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MacOS 12.2.1: Cannot get menus at top of screen to work.

First, this is my first Mac, so be gentle :)


https://youtu.be/OcFz06-MfhQ


Many times, I cannot access menus at the top of the screen to work.


I have a dual monitor system.


When I click on a menu item on one screen, the menu grays out and the menu on the other screen activates.

I then click on that menu and the active menu swaps back to original screen.


Am I missing something or is this an issue?

Mac mini 2018 or later

Posted on Feb 24, 2022 6:06 PM

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Posted on Feb 24, 2022 6:19 PM

What is that "Wacom Desktop Centre" app? Quit those apps. Maybe try booting in Safe Mode (see How to use safe mode on your Mac). If you can't reproduce the problem in Safe Mode, then it is some 3rd party system modification that is interfering.

3 replies

Feb 26, 2022 10:57 AM in response to etresoft

So, that is for my digitizing tablet from Wacom.


Removing those drivers and apps did not fix the issue. I will say that after removing these, my menus did start working again...for a little while. Just had them go away again while using MS Excel. Same behavior. In excel, this also meant that the MS "tabbed toolbar" would not work either.


Not sure I see the point of Safe Mode, if I cannot identify the culprit. Why waste the time...if unidentifiable then might as well reset AGAIN...would be my third factory reset.


As a new Mac user, I really thought I would not have these stability issues. Frustrating.


By the way, since the menus don't work and I am using a bluetooth Logitech keyboard, not sure how to restart the computer. What is the procedure to simply restart/reboot the computer?

Feb 26, 2022 12:35 PM in response to RRTony

RRTony wrote:

Not sure I see the point of Safe Mode, if I cannot identify the culprit. Why waste the time...if unidentifiable then might as well reset AGAIN...would be my third factory reset.

The point is that Safe Mode is a quick and easy way to restart the computer in a mode that closely resembles a factor reset.

As a new Mac user, I really thought I would not have these stability issues. Frustrating.

By the way, since the menus don't work and I am using a bluetooth Logitech keyboard

I think you will find that the problems will likely go away when you stop using these 3rd party system modifications. At this point, you can't even claim to be a Mac user. You are a Mac-Wacom-Logitech user. Are these issues normal for users of Mac-Wacom-Logitech? I don't know. I only have a Mac and I don't have these problems.


Please note that I am NOT saying this is a Wacom or a Logitech issue. I have no idea what is running on your computer. It could be one, or both of these. It could be something else entirely. From your video, your system seems to be working normally except for being unable to maintain the frontmost status of the current app. This suggests that there is some other app that is stealing that frontmost status. Chances are, that focus thief is going to be some app that runs in the background. It just isn't running as far in the background as it is supposed to.

MacOS 12.2.1: Cannot get menus at top of screen to work.

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