“Source:” Drop down Menu in Screensaver gone Missing

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“Source:” Drop down Menu in Screensaver gone Missing

After Uninstalling the Aerial screensaver from GitHub on my iMac macOS Big Sur 11.6, when selecting anything above the default screen savers, Ken Burns, Classic, etc., The “Source:” drop down menu and option to “Shuffle slide order” have disappeared, gone, and can only select Flurry, Drift, etc. Desktop selections are all functioning normally.

With the help of a few here we have run out of ideas working on this the past week. Even Apple Support and delegated to a Senior Advisor with screen sharing sessions lasting a few hours this has now been sent to engineering, which will take about a week to schedule a session, as I’m seven hours away from the nearest Apple store.

Creating a new “User” and screensaver functions normally.

Safe mode, deleting preferences plist(of interest a new plist is not created) nor a TM Recover of plist(all 69 bytes), reinstalling Big Sur from Recovery Partition, and finally deleting User and creating new User bringing over Home folder did not fix. Resetting Home folder permissions in Recovery Partition also did not fix. Grrr 😖…

If anyone has discovered what might fix this, some members would be most grateful, as found this has occurred to other members’ from similar postings, with members’ suggestions already listed here.

Best, Seth

Posted on Oct 17, 2021 3:41 AM

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Seth77 Author

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Oct 17, 2021 6:32 AM in response to Seth77

After nearly 10 days, with the several folks here spending a lot of time assisting me, and give them much thank you’s! Also spent several hours in screen sharing sessions with Apple Support. I finally fixed it and the source selection drop-down menu has returned.

I knew I must’ve accidentally deleted some essential file when trying to delete the Aerial screensaver from GitHub, or left behind some orphan files from that screensaver, preventing screen saver from functioning. I found a least 20 orphan files that I deleted, even after I did an uninstall following their directions on their website for the screensaver. I was not happy about that. When you do an uninstall it should not leave behind over 20 orphan files on your boot drive.

What I did was use the app called “Find Any File“, comparing the two home folders from two users, my usual one where it didn’t work, and on a new user I created where the screen saver did function. It was necessary to remove a number of files, and add about four or five files that were missing.

I didn’t even have to do a reboot, and opened system preferences, went to screen saver and it was blank, but after a few seconds the source menu appeared and photos was already selected. However nothing showed and it was frozen and I could not get the pop-up menu to work. I recalled that it takes some time for the photos to load, so I just left it for 10 or 15 minutes and after 30 minutes came back, and all the pictures were in the little preview window changing randomly, as I had selected previously, and worked perfectly.

Again I think all of you that assisted me here this past week, especially Louis on this form and Desmond senior Apple advisor.

Best, Seth

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“Source:” Drop down Menu in Screensaver gone Missing

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