charhandler

Q: OS X asks Where is FinderSyncAPIExtension on startup

Hi, I just reinstalled OS X Yosemite on my 2012 Macbook Pro (not a clean install, just an OS reinstall) and now immediately after logging in I'm getting a prompt to find this application in finder. Does anyone know where it is in the file system? Searching for it did nothing.

Thanks.

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Posted on Mar 24, 2015 9:21 AM

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Q: OS X asks Where is FinderSyncAPIExtension on startup

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  • by muadib20,Solvedanswer

    muadib20 muadib20 Mar 24, 2015 12:58 PM in response to charhandler
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Desktops
    Mar 24, 2015 12:58 PM in response to charhandler

    I believe that extension is for Google drive. Do you have Drive installed on your computer and in your systemui bar?

  • by Bud Tanton,Helpful

    Bud Tanton Bud Tanton Apr 8, 2015 1:36 PM in response to charhandler
    Level 1 (90 points)
    Apr 8, 2015 1:36 PM in response to charhandler

    And it can be found here:

    /Applications/Google Drive.app/Contents/PlugIns/FinderSyncAPIExtension.appex/Contents/MacOS/FinderSy ncAPIExtension

  • by danaschwartz,Helpful

    danaschwartz danaschwartz Apr 9, 2015 10:37 AM in response to Bud Tanton
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Apr 9, 2015 10:37 AM in response to Bud Tanton

    How do you select that file? 

  • by Bud Tanton,Helpful

    Bud Tanton Bud Tanton Apr 10, 2015 5:18 AM in response to danaschwartz
    Level 1 (90 points)
    Apr 10, 2015 5:18 AM in response to danaschwartz

    You don't. I just provided the path so that people could see for themselves that it is a Google Drive extension. For me, just relaunching Google Drive corrected the problem. I have an Automator script to do that since Google Drive loses its connection virtually every day and many times it happens multiple times/day. I just run my restart script to quit and start GD again. Doing this has gotten rid of the error described above the two or three times I've seen it.

  • by muadib20,

    muadib20 muadib20 Apr 10, 2015 7:22 AM in response to danaschwartz
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Desktops
    Apr 10, 2015 7:22 AM in response to danaschwartz

    Right-click on the Google drive application in the system wide Applications folder, then select show package contents. Then navigate to Contents/PlugIns/FinderSyncAPIExtension.appex

    Do that the next time OS X asks you for the location, it should work if I am remembering what I did correctly.

  • by Nickholl,

    Nickholl Nickholl Apr 17, 2015 3:44 AM in response to muadib20
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 17, 2015 3:44 AM in response to muadib20

    i get this message every time i log into good drive recently (it seems to coincide with swapping to a corporate account).  Navigating to the package contents doesn't seem to do anything.

     

    Has anybody figured out the cause of this?

     

    thanks a lot!

  • by mcsavva,

    mcsavva mcsavva Apr 21, 2015 5:11 AM in response to Nickholl
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 21, 2015 5:11 AM in response to Nickholl

    I had the same problem and I checked the contents of the /Applications/Google Drive.app/Contents/PlugIns/FinderSyncAPIExtension.appex just to make sure it was still there.

     

    I think I created this problem because I deleted the com.apple.finder.plist file suggested for fixing something else. That file is in ~/Library/Preferences/ and it seems that it holds information about Google Drive which could make sense that when deleted I started getting this problem. Since you switched accounts the com.apple.finder.plist probably still holds the old info about google drive.

     

    Once I quit and restarted the Google Drive application everything got fixed for me.


    So I would suggest to quit the Google Drive application, delete the com.apple.finder.plist (or move it to the desktop temporarily just in case it creates another issue) and then restart the Google Drive application.

     

    I hope this works for you

  • by Nickholl,

    Nickholl Nickholl Apr 21, 2015 5:14 AM in response to mcsavva
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 21, 2015 5:14 AM in response to mcsavva

    mmm.. i don't seem to have that file for some reason :-/  but...  I'm not being bugged by that message either recently - not sure why, perhaps somethings just rectified itself

  • by Nickholl,

    Nickholl Nickholl Apr 21, 2015 1:07 PM in response to Nickholl
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 21, 2015 1:07 PM in response to Nickholl

    scrap that - its still popping up on my mac at home   however, I can't even find the preferences folder within library let along that file. Any ideas where it may be?

     

    thanks

  • by mcsavva,

    mcsavva mcsavva Apr 21, 2015 6:43 PM in response to Nickholl
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 21, 2015 6:43 PM in response to Nickholl

    So the preferences folder is hidden and you will not see it in the Finder. The way to find it is to select the menu "Go to Folder..." from the "Go" menu of Finder. There just type ~/Library/Preferences. Then you should be able to look for the com.apple.finder.plist file

  • by Rozak,

    Rozak Rozak Dec 16, 2015 2:04 AM in response to charhandler
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Dec 16, 2015 2:04 AM in response to charhandler

    Just a word of caution, if you respond to the dialogue box that is asking where the API extension is by navigating through to 'Applications/GoogleDrive' do NOT double click the Google Drive application, it screws finder terminally

  • by Kooby1,

    Kooby1 Kooby1 Dec 22, 2015 1:56 PM in response to Rozak
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 22, 2015 1:56 PM in response to Rozak

    When it asks you to find the extension, just point it to the Google Drive App in Applications. It seems to have worked for me (for now).

  • by Rozak,

    Rozak Rozak Dec 23, 2015 1:51 AM in response to Kooby1
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Dec 23, 2015 1:51 AM in response to Kooby1

    just to re-state - this absolutely screwed up my finder. The symptoms were that after doing this it looked fine, but after a reboot the finder went into permanent and continuous crash and restart loop (was only obvious by looking at the Force Quit dialogue box and seeing the Finder application flash in and out continually). That was happening on every user on the system.

     

    I followed the usual 'trash Finder preferences etc' fix, tricky to do without a working Finder (had to be done by booting Mac in single user mode - and thats not pleasant on a 5k iMac screen - talk about small point size!). That however in my case failed to resolve the issue - I gave up at that point and decided just to restore from the latest Time Machine backup (life is too short).

     

    In my tale of woe - that failed to restore correctly (unable to write to the internal Fusion drive when booting from the recovery partition.. this was with the latest patched OS El Cap with the recovery mode changes just introduced) but it failed only after trashing the partition table on the Fusion drive (symptom you see the Fusion drive in Disk Utils but it is not a destination drive for anything in Time Machine restore and Disk Utils just shows the raw drive entry, not the partitioned or formatted drive)... end result a totally dead un-bootable Mac with no recovery possible using standard point and click tools in recovery or Internet recovery boot.

     

    Fix was ultimately to boot the Mac in local recovery mode, fire up terminal, remove the raid bonding on the Fusion partition table (found a useful article on the support forums that talks about Fusion drive partition table manipulation), switch to disk utils, let it fix the partition table, flick to restore from Time Machine... couple of hours later Mac was back up and working.

     

    Not saying that all this was due to pointing at Google Drive, but trashing the Finder certainly was down to that, and from there it gets really hard to try and fix things...

  • by GolfHotel,Helpful

    GolfHotel GolfHotel Feb 2, 2016 3:56 AM in response to charhandler
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Feb 2, 2016 3:56 AM in response to charhandler

    This typically occurs when you have google drive installed and more than one google drive identity. The conflict occurs when drive cant determine which files to synch when you are logged into more than one account.

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