Little house symbol keeps popping up on screen, giving a name, asking to "choose other"

gihamilton wrote:

I'm seeing almost exactly the same problem: I keep getting a small popup (mine has a contact card icon instead of a house) with my name or the option to 'Choose Other...'. Clicking makes it go away but then it soon returns.

I ran an EtreCheck report and hope this report will help diagnose if there's a third-party app/extension causing this. I see an unsigned app from Dropbox running that a Dropbox employee on another forum claims is legit

I've never seen that DropBox file flagged as possible malware before, although I have been seeing EtreCheck reports showing some unsigned files from large developers like Adobe and Google. The other "unsigned" files I'm referring did not list them as possible malware, so something is different with this one. It may be worthwhile uninstalling DropBox by following the developer's instructions and running another EtreCheck report to see if that "unsigned" DropBox file is also removed. If it has been removed, does it make the other problem go away?

Make sure to turn off Google Chrome's browser notifications to see if that makes any difference. Do the same for your other browsers as well.

You haven't rebooted the computer in two months. Try a simple reboot to see if that makes any difference. I would highly recommend to uncheck "Reopen windows when logging in" on the pop-up message as you are rebooting as that will also force those apps to close & relaunch from scratch as well.

Try rebooting into Safe Mode to see if you still encounter the issue.

@HWTech, the reboot did it. Embarrassed I didn’t try that first🤦‍♂️

I very recently started having this same issue. My popup had a phone icon instead of @puzzled571 's house icon or @gihamilton 's contact card icon, and next to it was my name and the word "mobile." Clicking on "choose other" showed all of my contacts, but selecting one closed the whole window with no other apparent effect.

I can't be 100% sure what caused it because I tried a few things. But what appears to have made it stop was signing out of iMessages, then shutting down my Mac and restarting.

After enough time passed without the mysterious popups, I signed back in to iMessages and have still been popup-free for many hours, which is already an improvement. I'll update if things change.

puzzled571 wrote:

I am not using the Home app

At this point, I have no idea why this is happening. The icon on your screenshot is the one for Home, so somehow this must be related.

In case there is something - perhaps a third party extension - causing this window to pop up, you may

want to run Etrecheck and post its report here, so we can have a look and search for something that may look out of place.

More users reporting this on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/1ashegk/random_icloud_contacts_popup_all_the_time/

I'm trying the approach of disabling Siri Suggestions across all apps.

System Settings -> Siri -> Siri Suggestions and Privacy.

This looks like something related to the Home application.

Does the name that appears relate to any of your existing devices (like an Apple TV, or a third party TV set that supports Airplay, or a HomePod, or ...)?

Thanks for that, HWTech, I'm usually good about regular reboots but have slipped recently. Did one at your prompting a couple days ago and so far so good. Thank you!

The first thing that stands out is that symantec/norton stuff. This can only cause trouble, and offers no security.

Third party antivirus are not only useless, but cause many sorts of problems, for zero benefit.

Effective defenses against malware and other threats

Also, although less likely to play a role in the present issue: third party drive manufacturer software is not needed for your mac to use those drives - you have such software from seagate and samsung.

I'm seeing almost exactly the same problem: I keep getting a small popup (mine has a contact card icon instead of a house) with my name or the option to 'Choose Other...'. Clicking makes it go away but then it soon returns. I'm on an iMac running OS Sonoma 14.2.1. The problem happens when opening Google docs or sheets in Chrome as well as in the finder when Chrome isn't running at all. I ran an EtreCheck report and hope this report will help diagnose if there's a third-party app/extension causing this. I see an unsigned app from Dropbox running that a Dropbox employee on another forum claims is legit ... This sure seems like I'm being constantly monitored (by whom?!) to have me confirm who's using my computer. Any ideas or solutions? Screengrab of the pop-up:

I am also seeing this symptom. The pattern is hard to characterise, sometimes every few minutes, sometimes far, far less.

The UI that pops up is identical to the one that appears in Preview when filling a PDF form field that asks for an email address.

The random appearances still happen when Preview is closed.

Hi puzzled571, how did you identify Seagate as the culprit? Was that clear from your EtreCheck report? I'm encountering almost the same problem (just posted details to this thread). Thanks!