As I have recently struggled with a nasty issue with macOS Tahoe straight after the update—luckily now solved—where the solutions could either be create a new admin user to start afresh or… wipe the SSD to start afresh with no migration allowed because the issue was in the user library, I would like to create a backup routine with Carbon Copy Cloner of just the settings folders for the apps I use for work.
For Dorico, on Mac, I know there is this in the user library:
If the issue in the User Library, then there’s absolutely no need to wipe the SSD. At most, you need to wipe the user library!
Most user-related problem can be pinpointed by removing some of the library subfolders, log out and in, and then test the problem. Then refine which folders you remove, and which you put back, depending on whether you get an improvement, or not.
I will allow you the pleasure of telling that to the Apple 2nd-level Specialist Advisor who kept insisting with that. A previous advisor proposed to create a new user and just migrate needed settings (which is a saner solution, I think).
I’ve gone through this for an entire month and only this morning the proper plist was found thanks to a most clever (not mine) trick. The good thing is that the app got back to working perfectly. The bad thing is that we also identified the bug within macOS, meaning that it will come back and that anyone using this app will be affected. The fact that this was never reported until now (I have been affected by it in one way or another since macOS 15.3/4) gives a clue at how little this app is being used by the macOS user base, lol!
Issue first started in Sequoia (video) and got worse in Tahoe (video). I described the issue over several forums, mainly here on Ask Different. The culprit was found by a wonderful user on Apple Discussions here. The log we gathered during troubleshooting showed the internal crash of the timer component due to running out of memory but it was well hidden.
While the issue is solved for now, it will come back if one keeps using the app, as for every timer or stopwatch or alarm you create, an entry will be written in the plist and never erased upon quit or restart or logout!
A detailed article describing this and reproducing the bug is coming this Friday on the Eclectic Light blog. The funny thing is that it seems I am one of the few power users of the Clock app —superlol!—
All the HALion samples are stored in /Library/Application Support/Steinberg. But these and the JSON files will get installed when you run the installer.
It took almost one month to find that it was that one because it didn’t have “clock” in the name and it didn’t appear in filtered logs.
The Apple Advisor, still this morning, kept saying that my best option was (still!) to go to Recovery, select the container, right-click, erase, then reinstall macOS and manually import only what I needed (and to repeat the process at least one every major macOS update).
They will probably never admit that the issue is in macOS and that they need to fix it themselves.
But – there is almost never any need to reinstall the OS – and certainly not for a user preference file problem. The Apple adviser is just working from a script, so they can tick the checklist of things to rule out.
