Road to 2.0 with Cache limit/management and macOS Big Sur 11

[glouel]

Hey all, I'll use this to track and discuss the work in progress on (finally) adding a cache size limit to Aerial, and better cache management/playlist management tools. There will be some core changes to Aerial's UI including the videos tab, so that it displays more clearly what videos are available/cached/etc and handle some new issues created by the management.

For now, here's a very early screenshot of what I'm looking at right now in terms of Cache options :

So the very first pref will be the limit, I plan to default this to 5 GB for new users (what to do about current users is still in the air).

The second pref is all about how to manage the cache:

In a perfect world, rotation would probably be the ideal setting here for new users (and stop downloading for current users, I'd say).

But whatever I do, I'll get support tickets :

• With rotation as default, people will complain about bandwidth issues (especially with 5 GB)
• With rotation as default, and bumping the cache to a higher limit, people will complain about free space (so just like right now)
• With stop downloading as default, people will complain about not getting new videos

So 🤷

Last setting is the periodicity (which probably default to monthly to alleviate issues above).

About how all this will work :

• Stop downloading is self explanatory. When the limit is reached, Aerial will ignore uncached videos in your playlist (the currently selected ones in the video list) and only play cached videos (so that's about how it works right now, but with the limit). If you manually try to download a video when limit is reached, block it and tell you to increase cache size (this will be more clear with the new videos ui).
• Rotation, when Aerial starts playing (in full screen mode), it will play first a cached video, then it will check in the background the download date of each file, and start by purging old files (that includes videos in other resolutions if you say switched from 1080p to 4K HDR). Then start filling up the cache in the background with fresh ones (randomly picked, again there will be improvement on what to download next with the new videos ui). They will be able to get played after the first video is done.

Now what I ended up deciding is NOT stream videos to replace cache. Streaming is awfully unreliable and I really don't want to do it. While I'll probably keep a checkbox for those who really really want to stream, it will not be part of the cache rotation because that's too much of a mess.

So that's about it for right now, I'm still working on implementation and I'll update this post when I have a build to share and more details about the other changes (especially the redesigned videos tab to more clearly explain what videos are cached/etc).

[glouel]

Yep I’ll add one soonish thanks !

[oddharsh]

Are there any plans for an alpha channel for homebrew? I'd like to help with testing out the latest versions but I don't particularly want to have an updater running passively and would also prefer not to check github or my email to find the latest version to unzip.

[glouel]

Are there any plans for an alpha channel for homebrew? I'd like to help with testing out the latest versions but I don't particularly want to have an updater running passively and would also prefer not to check github or my email to find the latest version to unzip.

Hi @oddharsh

A few things:

• In general I rarely do alphas, this is really because there were so many breaking changes/work in progress with 2.0 I didn't felt confortable pushing it as a beta to a larger audience. So I don't know if I'll release alphas often, but I very much do release betas pretty often so that could be a pretty good target for a channel
• The AerialUpdater, I do plan for it to be able to be scheduled and not stay resident, as I understand not everyone wants one more icon up there
• Back to your questions : I'm not very familiar with homebrew, do you know if casks have that channel concept ? If so I don't mind adding them in any case, I'll have a look when I get a sec

[oddharsh]

I think you should be able to have another cask with the prerelease builds, for instance aerial-beta or aerial-canary. Admittedly I'm not too familiar with the dev side of homebrew!

[jamesf-hub]

also, there is no easy way to quit it.

[glouel]

also, there is no easy way to quit it.

New version with a fancy quit button ;) And an icon !

https://github.com/glouel/AerialUpdater/releases/download/v0.2/AerialUpdater.app.zip

It's about the same otherwise, still missing some stuff will get to it later.

[jamesf-hub]

I know I'm very picky, but could you make the icon round like the new macOS icons?

[glouel]

I know I'm very picky, but could you make the icon round like the new macOS icons?

