Is AEServer from Apple?

hands4 wrote:

Is AEServer part of the MacOS?

You can always right-click or command-click on those items. That will display a "Show in Finder" button. When you click on it, it will open a Finder window with the file selected. In this case, the file is deep within Apple's read-only operating system. So you can be sure it is safe.

It appears to be something Apple added to increase Security and Privacy >> Accessibility with no indication of where it came from or why I should or should not enable it.

It's the Apple Events Server. It has been around about as long as the Mac OS has supported remote Apple Events.

The AEServer was not added to increase Security and Privacy, but Apple added more security controls to it.

While it was created to handle Apple Events sent from remote Macs, I don't think it is necessarily remote Macs, anymore, but "remote" applications, too. I don't know if you can find anything that supports that statement, but I have no idea why it would be running without getting input from remote Macs.

hands4 wrote:

Right clicking is good, but still not obvious. IMHO, they are increasingly expecting technical knowledge that "meer mortals" simply don't have. As in this case, these can be something new and weird that should remain hidden unless needed.

I agree. There are quite a few similar behaviours in modern Apple operating systems. I don't know most of them. I'm surprised when someone mentioned them and then I forget it right away.

One I do remember is the hidden menu in Mail. There is a grey line between the header fields and the message content. If you mouse your pointer to the middle of the grey line, a hidden menu appears. You can delete, reply, reply all, forward, and most importantly, directly access any message attachments. Normally attachments are icons unless then can be represented as an image. But if they are an image (or image-like) then it can be difficult to find all of the attachments that may be scattered about and in various forms. This hidden menu makes it easy.

I consider myself to be reasonably schooled in Mac stuff. This is why I chose to question this odd new item. I worked on "It Just Works" in the Apple's Advanced Technology Group in the '80s. We were charged with choosing stuff that was important and difficult and making them Just Work.

I chose to research data protection. I created "Replicant" that silently backed up thousands of engineer's Mac each night. For restores, it presented them with a Finder window of a folder they chose and from a date that interested them. The engineers used if for a decade. I'm not sure how much Replicant influenced Time Machine. TM was a huge step forward in IJW! It Just Works to setup, backup, and restore (particularly when restoring from full data loses or to new Macs). Amazing.

That's cool! Have you ever looked at the "asr" command-line utility? In theory, it is supposed to be a way to backup and restore APFS containers.

And you have to decode what the heck is the function and value of "Optimize Mac Storage." (They try to explain that using a technical new rather than a function and value one.) I've helped people set it up. They had no clues regarding how and why.

I have a similar pet peeve about that control. The description is simply not true. If "Optimize Mac Storage" is enabled, you absolutely will not download the entire contents of your iCloud data, no matter how much free space you have.

AEServer explained - Apple Community