Help undoing Onyx settings?
 

Used 2.8.5 on a brand-new install of Mavericks and suddenly I have no spotlight and a "simple" finder..which seems to equate to my hands tied behind my back!

I did not consciously choose that..any clue how to restore my machine to normalcy? I tried clicking "restore defaults" but that did nothing.

Thanks for any help..

a

In Onyx, go to the Parameters section, then...

1) under the Spotlight tab, make certain Turn On Indexing The Startup Disk;

2) under the Finder tab, have Show/Hide Interface Level Switching checked.

It's possible you'll need to restart the Mac (or just log out) for the changes to take effect.

NaOH;

Those things already WERE checked. I restarted the Mac and I'm still in Onyx wackyville..

how totally @&!& am I with this thing?

Do I need to reformat and re-install to get back my normal-acting Mac?

Try unchecking and re-checking them.

did that but only partial sanity was restored.

still have the worthless Apple menu without all the normal items there. You know, things like "restart"

and now I have to provide admin credentials for doing ANYthing!

I feel like I should be seeing an option to enable/disable those Apple menu items. For now, make certain you're running the latest version of Onyx—2.8.5.

Under Parameters > Login, is your Startup Mode pop-up menu (near the bottom of the window) set to Normal?

It is.
Swear.
2.8.5

Now the normal Apple menu is back. No clue how it was restored...no clue how it was borked.

There should be - spelled out clearly - anything that would affect the Apple menu or any other aspect of the OS. Nothing said "Simple Finder" or "Make Spotlight Icon and function disappear."

Now I am afraid to cleanse this machine of all traces of that thing for fear I'll need it to shut off things I didn't even know I turned on!

I'd never noticed, but the Help menu does give details. Unfortunately, it looks like it needs updating since Show/Hide Interface Level Switching is described as Simple Finder.

You probably do not need any convincing ...

It should be noted that system mods, hackcies etc. are neither needed or recommended for most users the majority of the time.

Some of these utilities merely provide an interface for terminal commands that can be run and turn certain features ON/OFF that Apple has chosen not to provide access to because they did not feel they were of value or appropriate for most users.

Other utilities make mods or "clean up". The latter of which Apple is pretty good about doing itself.

I would say if someone has a concern or problem they should search for a solution to the problem online or Ask Apple first, not download programs that claim to solve problems or provide solutions that may not be needed and can provide at the very least unintended results.

JMHO...

The developper runs an english section in his support forum and seems to be pretty responsive:

http://www.titanium.free.fr/viewforum.php?f=8

It looks like Onyx is basically a wrapper for Terminal commands written in AppleScript.

Note that it keeps its log here:

~/Library/Logs/OnyX.log

There are seemingly still some issues with the Mavericks version and there's a beta available. You might want to check if that fixes the issue.

Yeah..I'm done...

You should be able to turn off the Simple Finder in System Preferences > Parental Controls.

should be able to. I went there last night and discovered that nothing there had been enabled. seems to be controlled in onyx by something called "Show the interface level switching"

de-checking this appears to have finally returned the normal Finder menus..

never again...never, ever ever ever...

Does this mean/include NOT to use terminal commands to influence things which Apple hasn't provided access to?

Mainly I'm into doing just a couple of things:

deep sixing all animation of the interface, and controlling when the dock appears...the latter done by giving a very long "appear" time.

I just find that the leaping dock and an overly-produced OS X experience get old real quick and slow down "flow"

I've never been troubled by any of the animated effects in OS X, even though I see a lot of pages about how to turn them off. I barely notice them, even on ageing hardware.
To be honest, I probably couldn't tell you what features are animated and never found myself waiting for one to finish.

At least it's a lot easier to debug when you use the Terminal as we saw in the recent Dock-thread of yours.
If you know what exactly got tinkered with, it's a lot easier to figure it out.
And as a last resort, you can come here, tell us about the offending command and have the others take a swing at it.

It's nice to wrap it all up in a good-looking AppleScript.app as long as it works.
But as it's not telling you what it did behind your back, you're completely on your own if anything goes wrong.

Been using TinkerTool and TinkerTool System for a few tweaks/maintenance. I'm hooked on setting the icons of hidden apps in the Dock to a grayed out state, and not writing .DS_store files to network volumes. Other than those, I stay away from most tweaks.

