Parallels Toolbox menubar bug on macOS Catalina

M

MichaelC17

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The Parallels Toolbox app is seriously misbehaving on my MacBook Pro, running Catalina 15.1 Final. Had a conversation with an Adobe rep on Facebook yesterday, which I'm copying below. They recommended a reinstall of PT, which I did and which solved the problem for awhile, but it's back to misbehaving today.
I seriously suspect an incompatibility with another app that posts icons on the menubar and dynamically changes them, iStat Menus. Anyone else in similar straits who's seen this?

TIA,

Mike
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Running Catalina 15.1 (final) after several betas of 15.0 and 15.1, on a MBP 10,1 (2013) with P. Toolbox 3.6.1. Have system prefs for my user ID (sys admin) set to run P. Toolbox at login. P. Toolbox icon shows up on menu bar, as expected, but only turns blue when clicked on, drop-down pane doesn't appear UNLESS I run P. Toolbox app again. Have selected Clipboard History tool to appear on menu bar. Icon does appear as expected, but drop down pane NEVER appears, no matter what I do. The icon background highlights (turns blue), but nothing else happens.


Notes: Many changes in my system lately, but one which I strongly suspect for incompatibility with P. Toolbox is iStat Menus. It does some extensive menu bar manipulation.



Hi Mike. On Mac menu bar click on Apple logo > System Preferences > Security & Privacy > unlock settings > on the left side scroll down and select Full Disk Access menu > on the right side put checkmark for Parallels Toolbox. Same way select the checkbox for Parallels Toolbox under Accessibility and Screen recording. Then restart the app and check if it works fine. Thanks, Sathiya.


Sathiya, thanks, but no good. Checked the permission for all three categories of access for P. Toolbox: Full Disk Access; Accessibility and Screen Recording. Killed the P. Toolbox process and restarted the app. Icon still behaves the same; background turns blue, no dropdown pane.


BTW, P. Toolbox worked fine before (the latest Catalina update, iStat Menus was installed, etc.) but not now.


I can reboot to see if that fixes it?


Note: both the general P.Toolbox icon and the Clipboard History icon appear in the menu bar. As mentioned above, the CH icon just turns blue when clicked, no dropdown pane appears. The general PT icon DOES work; when clicked, I get a dropdown pane with the full set of tools displayed. However, if I then click the CH icon in that pane, the CH pane DOES NOT appear, the CH icon just turns blue as before.


Did a full system restart. Now the PT status is even worse. See the attached screenshot. The PT process is running (as you can see in Activity Monitor). Three PT icons appear on the menubar: the general PT icon, the CH icon, and the Hide Icons(?name?) icon at the next to last place on the right <-- didn't mention that before. But now NONE of these three icons is operative. The first two turn blue when clicked; the third does nothing.


As before, I suspect incompatibility with iStat Menus, and my varying results depending on the order in which these two apps modify the menubar.


NOW if I force quit all three processes: PT, CH and HMI; and restart PT, the general PT icon appears on the menubar. If I click on it, it's pane containing all the detailed tool icons DOES APPEAR, but clicking on CH, for example, does nothing. BUT clicking on it again, DOES bring up the CH pane and its icon on the menubar DOES WORK, too.


I'm asserting that all of this is consistent with my premise of dependence on the order of loading menubar apps, with iStat Menus being the most likely troublemaker! Will be very interested to hear what the PT developer team makes of this
1f642.png



Oh, forgot to include that screen shot I promised a couple msgs ago. Here it is:






Please uninstall Parallels Toolbox, restart your Mac and reinstall it. Then check if it works normally and update us with the results.


Will do so in the morning.



Please do and keep us posted.

FRI 10:44 AM

OK, did an uninstall of P. Toolbox, reboot, reinstall from P. Desktop menu. All appears OK now. Menubar icons appear appropriately and act as they should. I would suggest that your development and testing team for P. Toolbox still have work to do. I view this uninstall/reinstall sequence as primarily a "workaround". I suspect there's still an incompatibility with other menubar apps, e.g., iStat Menus, lurking around, waiting to bite other users if the load order isn't just right.


Nonetheless, thanks for the help and getting me back in operation. I've been missing P. Toolbox, especially Clipboard History, and now Hide Menu Icons.

