Disappearing Cursor Tools

[dix]

Since updating to Ventura I consistently lose the tool icons after working for a few minutes of working in DP on new and old projects (although sometimes it’s hours). The tool behaviors are there, but both the smart tools and pallet tools don’t show. Relaunching DP usually corrects it, but often I just limp along without tools to avoid having to relaunch every few minutes.

MOTU support is stumped so far. They suggested removing all prefs, but that did not help. I’ve also tried things like scaling and swapping skins, but nothing fixes it. Same behavior with all versions of DP 11.2 I’ve tried including the latest 11.23.

Has anyone seen this behavior before? It’s really slowing me down. Any ideas on what to try would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[HCMarkus]

Since updating to Ventura I consistently lose the tool icons after working for a few minutes of working in DP on new and old projects (although sometimes it’s hours). The tool behaviors are there, but both the smart tools and pallet tools don’t show. Relaunching DP usually corrects it, but often I just limp along without tools to avoid having to relaunch every few minutes.

MOTU support is stumped so far. They suggested removing all prefs, but that did not help. I’ve also tried things like scaling and swapping skins, but nothing fixes it. Same behavior with all versions of DP 11.2 I’ve tried including the latest 11.23.

Has anyone seen this behavior before? It’s really slowing me down. Any ideas on what to try would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Haven't seen that one, dix, unless I hide the tools by accident...

Could it be an errant Command assignment? I guess removing preferences would have eliminated that possibility.

[dix]

Haven't seen that one, dix, unless I hide the tools by accident...

I assume you mean hide the Tool Pallet by accident. I don't think there's a way make the tool icons invisible on purpose. ...again, I still have the tool behaviors, but the tools become invisible.

[bayswater]

Haven't seen that one, dix, unless I hide the tools by accident...

I assume you mean hide the Tool Pallet by accident. I don't think there's a way make the tool icons invisible on purpose. ...again, I still have the tool behaviors, but the tools become invisible.

Are there not preference settings to determine which tools you want to see, aside from the command to show the pallet?

[dix]

Good idea. Apart from Tool Pallet Options there's Cursor Selection Mode option prefs. Next time it happens I'll mess around with these prefs....one of the weird things is that sometimes I don't have the issue all day. today is one of those days.

[dix]

The tools disappeared again today. Messing with prefs didn't help

MOTU support suggested seeing if the problem occurred on a new user account. I set one up and so far I have not been able to get the issue to show up - however, the test account doesn’t really allow me to do actual work (setting up an entirely new usable account isn’t practical). I just messed around on a little fake project for 45 mins or so to see if it happened, which it did not. But since I don't experience the invisible-tool issue sometimes for a day or two it's hard to say, based on this experiment, if a new account would be immune to the issue.

Assuming a new account is immune, what does that tell me? And what would be my next step? Setting up an entirely new user account would be quite a project. I'm wondering if there's something short of that I could try on my existing user account to be rid of this problem.

[bayswater]

What makes setting up another account difficult? I've done it (several years ago) and don't recall any big problems. There are support articles on changing and account name, and the related directory names, if that's the problem.

[dix]

Maybe you’re right. I’m not sure I’ve ever done it. Maybe be there’s an easy way. Right now it feels like I’m using someone else’s Mac when I log into the new user account. It seems like a lot of customization will need to be redone. None of my system or app prefs are there. Several VIs can’t find their libraries, Stream Deck is lost and a bunch more.

I’ll investigate articles to see if there’s a simple way to move all my prefs and system settings to a new account. It’s beginning to look like I don’t have a choice.

Thanks

[bayswater]

Sorry I can't remember more about what was involved. I know there was a very specific process to rename accounts, and a reason to end up with the original account name. I created a new account, renamed the old one, then renamed the new one to the original name of the old one.

I also recall being able to just copy over most of the user defined things, but there must have been things like setting network passwords, some system preferences, etc. that had to be done from scratch.

I had to do this for much the same reason you have. There was a corrupted setting or system file, no way to identify the offending member, and nothing to do but reinitializing things, in a new account, and then delete the old account and all it's potentailly corrupt files.