Is there any way to automatically launch an application on USB attach or CD insert on Mac OS X? it's easy on Windows, but I found that AutoRun.Inf does not work on the Mac at all.
You can't. Autostarting applications is impossible under Mac OS X.
The next-best thing, opening the CD folder and showing the installer icon, can be done by using (AutoOpen version 1.0) to make a .dmg which can then be burnt to a CD.
Basically, auto-run is considered a security problem and so is not supported in OSX. Sophie Alpert's answer is also a bit overkill. Most installers for OSX simply open up a folder to show the application and, possibly, a readme. Installing is done by dragging the app to your Applications folder.
For other kinds of apps on CDs (say, a slide show or something like that), the developer generally uses hidden folders to hide support data to ensure that the only thing the user will see when they open the CD is the single icon they're supposed to double click to start the app.
It is possible to install a background service that monitors whenever a USB device is plugged in and then launches an App. Google's "Android File Transfer Agent" is such a service that is running in the background and launches "Android File Transfer" whenever you plug in an Android device.
If you are looking for something for just yourself, you could write a small mac app that runs in the background and watches for a particular USB device (by id) to be attached and then run the program. Ideally a small XML plist could be used to map device IDs to the correct program to run. The XCode SDK has sample code that monitors for device additional and removal to get you started.
I agree with JavaCoderEx. I would crontab a task that looks for /Volumes/*/autorun.sh, then runs it once. Maybe touch a file in /tmp/ so you know its already been run, then remove it if the volume disappears.
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I have a cross platform need to open a gui application programmatically, but keep it hidden from the user. Effectively, I want a command line driven interface to act as a wrapper over this gui app, and insulate the end user from seeing or interacting with it. The program is from a third party, I did not write it, and I can't edit it.
I can do this one way or another on Windows, on Linux, and (in theory) on older versions of Mac, but not the most recent ones. On Windows, I can use the native api ShellEx with a hide window parameter. It's very easy and straight forward. In Linux, I can can render a gui app to a virtual frame buffer (using xvfb).
On macOS, the open command has a --hide and --background option, but they don't have any effect (at least on this app...)
I tried changing the plist file and found that LSUIElement will hide the app from the docker, but it still shows up on the screen. LSUIPresentationMode=4 or 3 OUGHT to work for exactly this, but apparently that doesn't do anything anymore as of a few os versions ago...
I tried the approach of moving the .app off of the screen with AppleScript. That works, but you have to manually grant permissions for such a thing to occur via System Preferences. In prior versions of Mac, those permissions could be twiddled on the fly via sqlLite (so long as you had sudo rights), but now they blocked that too. You can only pull that off apparently through a process of disabling "SIP" and forcing a reboot. That is totally outside the realm of what I want.
I've tried using the xvfb approach on Mac (jumping through hoops to acquire the binary they use to include stock, and now dropped), but I'm not having luck with that. I don't think it's possible to direct a mac .app to another display is it? A .app does not render on X11 by it's nature right?
What other clever ways might there be to hide a third party app on a mac? (and that still works in most recent os versions!)
I want to open an Electron JS app when I click or touch the screen.
Another software is gonna be running in the main screen, but at any click/touch, my app is supposed to open.
Is there some way to listen to the Windows clicks/touches anywhere, and open certain app?
Obs.: The system is being developed to be executed on a "Midia Totem", and this is the reason I have to do all of this stuff.
They answer a similar question here. https://stackoverflow.com/a/41836178/4778613
"Once the OS is handling touch events, those are piped through to Blink via the Electron wrapper. However, you need to set the touch-events command-line switch to enable it."
I recently tried delete Steam.app from Mac OS X 10.10.5. As soon as I hit Command-Backspace to remove the application, this dialog appeared:
The text reads:
Steam still has some game content stored at /Users/apaidnerd/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps. Do you want to delete the game content as well?
[Leave files] [Reveal in Finder] [Delete files]
How did the Steam application cause this to happen? If I'm developing an app for Mac OS X, where is this documented?
You were close. It looks to me like the launch agent "com.valvesoftware.steamclean" is responsible for this. Unloading the "com.valvesoftware.steam.ipctool" agent/service may effectively disable the other one.
The steamclean agent's description plist file is in ~/Library/LaunchAgents. It doesn't poll. It has a WatchPaths key, which asks launchd to run it when that path changes. launchd uses file system notification techniques to monitor that, which also don't rely on polling.
When that happens, the agent runs the program ~/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/steamclean, which is not in the Steam.app bundle. It couldn't be, because the app bundle has been moved or renamed, so launchd would not be able to find the program for the agent. steamclean is what shows the dialog. You can confirm this by reproducing the dialog and leaving it open. Then, use Activity Monitor to list the processes and filter for "steam".
Figured it out. Steam has a launchctl agent that runs (com.valvesoftware.steam.ipctool) out of the /Applications/Steam.app/ directory. If I stop the daemon and remove the Steam.app, no dialog appears.
It must poll to see if its executable path still exists and prompts the user if goes missing. Also, the inactive-looking title bar implies that this dialog is indeed coming from some sort of background process.
I want to be able to call the automator or unix commands like ls from a mono app and ge the results back.
This can be accomplished on windows easily. The question is how is this done on the mac??
caveat: I've never written a char of mono in my life.
I imagine it's a matter of redirecting stdout and firing up a process. this linux forum shows that you can do pretty much that - OSX will behave mostly as a UNIX-like system for you, I reckon.
Oh by the way, if you want to fire up an OSX application, have a dig around inside the ".app" bundle. OSX shows these as a file, but they're actually directories. In the finder you can right-mouse click and "show package contents", or you can open up a terminal / command prompt and cd into them. For instance, you can launch the Automator like this from the terminal:
/Applications/Automator.app/Contents/MacOS/Automator
I don't know if you would want to go down this route, but if you're going to be interfacing with OSX (gui) apps, you might want to look at using Applescript as some "glue" between Mono and the app.
I've recently been told about a useful debugging tool on Mac OS X called stackshot, however I don't know how to invoke it. My understanding from the documentation is that it runs as a daemon, but the man page also reads as if it can be invoked from the command line. How would I go about leveraging stackshot for my currently-running application?
sudo /usr/libexec/stackshot -i
Stackshot is intended for debugging system-wide issues (deadlocks etc), not single applications; as such it creates a stack dump of the entire system, not a single application.
With the default configuration, this will create a stack shot in /Library/Logs/stackshot.log
Apple has asked me to produce a Stackshot on my iOS device. To do so, when the issue occurs, simultaneously hold down and release the Home and a volume button.
Then, synch your device with iTunes.
After synching, your stackshot log file will be stored on the computer. I don't know where it is in Windows, but on a Mac it is in:
~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice//stacks-yyyy-mm-dd-xxxxxx.log
stackshot no longer appears to be included with OS X, at least not in 10.11. However you can still take a sample of your app using the /usr/bin/sample tool.
This is also accessible using Activity monitor:
Open Activity Monitor
Double click your app
Click the Sample button in the bottom left corner
That will allow you to see what is currently happening in your app so that you can debug CPU usage issues without running the app from Xcode.