Can you explain what you mean by this ? It's round so... ;)

[glouel]

Side note to Big Sur beta 3 users, Apple is doing something weird with the sandbox paths, so your old cache/settings may be ignored from Beta 2/previous macOS.

The new path is (in my case)

/Users/glouel/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver.x86_64/Data/Library/Application Support/Aerial

(or)

/Users/glouel/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver.arm64/Data/Library/Application Support/Aerial

instead of

/Users/glouel/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Application Support/Aerial

If you try to browse from Finder, you can only find the old path (you can reach the "new" one via Advanced > Show log in Finder). The "new" path is not browseable, it looks like they are doing some more magic aliasing but it's clearly not working as intended.

Because of this weird aliasing, your cache is still in the old place and ignored by Aerial, and so are your settings. I just saw that my preferences were reset and my cache empty. So if you are using Big Sur B3, move the content from the old path to the new (the one with x86_64) and same thing for your settings (a couple levels below in Preferences). I'm pretty sure there's a large bug in beta 3 around that new path aliasing, so just mentioning it so you're not surprised like I was !

Edit : Deleting com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSavermakes the folders appear, but with a - instead of a . (why...) in Finder. I suggest you don't do that, just move the content from Aerial's folder to the new path !

[jamesf-hub]

I know I'm very picky, but could you make the icon round like the new macOS icons?

Can you explain what you mean by this ? It's round so... ;)

If you look at the Big Sur icons, they are all round squares. It's just a suggestion. Thanks in advance!

[glouel]

If you look at the Big Sur icons, they are all round squares. It's just a suggestion. Thanks in advance!

Ha I see, it's an icon I made a couple years ago right now, I'll see about updating it when I have a sec but I'm not a designer so this may take some time.

[glouel]

New updater that actually does checks in the background : https://github.com/glouel/AerialUpdater/releases/tag/0.3

New Aerial build that fixes the terrible startup time while generating thumbnails (you can delete your thumbnails directory to check), removes all of the old resources/code that were unused, removes Sparkle, and also has a few improvement/fixes (not everything as I spent most of my time finishing the updater). It's starting to get there : https://github.com/glouel/Aerial/releases/download/v2.0.0alpha4/Aerial.saver.zip

[jamesf-hub]

how does the background system work?

[ZV00]

Looking great!

I would second the question from @applekillerbyjames about knowing exactly how it goes about running and checking in the background... but:

1. After installing the latest updated it automatically updated as expected to Alpha 4!
2. Aerial seems to now be called both Aerial and Aerial2... We should keep that consistent:

3. Loving the new credits, Help, and About pages!

4. I think I mentioned this earlier, but it would be great if the command could be copied here:

   

5. I would also mention that Brew cask should likely reference aerial2 as well as mentioned in item 2

6. Fun glitch: If you do the following, you no longer have a log file... 🤦‍♂️

   • Open Aerial
   • Go to Settings > Advanced > Show Log in Finder
   • Delete the Log
   • Quit System Prefs
   • Relaunch > Note that Show Log now goes to Finder but there's no log
   • Note that the workaround is to enable Debug mode and then relaunch Aerial in System Prefs. Ideally this shouldn't be required. There should always be at least a blank AerialLog.txt so that if someone goes looking they can find something.

[r8ders2k]

@glouel So, I had 1.9.2 installed on my rMBP (11,3) and thought I'd try out AerialUpdater 0.3 and selected Alpha 4 as desired and the updater said it was installed, but System Preferences showed 1.9.2. I did a Finder search for Aerial and found 3 folders. Similar to what you mentioned previously. Here's screenshots of the pathways. I also found 2 additional folders for the Aerial screen saver.

So, should I start over cleanly or just move files from the legacyScreenSaver to the x86.64 Aerial folder?

