El Capitain: Share buttons not working anymore - system wide

No more sharing with Mail, Message, Airdrop,Notes


When I installed El Capitain (Now 10.11.5 ) all went fine.

Recently I noticed the the much appreciated share button would not work anymore.

Symptoms:

  • Click on eg Share with Message or Mail would 1. not bring the result plus 2. render the used window irresponsive (per window in safari). Only closing the entire application restores.
  • checked with other applications: Notes, Safari, Mail, Finder etc. – they show the same problem

Tried solution

found some suggestion in the forum Share Button stop functioning OS X El Capitan and tried option one:

  • No cure
  • Worse: Now the share links to Message and Notes and others disappeared!! And are not even anymore listed when clicking the more button! A new bunch of unwanted social media stuff populated this list instead.
    • How to get those back
    • How to take those unwanted items off the list


Now clueless. Does anyone else have the same problem?

Does someone know how to fix this?

MacBook Air, OS X El Capitan (10.11.5), 8G Ram 500G HD

Posted on Jun 13, 2016 10:40 AM

Reply
10 replies

Jun 14, 2016 3:23 AM in response to Zabadue

There's a problem with your OS X installation. The simplest way, but not the fastest way, to fix it is to reinstall the OS. Unless you're in a hurry or have metered network access, that's what I suggest, especially since I don't know whether there are other problems with the installation. Please back up all data before reinstalling. You won't need the backup unless something goes wrong.

The advanced shortcut below, if it works, may save you some downtime (and the cost of a multi-gigabyte download, if applicable.)

1. Back up all data.

2. Disconnect all external storage devices.

3. Start up in Recovery mode. Select a language, if prompted. The OS X Utilities screen will appear. One of the options is to install OS X. That's not what you're going to do.

4. This step is only necessary if you use FileVault 2. If you don't know what FileVault is, you're not using it. Go to the next step. Otherwise, launch Disk Utility, then select the icon of the FileVault volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name.) It will be nested below another drive icon. Select Unlock from the File menu and enter your login password when prompted. Then quit Disk Utility to be returned to the main screen.

5. Select Get Help Online. Safari will launch. While in Recovery, you'll have no access to your bookmarks, but you won't need them. Load this web page.

6. Triple-click anywhere in the line below to select it:

chflags -R norestricted /V*/*/S*/*/Caches

Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.

7. Quit Safari. You'll be returned to the OS X Utilities screen.

From the menu bar, select

Utilities Terminal

The Terminal application will launch. Paste into the Terminal window by pressing the key combination command-V.

Wait for a new line ending in a hash sign (#) to appear. Quit Terminal to be returned to the main screen.

8. Select

Restart

from the menu bar.

9. This step must be carried out after the restart and while you're logged in as an administrator—not in Recovery mode. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.

Select and copy this line as in Step 6:

sudo /usr/libexec/xpchelper --rebuild-cache

Paste into a Terminal window as before. You'll be prompted for your login password. Nothing will be displayed when you type it. Type carefully and then press return. If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before you can run the command. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. Confirm. You don't need to post the warning.

If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator. Log in as one and start this step over. You don't have to repeat the earlier steps.

Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) to appear below what you entered.

10. Do as in Step 9 with this line:

sudo /usr/libexec/*/app_sandbox_cache_builder --rebuild-cache

You can then quit Terminal.



See, however: Mystery - LaunchDaemon respawning issue

Jun 14, 2016 5:29 AM in response to Linc Davis

Haven't had any other problem with El Capitan so far. I have Xcode and the (non-apple) Java 8.91 running.

To avoid all this re-installing I shall follow your second instruction - after the backup.

  • But I found the same problem as in your other link mentioned Mystery - LaunchDaemon respawning issue.(Besides different file dates all numbers of the test match).
  • Found console messages related to my problem - actually quite some dozens

2016-06-14 13:05:06,805 pkd[58146]: plug-in sdk "com.apple.share-services" not registered

Does this tell you anything different?

And: Love your detailed instructions...

Jun 14, 2016 6:43 AM in response to Linc Davis

Hey this is great. After Backup followed your second, advanced instructions:

  • it did the trick: all Share Button options functionally restored
  • just took 5 min
  • did not have to mess around with the SIP
  • I am running a non-Admin account. Thus in Terminal I did first

su AdminName

then your two sudo commands.

worked seamlessly


Thank you again for the skillful and profound help - without the overkill of reinstalling my El Capitan / El Capitain (reminds me too much of my windows time)

BTW: Noticed I misspelled the header of the question. Can't see how to change it now. Thus people may not find your helpful advice. Is there a way to correct the question spelling?

Jun 15, 2016 9:34 AM in response to Linc Davis

Thank you very much for your solution, It worked really fine and now I can share again everything.

Your procedure was able to fix also the share with dropbox, with all the options (share, copy dropbox link...) again up!


As soon as I noticed the "share" problems, I started also to have problem with right head of my macbook pro retina mid 2012, intel hd graphic 4000, which started to croak when playing music; do you think it is a pure coincidence or with the upgrade to 10.11.5 intel graphic 4000 is no more supported?

Since last update, as you can read, I am having a lot of problems and I don't know if my right head is broken or it is just a software issue.

I am sorry if the right head problem is beyond this treat, but it is very difficult to find an expert that can solve problems in the very simple way you did with sharing buttons.


Thank you in advanced for your time

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El Capitain: Share buttons not working anymore - system wide

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