’s still the first thing I’ll try if this returns.

Delete Containers, Group Containers, and CloudKit Caches

In Finder, delete

/Users/yourname/Library/Containers/yourAppContainerFolder/
/Users/yourname/Library/Group Containers/yourGroupID.yourAppGroupContainerFolder/
/Users/yourname/Library/Caches/CloudKit/yourAppID
/Users/yourname/Library/Caches/CloudKit/CloudKitMetadata* (*all files that begin with that filename)
/Users/yourname/Library/Caches/CloudKit/CloudKitOperationInfo* (*all files that begin with that filename)

Now launch Activity Monitor.app and force quit the following processes:

cfprefsd
apsd
notifyd
remoted

Now, I’m not sure you need to force-quit each and every one of those, but I wanted to relaunch any process that remotely looked like it had to do with remote/push notifications.

At this point, I restarted Transloader through Xcode, and lo and behold, it worked again.
On my MacBook Pro, where the same problem occurred simultaneously, I took the same steps. And it *didn’t* work. A restart was required, so your mileage – like mine – may vary.

Additional Info

There’s also this handy technical note from Apple, which can help debugging push notifications on both macOS and iOS.

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ScreenFloat's Mac App Icon

Since I’m having trouble with the macOS Catalina-compatible ScreenFloat v1.5.17 update getting through review, I thought it’d be best to publish a quick note about how to make sure ScreenFloat works for you on macOS Catalina. Otherwise, you’ll probably end up with screenshots of your Desktop, instead of the actual windows you’re trying to take a screenshot of.

  1. Quit ScreenFloat if it’s running
  2. In Terminal.app (in /Applications/Utilities/), type the following, followed by enter/return:
    tccutil reset All at.EternalStorms.ScreenFloat-appstore

    This resets all of ScreenFloat’s permissions on your Mac (the only one it uses is the Screen Recording one). If you’re using the demo, replace ‘-appstore’ with ‘-demo’.
    At this point, a restart of your Mac might be necessary.

  3. Launch ScreenFloat and take a screenshot.
  4. If a dialog appears asking for screen recording permissions, click on Open System Preferences and select ScreenFloat in the list that appears
    If the dialog doesn’t appear, launch System Preferences, select Security & Privacy -> Privacy -> Screen Recording and select ScreenFloat there.
  5. Restart ScreenFloat

Now ScreenFloat will be able to create screenshots again.

My apologies for the inconvenience. I’m hoping to have the update for it out soon, but currently, I’m at the App Store App Review’s mercy.

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It’s Black Friday (November 23rd, 2018) – here are my deals:

Yoink (Mac): $7.99 -> $5.99 (~25% off)
Website / Demo
Mac App Store

Yoink (iOS): $5.99 -> $4.99 (~16% off)
Website
iOS App Store

ScreenFloat (Mac): $8.99 -> $5.99 (~33% off)
Website / Demo
Mac App Store

Transloader (Mac): $5.99 -> $4.99 (~28% off)
Website
Mac App Store

Mac App Store Bundle

For users of macOS Mojave, I also offer an app bundle (the Eternal Storms Software Productivity Bundle), which includes Yoink for Mac, ScreenFloat for Mac and Transloader for Mac, which offers an additional ~11% off on the apps:
Eternal Storms Software Productivity Bundle (macOS Mojave): $17.99 -> $14.99 (~16% off its previous discount)
Mac App Store

Enjoy 🙂

All the best,
– Matt

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