AU Component Icons.

[AndyS]

 

Not sure if this is really apt for a Logic forum, but since it concerns AU Components, I'll post anyway. Feel free to delete/move/exorcise/burn David ,-)

Trying out macOS Monterey 12.6.2 on a workhorse 2018 MBPro before committing to a studio upgrade. Whilst installing a bunch of random plugins, I noticed that the icons in Library/Audio/Plugins/Components are missing, they all sport generic folders and blank docs. Frankly, I'm not concerned so much with losing a few

Perhaps someone with the same OS could confirm whether this is (yet another) backward step from Apple, or whether I'm looking at the first lover's tiff in an unhappy romance with Monterey.

PS: The AAX plugins are showing their usual icons.

 

[fisherking]

'yet another' backward step? hmmm, what else is 'backward'? 🤔

my components folder is a combination of generic icons, plugin icons, and folder icons... but everything works. 

how much time do you spend in that folder, in icon view? more importantly, do the plugins all work?

[AndyS]

3 hours ago, fisherking said:

'yet another' backward step? hmmm, what else is 'backward'? 🤔

Too much to go into here. 🧐

So something is perhaps amiss with the install, since you say you have plugin icons (I have none).

3 hours ago, fisherking said:

how much time do you spend in that folder, in icon view? more importantly, do the plugins all work?

 

I prefer Icon view - go figure.

In Mojave I was constantly in the component/AAX folders (also in Application support folders) correcting bad permission settings on upgrade/update installs – iZotope is a classic for that. At least, for me.

I'll know if 'All' the plugins work as and when I can find the down time to test them 'all'. ,-)

On the other hand, perhaps a new clean install will remedy the problem.

Thanks for chiming in, fella. 🙂

 

[fisherking]

i said i have a combination of plugin icons, folder icons, and generic icons. & you shouldn't need to go into the components folder generally, so why worry about... icons?

for me, apple keeps moving forward (not that i care about all of it, ie stage manager, siri on the mac...). i don't see any 'backwards steps'...

anyway, seems pointless to do a clean install to (hopefully) fix icons, especially if those plugins are working in logic.

[AndyS]

2 hours ago, fisherking said:

i said i have a combination of plugin icons, folder icons, and generic icons. & you shouldn't need to go into the components folder generally, so why worry about... icons?

I shouldn't need to, but since you read in my first reply you'll know why I do.

2 hours ago, fisherking said:

for me, apple keeps moving forward (not that i care about all of it, ie stage manager, siri on the mac...). i don't see any 'backwards steps'...

It was a satirical comment. Wasn't looking to trigger any iFans 😉. (Totally agree with you about Siri, though). Apple do indeed move forward, without mending the trail of bugs they leave behind. We don;t need a new version every year for the shareholders, we need one that 'just works'.

2 hours ago, fisherking said:

anyway, seems pointless to do a clean install to (hopefully) fix icons, especially if those plugins are working in logic.

 

Perhaps, but since I've only just this day clean-installed the new OS, reinstalling will be virtually zero work and will not affect anything negatively. The few plug-ins I have installed are working fine for Logic, which I use principally for composition. There are other daws out there, and a large percentage of professional musicians/engineers use a combination of various DAWS. I'm yet to install Pro Tools, Reaper and CuBase. Since I haven't loaded anything important, I'l just reinstall. I was simply trying to ascertain whether the missing icons was a default macOS 12.6.2, a bug in Logic, or some other critter. I'll live!

It is indeed just a cosmetic thing (I hope). You, sir, have your Feng shui... and I have mine.

I think we can close this one. Thanks anyway, Dave, and Merry Christmas!

 

[fisherking]

am placing my bet: you'll re-install, and the icons will come up exactly the same. 

and most pros i know use 1 or 2 DAWS at most; not sure why anyone would need 4 🤯, but... you do you. have fun...

[des99]

You just need to set the bundle flag on those folders, as that’s the thing that determines whether Finder thinks those are bundles or folders. There’s a terminal command to do this, you can Google for it as I’m not at my computer right now… (or I’ll update the post later when I can.)

Edit: Here you go. (Note, you'll need XCode Developer Tools installed, as SetFile is a developer tool, not installed by default.)

SetFile -a B sets the bundle flag, and SetFile -a b clears the bundle flag so it turns back to a regular folder.

Some installers don't do a great job at preserving file attributes, the Arturia and Soundtoys ones in particular have behaved like this a lot of the time, but there are others too.