I use TTS to reset the launch services database, which is a long sore point with me.

[whine_on]
Why can't Apple figure out that apps on a clone drive that are duplicates of apps on the system drive don't belong in the Open With… menu?
[/whine_off]

In general, agree completely there's a risk to plist tweaks.

First I think terminal commands look "scary" to the Novice so there is a protection/speed bump...

I do not have an issue generally with Terminal commands because as has been suggested there is generally for every ON, there is an OFF for that command. With a lot of Utilities it is not always clear what your doing.

***That the terminal command exists as a terminal command also generally means its not a true system hack but a non easily accessible system switch.

***** That said one can easily deep six there system if they use them willy nilly. Using a command and giving it SUDO privs could cause one grief if great care is not taken. That said normally you look up a command, why it does and how it turn it on and off.

I can also think of a few areas where a utility might be easier/more reliable. For example while I generally do not think it is advisable to turn on TRIM if your SSD manufacturer does not support it. Using something like Trim Enabler is a hack but it is an easier/safer hack then using the terminal.

Similarly if you have stubborn trash items you can use a number of terminal commands to get the system to behave, but I am not going to pretend that is easier / safer then using TrashIT on individual folders or files.

There are no rules that are simply Black and White, generally:) I just shy people away from the Shiny Util interfaces products that allows Spin, Fold, Mutilate and may be using hacks over switches. Usually it is better to research a problem /concern instead of throw a utility at it. A lot of these utilities say there making your system better, even if there was nothing wrong.

I don't know what Apple's official view is on this,
but usually if something is not documented by the developer (here, Apple)
that means that it is not officially supported.

A lot (most? all?) of these Terminal commands for manipulating plist (defaults) settings are not officially documented by Apple and hence can be considered as unsupported.

Agreed. Apple is never going to support terminal commands because its not Apple friendly way to do things. Undocumented... If MAN pages are there technically Apple put them there:) and did document that far.

I still think the main point is Apple delivers very stable and configurable environments that do not require modding for most users.

I think the first step if you have a concern or need or problem is to research it... or go to the genius bar or call Apple... And of course we all post and share info here and perhaps elsewhere.

I'm not sure, but I don't think many of these settings are documented in man pages. Sure the commands that change the settings are documented but I'm talking about the settings themselves - the names and values of the plist entries.
E.g. if Apple doesn't document that there is a setting for the Dock called 'autohide-delay', then it can be considered as unsupported to change that setting.

Your probably correct.... Probably mostly only the the BSD stuff is in MAN. No idea where people find other commands documented, at least by Apple.

Typically people snoop around in System-related plist-files or run binaries through the Unix strings command to figure out undocumented options, then give it a whirl to find out.

Obviously, you're on your own as you don't know whether it's really working and got yanked from the GUI last minute or whether it's a half-baked attempt meant to show up in the next version when it's fully debugged.

I think that answers the question I was about to ask and that is whether, yeah, you can enter the commands into Terminal and get the single behavior you're after but you run the risk of unintended consequences because that terminal command can affect other things in a painful, nasty way.

You'd think that after 13 years of OS X, Apple would finally offer more control over that dock. I guess it's to just filling out the OS X feedback page.. I and many others just want control over when the dock appears...doesn't seem like a ridiculous thing to implement.

Thanks!

a

I looked around a bit for you. I think instead of modding the dock you should move it out of the way (make it small at put it on the right side) and use another Launcher.... I listed a few below.

Tablauncher

I played with tab launcher (comes in free, paid, and App store version so semi apple blessed). The free version is nice its just an App so it does not mod your system. The free version give you 3 tabbed dock like launchers. Its nice. The paid version does not limit you to 3 tabs.

http://tablauncher.com/index.html

LaunchBar
http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html

Hyper Dock
http://hyperdock.bahoom.com

Good Luck

Thank you that's kind of you to grab that info..I'll keep those alternatives in mind.

a

NP...... The Last one Hyper Dock appears to be more in the mod category since it Mods the Apple Dock. Not a lot of details on what besides window previews.

I think I would stick to tab launcher or Launchbar.

Good Luck