I keep getting a purple debugging window around Photos

I really hope someone has an answer to this problem. There's zero information on the internet about this purple window and I've got exactly the same text and widow as Zoe. The Photos app has been playing up after upgrading to El Capitan, which is a bugger...

I am seeing this horrible purple frame usually after I tried to open a life image created with Cinemagraph pro.

Do you also see this purple frame after trying to open a video or life images? The frame states it is a debug message, but I am seeing it on macs that are not running a developer version of El Capitan,

I keep getting this too. Seems to occur when I view video captured with a Sony A6000 camera with XAVC codec:

Also get an odd scaling/ruler pattern on the video when it previews it on hover:

I just got the same thing after importing photos from my wife iPhone.

The ? seemed to suggest some terminal commands to perform, but I was not sure about doing that.

David A. Nimmer wrote:

I just got the same thing after importing photos from my wife iPhone.

The ? seemed to suggest some terminal commands to perform, but I was not sure about doing that.

The Terminal command will change the defaults for the<<domain>> to suppress the logging of this debug message. replace <<com.apple.Photos>> by com.apple.Photos

I entered

defaults delete com.apple.Photos NSConstraintBasedLayoutVisualizeMutuallyExclusiveConstraints

in the Terminal and then restarted the Finder by using Force Quit from the  menu. You could also simply restart the Mac after entering the Terminal command.

After that the purple debug background and the strange pattern on the video thumbnail did not longer appear when I opened a Cinemagraph Pro video

I'm getting this as well, randomly in Photos El Cap.

I shouldn't really be seeing a debugging window in a shipping OS - pretty disappointed.

Thank you Léonie -- your suggestion seems to have worked for me!

TThanks, restarting the finder was the missing piece for me!

I get this purple window too. I have the impression it is more likely to appear when I interact with videos in Apple Photos.

Thanks for the confirmation, ngpepin1 and David.

I just noticed, I should have mentioned that the Terminal command needs to be typed onto one single line, even if the forum software is breaking it up into two lines:

defaults delete com.apple.Photos NSConstraintBasedLayoutVisualizeMutuallyExclusiveConstraints

Do we need to be in a specific directory for this command to work? I tried it at my home directory and then in ~/Library/Preferences where the other com.apple files are but in both places I get the response

Domain (com.apple.Photos) not found.

Defaults have not been changed.

Got this sporadically earlier but now I'm tapping a video and getting the purple debug mode every time I go to the video.

Figured it out. You need to quit Photos before you issue the command, and restart the Finder.

I have this window when Photos has an iPhone plugged in. This seems like a hangover from a beta.

Hello, Apple. Anyone home? Does Apple really expect non-techs wives and little grammas with their Macbook Airs to start running commands in Terminal windows?

For me, it's not that I need to know how to fix it, more that Apple shouldn't have released El Capitan with all these glitches and not admit to it and be trying to fix all the problems. The Photos app has many problems. The most annoying for meat the moment, more so than the purple, is when zooming into a photo and it remains pixelated. This happens a lot, though I've had no response from a week ago when I posted about the problem. Anyone else notice this?

Andywhistle wrote:

For me, it's not that I need to know how to fix it, more that Apple shouldn't have released El Capitan with all these glitches and not admit to it and be trying to fix all the problems. The Photos app has many problems. The most annoying for meat the moment, more so than the purple, is when zooming into a photo and it remains pixelated. This happens a lot, though I've had no response from a week ago when I posted about the problem. Anyone else notice this?

I haven't seen this. But my (and many other people's) email stopped working. I've had to go to another mail app instead of Apple's Mail.

Crazy.