Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Sonoma Aerial Screen Saver Freezing
- Thread starter Chilltravelers
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Instead of making them read-only, you can lock all the files in the folder /Library/Application Support/com.apple.idleassetsd/Customer
From Terminal
Code:
sudo chflags -R schg /Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.idleassetsd/CustomerTo unlock them
Code:
sudo chflags -R noschg /Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.idleassetsd/CustomerIf the commands return an error, give Terminal temporary Full Disk Access.
Thx, I'm giving it a try. I have 91 files in the Folder and will use Shuffle All/Continuously and see what happens. Will report back in a couple of days.
Julian, what you have uncovered is normal Screensaver behavior when dealing with large Aerial files. It only keeps a few on your computer at a time by design. I'll get to that in a minute, because it might matter, as you suspect.
I'm wondering if maybe the log-in condition, or more precisely the time before password request or display turn-off might have something to do with this behavior.
I, too have encountered the freeze, but only occasionally. I haven't tracked it, but it seems to happen after it's been going a good long while in my case, hours, which may be an important clue.
Conditions:
My system is always set to start the screensaver at either 3 or 5 minutes inactive.
Display to turn off when inactive for 3 hours.
Require password 1 hour after screensaver begins or display turned off.
Mac M1, OSX 14.1.2, external HDMI display
Problem:
I will come to my computer I was using some undetermined "long" time earlier. The display is still on (meaning it's been less than 3-hours), but I have no movement from the Aerial screensaver. Tapping the trackpad brings the login screen, still no movement. I log in. Going to settings and selecting "preview" of the stalled screensaver, as elsewhere mentioned the existing Aerial screensaver does not start moving as it should. One must first change it, then change back to get it to work.
I haven't bothered yet to correlated my various display and login setting times with this freeze yet, but I suspect it may be important in zeroing in on this bug.
Since Aerial files are really large, and downloading them all takes over 50GB, Apple realized that's rather large for some of their smaller SSD customers. They designed the screensaver running Aerial to only keep a limited set of those files onboard your computer at any one time, and you can't change that behavior. It self-deletes files that haven't been used or selected for an unknown pre-determined-by-algorithm length of time vs. space used. Even if you download all of them in one session, if you go back and try the first one you dowloaded, it's provably gone already.
What that means is only a fraction of the available Aerial screensavers are ever loaded onto your computer at any one time, even when you select to use "all" of them in rotation. The constant re-uploading of the same file over-and-over again the same day is normal behavior if you're running it all the time.
Like I said, I know of no way to change or turn that behavior off, but it's confirmed screensaver behavior as I picked up on other support boards.
Solution?
I will hazard a guess that maybe one of my display-off, password, or login duration states may conflict with the screensaver's attempt to re-load the image that stalled. Maybe the stall occurs because the file is incompletely restored or activated before one of those state changes?
Just to add since I used the Terminal Command provided by bogdanw a week ago it has NOT deleted a single Aerial file or screen froze and has been working flawlessly. All 91 I downloaded before using the command are still in the Folder and it flawlessly Continuously Shuffles All.
Apple support had me replicate the freezing aerial screensaver issue over Easter for their tech team and took detailed system logs to track down cause, hopefully...
You would think that in 1½ years someone at Apple would have experienced this by now.
Still not fixed in 14.5 almost one year after release, and on 15.0 Sequoia 1st Dev beta on a seperate partition with no other software installed it is STILL not fixed....
Technical support team were having me run tests and diagnostics, but have been silent for a few months now since all tests were run and showed the issue remains....
Technical support team were having me run tests and diagnostics, but have been silent for a few months now since all tests were run and showed the issue remains....
Mine recently fixed itself! Sonoma 14.5, Mac Studio M1 Ultra with Pro XDR Display. It previously had the issue (pausing at the end of the first aerial screensaver it played) beginning from first install of Sonoma - and continued to have the issue after the 14.5 update. But now, for unknown reasons and with no apparent sw updates, it plays the aerials correctly. I'm also seeing new aerials that I hadn't seen in the rotation before. I did nothing to fix this, it just started working. Finally.
STILL not working for me on my M1 Mac Studio Ultra, even with Sequoia Beta 6. After one update, maybe beta 4, it worked for 3 days straight and I thought it was fixed, but it recurred and is still recurring. So frustrating. Have not heard back from Apple Support after their detailed testing and logging they had me do months ago. Got en email update that said keep software up to date...big help.
Follow-up on my “it fixed itself” post: It still freezes sometimes. Some of the aerials will play through then transition to the next aerial as it should, but once in awhile i still catch an aerial frozen on its last frame.
I'm joining this thread (and this forum) for the sole reason that I also have this issue and it's been driving me nuts. I read this thread the first time I noticed this problem when I upgraded to Sonoma back in July. I can't understand why this does not work on my 2022 Mac Studio with M1 Ultra (recently updated to Sonoma as of July-2024) but works just fine on my 2021 MacBook Pro with M1 Max (Sonoma 14.6.1, and has always worked since installing Sonoma when it came out). Grrrr.
Summary of my situation:
- I have this problem only on my Mac Studio M1 Ultra that is running Sonoma 14.6.1
- I do not have this problem (and never have) on my MacBook Pro M1 Max that is also running Sonoma 14.6.1
- Both use external HDMI monitors (not the same monitor).
After reading this thread, I am going to start by trying turning off the password login requirement. I'm the only one here and I can't see another way to stop the "logout" concern. If that doesn't work I might try the locking of the files, though that didn't seem to work for folks.
I'm now following this thread here to see what may come of this issue. If someone gets it working, please let me know how you fixed it, thanks!
Summary of my situation:
- I have this problem only on my Mac Studio M1 Ultra that is running Sonoma 14.6.1
- I do not have this problem (and never have) on my MacBook Pro M1 Max that is also running Sonoma 14.6.1
- Both use external HDMI monitors (not the same monitor).
After reading this thread, I am going to start by trying turning off the password login requirement. I'm the only one here and I can't see another way to stop the "logout" concern. If that doesn't work I might try the locking of the files, though that didn't seem to work for folks.
I'm now following this thread here to see what may come of this issue. If someone gets it working, please let me know how you fixed it, thanks!