MacOS Monterey Bug: Dialogue Boxes Will Not Dismiss on Option Choice

OK, a bit of headway - at least I don't have to restart my computer when this happens. Following the ideas here:

https://superuser.com/questions/902869/how-to-identify-which-process-is-running-which-window-in-mac-os-x

I found out that the application that is running the dialog boxes is "UserNotificationCenter". I was then able to find that in the Activity Monitor app and quit it. The dialog box disappeared. Not a long term solution, but at least better than restarting!

Your drive is getting quite full. Even though there is 33GB of space free, that is way less than 10% of the drive. Consider clearing some space.

/Library/Application Support/Samsung/Samsung DeX/Samsung USB Driver/ssud_installation

[Loaded] ssuddrv.kext - com.devguru.driver.SamsungComposite (DEVGURU Co., Ltd., 1.4.42 - SDK 10.6)

This is old and totally unnecessary. Your mac can perfectly well work with your external drives without the manufacturers' software, which is often a cause of trouble.

[Loaded] LoginHelper (FIPLAB Ltd - installed 2022-05-27)

Modern Login Item

/Applications/Memory Clean 2.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/LoginHelper.app

Applications that try to "clean" or "purge" memory should NEVER be used on any version of the OS since OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

They cause a huge performance decrease, and fight against the way the OS manages RAM, potentially also causing crashes.

Security:

Gatekeeper: App Store and identified developers

System Integrity Protection: Enabled

¨Antivirus software: Apple and CleanMyMac

This hideous piece of **** should never be let near any mac.

Completely uninstall this - it is not enough just to drag to the trash, you will have to follow their instructions for uninstalling.

I get the same problem when I try to mount encrypted dmg files. Monterey will display the dialog box asking for the password -- but often the dialog box won't close after I enter the password.

The way I kill the dialog box is to run an executable shell script that contains the following line:

ps -e | grep UserNotificationCenter | grep app | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill -9

However, there's still the problem of how to mount the disk image. For that, I've been using hdiutil, a command-line utility. It gets the job done, but it's pretty awkward.

If anyone at Apple wants to look into this, I'd be happy to share some system diagnostics.

I am getting this constantly system-wide on at many pieces of software. This happens regularly, where crashed programs should allow you to "Reopen, Report or Close" (something like that) and clicking DOES NOTHING. It happens regularly on programs trying to request access to a folder such as "Downloads" and clicking DOES NOTHING.

This is happening on my Macbook Pro M1 and on my Macbook Pro M1 Max. The only way I was able to get rid of it was by rebooting. So yeah, I'm rebooting constantly...

A user below suggested killing the UserNotificationCenter process and that is a lot easier than rebooting.

So Apple shouldn't point to 3rd party software as being culpable. It's not likely that so many different vendors have a problem and Apple doesn't.

I created a script in my home directory and put the following command suggested below by another user in the file.

ps -e | grep UserNotificationCenter | grep app | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill -9

In order to try and find out what's wrong with your system, we need more information.

Please run Etrecheck and post its full report here. Use the "additional text" button and paste the report into the text box.

Any Third Party Applications that will interfere with the normal operation of the OS, alter, modify, remove or delete or attempt to do so is an invitation for disaster and comprising the Operating System

It may require a Reinstallation of the OS in-order to replace any modified, altered, removed or corrupted elements of the OS this software has inflicted on this computer 

Any of the below should be removed as per Developers Instructions 

This will include CleanMyMac and do ready some of the many posting specific to this Application

I have a similar situation with this dialogue box:

Report you issue to Apple via Feedback - macOS - Apple.  

Presumably, this should appear if you are trying to save a file to your Desktop folder (or a subfolder thereof), and if you click OK, then it should never again appear - for the same application and the Desktop.

If you escape, it is the same as "Don't Allow", so next when you again try to save, you are shown the same dialog.

To summarize: click OK since, presumably, it is you who are doing the save; or save somewhere else.

I can guarantee that it is probably not the case for this particular problem.

I confirm very serious exact issue and I reboot my computer multiple times per week because of this.

I don't have any malware like CleanMyMac, only installed macFUSE (in very remotely similar category but not really), I think it required temporarily disabling SIP protection... I uninstalled macFUSE to see if the issue would go away.

It did not, I cannot even install something like CyberDuck from appstore without reboots, see:

Cannot click on either button, or close the dialog... I'm stuck with this until reboot.

This is without any malware, with freshly installed copy of macOS Monterey 12.4 on my new M2 MBP.

It gets even better:

cannot click on these buttons either. After reboot I can go here:

And see the entry as if I disallowed access to folders the problem was asking me... I could now enable this access and I kind of would have something resembling a working system (with additional hassle).

So:

• there is a serious issue in latest macOS
• malware suggestions are an easy way to blame something else
• if something serious and well used like macFUSE could have caused this, then it's still Monterey problem since it allowed external software to screw up the core of OS ... I don't think this is the case as explained, I think it's a serious bug in coding in core OS component

People recommending a separate thread and working for Apple should instead show all this info to someone serious who can actually look into the problem instead.

I'd gladly provide some more system diagnostics on this thread if requested, let me know what you need.

Cheers!

"I get the same problem when I try to mount encrypted dmg files. Monterey will display the dialog box asking for the password - but often the dialog box won't close after I enter the password."

Ha! First time I've seen mention of this aspect of the problem. I have a similar problem when trying to mount disk images I've created. Old sparse ones work fine; newer non-sparse images won't mount (I enter the correct password, but nothing happens when I try to go further), and the dialog box won't go away. I hope Apple is aware of this problem...

Again, Tell Apple in detail about your problem via Feedback - macOS - Apple.  

When I get one I just move it to one of the corners of the screen so it's mostly off screen. Since I shutdown every night they go away on the next boot.

Thanks for your reply - however no this is not about the actual message being displayed by the dialogue prompt - It is a system wide issue that I am having irrespective of the context. Here's another instance of this glitch that has just occurred on my MBP17. Really is quite frustrating. As I said some can be dismissed with the esc key others like both of these just stay on screen until a Log Out event. To summarise the issue is at the OS level where whatever boolean flag implemented to dismiss the prompt is not carrying out the UI updates needed to pop this view off the view stack.

Thanks for sharing. I agree that Monterrey should not allow this to happen in the first place, regardless of whether than external app is doing it or not. Definitely a bug in the underlying core. Would be nice to narrow down the cause.

I am having the same issue on TWO different computers, both running Monterey. My mackbook pro, I just installed monterey and now am having dialog boxes that I cannot close by clicking "OK" or "Don't Allow". Escape works for some dialog boxes but not others.

The other computer is a BRAND NEW out of the box Mac Studio with practically no other software installed on it, but this is still happening. I'm having to restart just to get rid of the dialog boxes... until the next one appears. Here is a screenshot of the current one on my laptop.

I called the Apple help line today, spoke with someone for 5 minutes before she concluded she had no idea and put me in queue for someone higher up the chain, but I hung up after an hour of waiting.

Any ideas????