FRI 5:45 PM


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Hello,

yes, "Hide Menu Icons" tool may have problems with applications that actively work with menu bar icons. Unfortunately behavior of such applications could be unpredictable which causes misbehavior of Hide Menu Icons. We continue work on improving the tool to cover as much such cases as possible.

Anyway, thank you for your feedback!
 
OK, updated to Catalina 15.2 beta 3 and even reinstalled the latest Parallels Toolbox Version 3.7.0 (2768), but I'm still unable to use Clipboard History:
  1. The Toolbox icon on the menubar won't respond until I run the app at least once after booting (and yes, it has already run once during the boot process).
  2. The Hide Menu Icons icon is erratic until I exercise it a couple times, and
  3. The Clipboard History icon never produces a history drop-down. Just sits there, highlighted blue:
Can you please fix this? I really miss having Clipboard History.
Thanks,
Mike
Screen Shot 2019-11-22 at 3.46.08 PM.png
 
Hello,

Thank you for your feedback,

> The Toolbox icon on the menubar won't respond until I run the app at least once after booting (and yes, it has already run once during the boot process).
We've found that this issue appears if on of the tool (from inside Parallels Toolbox) is launched Agent. There are some of such tools like Date Countdown, Alarm. Please try this:
1. Check that all your tools are turned off.
2. Make sure that Toolbox will be launched on startup (open Toolbox Preferences and check "Start Parallels Toolbox when Mac starts" option)
3. Restart macOS.
4. Check behavior of Toolbox icon.
If problem still there then send us Technical Report: https://kb.parallels.com/en/124107

> The Hide Menu Icons icon is erratic until I exercise it a couple times
Yes, there are still problem applications (like istatmenus in your case), we continue working on such issues

> The Clipboard History icon never produces a history drop-down. Just sits there, highlighted blue:
Try this:
1. Open Activity Monitor application and close "Clipboard History". Make sure that tool icon disappeared from menu bar.
2. Launch tool from Parallels Toolbox again.
Does it help? Does problem return after restarting the mac?
 
Sergk,

Thanks for the suggestions. Here are my observations:
  1. Did a fresh restart.
  2. As the icons start filling in on the menu bar, three icons from Parallels Toolbox appear: the Toolbox, Clipboard History, Hide Menu Items (as expected, per my settings).
  3. The first two appear at the left side of the row of icons; Hide Menu Items at the second from the right, as expected.
  4. But the Hide Menu Items icon is gray, not black.
  5. As the menu bar icons complete filling in, iStat Menus runs and adds its icons between the PT and CH icons.
  6. After the system completes starting up and settles down, the Toolbox icon is active. When clicked on, it highlights and a drop-down panel showing all tools appears, as expected.
  7. But when the CH icon is clicked, it only highlights. No drop-down panel appears. Clicking outside the icon deselects it.
  8. Clicking on the larger CH icon inside the Tools drop-down pane does exactly the same as clicking on the menubar CH icon. The latter just highlights.
  9. When the HM icon is clicked, nothing happens. It doesn't even highlight or respond in any way.
  10. The iStat Menu's menubar icon(s) behave as expected.
  11. Force Quitting the Clipboard History process in Activity Monitor causes its menubar icon to disappear.
  12. Invoking CH by clicking on the tool icon in the Toolbox drop-down pane apparently restarts the CH process.
  13. After (perhaps) the second try, CH now works(!) as expected. Its menubar icon is active. Clicking on the CH icon invokes the drop-down panel of clipboard history entries.
  14. Similarly, for Hide Menus. Killing its associated process and re-invoking HM from the main Toolbox d-d panel causes its menubar icon to reappear (black this time, not gray) and it behaves as expected.
Hope this helps. I'm still suspicious of some interaction between your PT and iStat Menus (even though the developers of the later discounted any possible interference). I suppose the definitive test would be to uninstall their app and try this sequence again. (Bit of a bother, but would be willing to try that if it would be useful to you.)
In any case, thanks for helping me find a workaround so I have access to your tools again :-)

Mike
 
Mike, thanks a lot for your small investigation!
Sure it will help to fix these issues.
 
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