Finder / Quicklook blocks eject of mounted disk images

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Finder / Quicklook blocks eject of mounted disk images

This is. a bump of the unanswered post here: discussions.apple.com/thread/8175248

Bottom line: after using QuickLook to preview files on a mounted disk image (sparse bundle, in my case), you can't eject or unmount the image. The Finder reports it's "busy". I've pretty much narrowed the culprit down to QuickLook;

(1) Using "lsof" in the Terminal shows QuickLook has many open files on that virtual disk (even though the previews are long closed)

and

(2) using the ActivityMonitor and killing "QuickLookUIService" immediately allows me to eject the disk.

As mentioned in the previous posts, you can wait 1 min or 1 hour after using QuickLook - it doesn't matter - it won't free up the disk. You can however, force eject the disk, but that seems like a Bad Practice.

I guess Apple employees don't actually read these discussions, but if anyone is lurking, why is this still an issue?

MacBook Pro TouchBar and Touch ID, macOS High Sierra (10.13.3)

Posted on Mar 3, 2018 7:39 AM

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Answer 1

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DB-mac Author

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Mar 27, 2018 6:54 AM in response to adamfromwesterville

@adamfromwesterville: force-quitting the Finder to effectively kill QuickLookUIService works, but I recently came to a similar solution that doesn't require re-launching the entire Finder.

In the terminal:

/usr/bin/killall -KILL QuickLookUIService

One could save it as a simple shell script that could be click-able from the Finder, if you prefer.

In any case, I agree this persistent bug is totally unacceptable. I'm getting less and less tolerant of serious bugs that go unfixed in MacOS while minor cosmetic additions seem to be the primary additions in the incremental OS updates.

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Answer 2

Mar 27, 2018 6:55 AM in response to DB-mac

This absolutely a problem that is not uncommon. I have had this issue with the last two macBook Pros I've owned (both post 2016) and several friends and colleagues have agreed. It's definitely spotlight.

I am often in a place where I simply cannot reboot the computer and remove the disk while the system hasn't yet started, but this is pretty consistently the issue for me.

I too want this to be reviewed and fixed. It seems like it should be a simple fix, but I haven't coded in over a decade.

One temp fix I have at the moment, is this:

Because the QuickLookUIService is a process that is running in the finder, if you summon the "Force Quit Applications" prompt (⌘ + ⌥ + ⎋ ) and relaunch the finder. Shortly after relaunching (assuming I am in a place that is acceptable, and it often is) the drive can then be ejected. It beats rebooting, and just yanking the drives out. The finder will usually start back up where it left off, and I will not miss a beat.

As a content creator who stores terabytes of data on external drive and transfers between machines constantly, this bug is really unacceptable.

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Finder / Quicklook blocks eject of mounted disk images

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