Clock app showing blank and unresponsive interface in macOS Tahoe (26.0+)

NotationMaster wrote:

Man, you are a bloody genius!

This restored the Clock app to perfection! It also restored all my saved timers from before!!

Curiously, there were two files in that location, one as you spelled it and one without the final 'd' character, which I didn't touch. The one you suggested had a quite suspicious size of 6.8 MB! Upon dragging it out to the Desktop (and with the Clock app still quit), the library recreated it under my eyes without having to reopen the app.

Now the new plist is 1 KB (yes kilo!) in size.

I'm glad it's resolved. This one was harder than most.

Interesting that no official advisor thought about looking for this when I told them "the log says that the Clock app is trying to continuously create a 0ms timer and killing it and recreating it in a loop". They thought better to erase and restore the Mac, which I just won't do at this point! :-)

And guess what: if you'd erased and then migrated back, the problem would have remained the same.

Usually, these problems disappear in Safe Mode, which means there is a third party software involved.

This was NOT the case here.

Also, it did not affect other users, so it had to be something within your account.

I have learned from experience that corrupted preference files can and do make applications crash or behave in strange ways. Final Cut Pro is a prime example, so much that "deleting preferences" has become the usual number one troubleshooting step.

That is why I previously suggested trying to delete com.apple.clock.plist (which in your case apparently did not exist).

Then how did I come to find the real problem?

This has worked with other apps before:

1) Open the ~/Library/Preferences folder, and set it to List View and showing most recently modified files at the top

2) Make changes in the application in question, and keep looking at which files appear near the top of the list.

This is how I came upon com.apple.mobiletimerd.plist

I had no idea this file even existed until I started to test this.

Let me know if you are ever in NW Italy, I will gladly invite you to the best pizza place ever!

PS: is there a way to mark this answer as correct?

Thank you! I am in Portugal, and maybe I will come to Italy sometime. I was there the last time in 2007. Boy, how time passes!

You cannot mark it as correct, but you can upvote it. There used to be such possibility but this was changed a while ago.

PPS: would seeing the corrupted plist be useful to you or anyone? I will not trash it for now.

I don't think so. It is an extremely long xml file, which could be somehow malformed, and parts of it will maybe be loooooong strings of hexadecimal codes. Even if one were to pore over it and find an unbalanced tag, it would be nearly impossible to determine how that came to happen.

One thing that made this hard to figure out is that it was the first time, at least that I know of, that this problem has been reported here. Should this happen again, we'll know what to do :-)

I tested some more, and I found a file that is used to store information about timers and alarms.

If this file happens to be corrupted, I reckon it could cause all sorts of trouble in the Clock application.

So I suggest you try me previous advice, but moving aside the file com.apple.mobiletimerd.plist.

Specifically:

In Finder, press Command-Shift-G and paste

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mobiletimerd.plist

and then move this file out of the folder, and try Clock again.

NotationMaster wrote:

Hello!

Have you had a chance to see my Etrecheck report?

I can see that there have been multiple crashes.

There are many user launch agents and login items.

There is nothing obviously bad that I can see.

There is one simple thing that you can try and, if it does not work, then at least there was no harm done.

Some apps may misbehave if their plist files have become corrupted.

Make sure that the Clock application is not running.

In Finder, press Command-Shift-G and paste

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.clock.plist

Drag the file out of the folder (put it in Trash, or park it on the Desktop for now).

Start Clock. Any changes?

If the problem is fixed, great. If not, and if you so desire, you can put that plist file back, replacing the one that was created automatically.

Clearly something is broken in your account.

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

Yes, I missed it.

SInce it works in a new account why not use the account that works?

https://www.stclairsoft.com/AppTamer/

[Running] com.stclairsoft.AppTamer.Helper.plist (St. Clair Software - installed 2024-11-04)

Let the Operating System manages the process that are running on the machine

To try and make a parallel

Some users like to keep the Unified RAM as clean as possible

To active this, some will use a Memory Cleaner

In effect, the Third Party Memory Cleaner tries to Empty the Unified RAM while the Operating System try to utilize ALL the available Unified RAM

Just to cents here

Test while in Safe Mode.

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

If it works in Safe Mode something you have installed is causing the problem.

NotationMaster wrote:

I totally agree with you on letting macOS manage processes but when certain Adobe apps get crazy hungry, I wanted something to tame them. This app saved my older Intel Mac and you are probably right that, on Apple Silicon, this is no longer needed. I have no other 3rd-party cleaner, or anti-virus especially not that paw one.

Ah. the old Adobe apps go crazy

On that specific issue.

I best " keep my powder dry "

Regarding “there is no such file in my library”: are you sure you looked at the right Library folder? The tilde character is part of the path. If you happened to leave it out, you’d end up in the general Library and not the one inside your home folder.

And I totally agree with Owl_53 that any “cleaners” should be completely avoided. Sorry I missed that before.

NotationMaster wrote:

Interesting that no official advisor thought about looking for this when I told them "the log says that the Clock app is trying to continuously create a 0ms timer and killing it and recreating it in a loop". They thought better to erase and restore the Mac, which I just won't do at this point! :-)

Official Advisor from Apple ?

From what I have experienced and seen.

They are generally good at general issues

Digging down into these types of issues like .plist files corruptions

No so much so

In part, this is some of the reasons these Forums exist

When a person like my colleague gets involved, there is some special " Magic " that occurs

As for marking a posting as Solved?

The old Solved, Helpful and Apple Recommend Moniker was Dropped in December 2023

Replaced by the Voting System