In some cases, I've had component files that correctly have the bundle flag set (so they are bundles, not folders), but have an incorrect folder icon (I had a couple of Soundtoys ones like this). For those you can copy/paste the correct icon onto it in the usual macOS manner: use get info on a correct icon plugin component, select the icon at the top of the get info window, command-C to copy the icon, then select the file with the incorrect icon, get-info, select the icon, and paste to replace the icon.

(To tell whether it's a folder, or not, you can either try to double-click to open them, or easier, display the finder window in list view, and real folders with have a ">" disclosure triangle in front of their name. If your broken item has a ">", it's a folder, and should be "fixed" with SetFile to set the bundle flag. If it doesn't, it's a bundle with an incorrect icon, so paste a good icon onto it instead to fix it as per above.)

Also, as the OP was suggesting this was specifically a Monterey issue, macOS has acted like this for a long time - there is nothing new in this behaviour in Monterey specifically. I've certainly used this method to "fix" these kinds of things since Sierra, probably even before. It's more a macOS filesystem/Finder thing. Installers sometimes don't update the correct file flags, sometimes cacheing or backup systems can interfere, sometimes Finder can be buggy or lose file attributes, sometimes users copy Mac files onto filesystems which don't support Mac filesystem metadata so it gets lost - there are lots of potential causes for these small issues, but they are not serious, and easily fixable if their appearance is bothersome.

Edited December 21, 2022 by des99
Typo

[AndyS]

10 hours ago, des99 said:

You just need to set the bundle flag on those folders, as that’s the thing that determines whether Finder thinks those are bundles or folders. There’s a terminal command to do this, you can Google for it as I’m not at my computer right now… (or I’ll update the post later when I can.)

Edit: Here you go. (Note, you'll need XCode Developer Tools installed, as SetFile is a developer tool, not installed by default.)

SetFile -a B sets the bundle flag, and SetFile -a b clears the bundle flag so it turns back to a regular folder.

 

Des99, you are a star, Sir!

If I was just around the corner I'd buy you a drink – Hell, I'd buy you 10...

Thank you for such a knowledgable, helpful, and non-judgemental reply. If all forum posts were like yours, the world would be a more informed place. I salute you.

Interesting to know that this is a long-standing problem – I've been running Mojave 10.4.6 until now, and though it's had it's fair share of hiccups, this particular one hadn't raised it's head.

The only plugins installed to date are Melodyne Studio 5, Revoice Pro4, Soundtoys 5, S-gear and Metric Halo's Production Bundle, all of which failed to set the correct icon.

As you say, copy-paste would probably be the simplest route, but I'll try the terminal route you suggested first. If I mess up, I can simply erase and reinstall.

If I do take the copy-paste route, perhaps I could copy from the Mojave backup – or would that be considered bad practice? I keep Image2icon handy for custom icons and coloured folder icons. Helps me to organise/search more effectively – less time faffing about, more time working. However, ideally, I'd rather have a fresh install of everything rather than port anything over. Call it that 'once-in-in-a-blue-moon' spring-clean.

On that note, I understand from your reply that this is essentially a 3rd-party error rather than an OS install concern, and that another fresh install of Monterey is unlikely to help. I keep a partitioned external SSD aside with bootable installers from sierra to Ventura, though in this case (yesterday) I erased MacHD before clean installing from Apple's Server. Can problems be introduced when downloading/installing from a server? If so, would using a bootable installer and updating from there be preferable?

Thanks again Des99. Legend!

 

[des99]

You're welcome!

9 minutes ago, AndyS said:

If I do take the copy-paste route, perhaps I could copy from the Mojave backup

All you are doing is copying the generic icon from another plugin component that is correct, to replace the incorrect folder icon - you should have a bunch of them already in the same plugin folder, I'm sure. If you want to copy some specific icon from any other file, regardless of where it's from, you can of course do that too. It doesn't matter what file you copy the icon from, you're just getting the icon image from it, that's all.

You don't need to update your OS, and it would be a waste of time and change nothing about those extra third-party files you've added/installed - a re-install of the OS would leave those alone, and their file attributes would remain as they are now, unless you wanted to do a nuke-and-pave thing and completely erase the machine and start again from scratch - again, a waste of time and effort, imo, and likely the issue would come back when you reinstall the third-party software anyway, solving nothing.

Honestly, it's not really an issue at all - and if you never even looked in your plugin directory, you'd never realise any of the components had an incorrect icon or bundle flag, everything would still work fine. Fixing them is mostly just for OCD-satisfaction, really.... 😉 

There's nothing you're doing wrong, and you can't change the actions of a third-party installer - but at least you now know the fixes if they are needed. 👍

Edited December 21, 2022 by des99

[fisherking]

btw, am not judgemental, just... highly opinionated. anyway, whatever works for you is right for you 👍