purple border around photos app - disable debugging?

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julian212 Author

Level 1

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purple border around photos app - disable debugging?

My system:

MacBook Pro - Retina - 15 inch - Late 2013 - OSX El Capitan

Since a few a days i have a purple border around my photos app.

When i start the app everything is normal but when i click at a thumbnail the border goes purple.

There some text at the top, just over the 3 buttons (close/minimize):

11 constraints not visualized [Log to Console]

Layout is ambiguous [Exercise Ambiguilty]

Click a constraint to log it to the console

And on the top right:

Why am I seeing this window?

Here is a screenshot:

Does anyone know how to fix this?

Thank you 😉

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)

Posted on Oct 11, 2015 1:10 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

197,279 points

Oct 11, 2015 1:50 PM in response to julian212

Quit Photos.

Lauch the Terminal application from the Applications > Utilities folder.

Enter the command below.

defaults delete com.apple.Photos NSConstraintBasedLayoutVisualizeMutuallyExclusiveConstraints

The command needs to be typed onto one single line without a line break.

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.

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Answer 2

Oct 12, 2015 8:23 PM in response to léonie

I had exactly the same problem and did not understand what the "Purple" message was telling me. But thanks to this answer, I was able to fix it. Thank you.

I would like to know what caused this problem.

Jerry Jerabek

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Answer 3

Oct 12, 2015 8:26 PM in response to julian212

is this a preferred fix? i just got my 27 retina iMac and I'm having this problem.

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Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

197,279 points

Oct 12, 2015 11:40 PM in response to jmalatino93

is this a preferred fix?

The Terminal command is not very risky, but make sure, you enter it exactly. Spelling mistakes in a Terminal command can change something harmless to something completely differently, because there is not much redundancy.

The purple message is a debug message, that should only be visible in a developer Beta version of Photos. Apple probably forgot to disable it before the release of the current public version.

The "defaults" command from the Terminal allows to enable hidden preferences, that are not visible in the Preferences panel.

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