[glouel]

@glouel So, I had 1.9.2 installed on my rMBP (11,3) and thought I'd try out AerialUpdater 0.3 and selected Alpha 4 as desired and the updater said it was installed, but System Preferences showed 1.9.2. I did a Finder search for Aerial and found 3 folders. Similar to what you mentioned previously. Here's screenshots of the pathways. I also found 2 additional folders for the Aerial screen saver.

Let's start with the Aerial.saver :

So this is Aerial installed for all users, please delete this one (in /Library/Screen Savers/). This is why you still saw 1.9.2 in System Preferences. I will add a detection to the updater in the next build to warn you about that should that happen, kinda forgot sorry !

This is Aerial installed in your own user directory, that's the good one, keep it (if you delete it, the updater will tell you Aerial is not installed and offer to install for you). That's the one the updater will auto update in any case.

About Application Support/Aerial :

So, first, this was where Aerial used to put its files before Catalina. So you can just wipe that folder (because of the sandboxing, I couldn't do it automatically, though this could be a cool feature for the updater, cleaning up your stuff !)

So that was the container folder where Aerial was running in Catalina and Big Sur Beta 1/2. You have your cache and settings in there.

And this is the new path from Big Sur Beta3. I'm not sure what they are doing at this point but this is where Aerial runs now for some reason. This may be a temporary bug but in the meantime it's as if you lose your settings and your cache (again, that's completely independent of if you are running 1.9.2 or 2.0.0).

So, should I start over cleanly or just move files from the legacyScreenSaver to the x86.64 Aerial folder?

You can do both. If you want to start over, just delete stuff from the old paths But here's what I would suggest precisely :

To move over your settings :

Move from: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.JohnCoates.Aerial.{UUID}.plist

to:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver.x86_64/Data/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.JohnCoates.Aerial.{UUID}.plist

Then if you want to move your cache, you can safely move the content of:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Application Support/Aerial/

to:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver.x86_64/Data/Library/Application Support/Aerial

That will bring back your settings and cache for Big Sur beta3.

I think they messed up something as depending where you look, you see the path with a -x86_64 instead of a .x86_64. See your screenshots above, in Finder you see a dash (-), but if you copy the path by right clicking the thing you circled in red (as I did above), you get a dot (.) instead !

I strongly believe they wanted to do a path aliasing of both .arm64 and .x86_64 to the "old" location, but might have messed up with the-instead of a.(or vice versa), making the aliasing not work and both path exists on the file system (you can check on your Intel Mac running Big Sur beta 3, you have this path :~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver.arm64/Data/Library/Application Support` existing, which likely should not be there). Whether/how they try to fix that in beta4 or later, I have no idea ! I'll keep checking what they are doing in the future and try to adapt, I'm probably going to put a startup warning in Aerial if I detect Big Sur beta 3 so people aren't surprised about it.

I wouldn't be surprised they wipe out the content of the x86-64 folder though in next beta to resolve this.

Edit : I filed a radar about that one right now, hopefully it will get fixed soon.

[glouel]

how does the background system work?

So I just put a longer description on the readme, I think it answers pretty much everything, if it doesn't let me know. Check here : https://github.com/glouel/AerialUpdater

I would second the question from @applekillerbyjames about knowing exactly how it goes about running and checking in the background...

Well I didn't answer the background thing ! So right now, I'm using a "unscheduled" timer using a DispatchSourceTimer(apple doc here) to periodically check the manifest I mention above. If a new version is available, depending on your choice, you get updated or notified (by the icon change). A check also happen right at startup (which may be a bit weird in automatic mode, which I think was the default I set).

It's unscheduled so it's not running on the main thread, and not using any energy. Like most macOS things, there are MANY ways to do this, but so far it looks ok, I let it running since I released 0.3 and it doesn't register any activity/energy expanditure as expected:

Here's my logs so far :

2020-07-26 18:27:51.532 : Checking for new version...
2020-07-26 18:27:51.533 : Manifest downloaded, alpha: 2.0.0alpha4, beta: 1.9.2, release: 1.9.2
2020-07-26 18:27:51.533 : New version available !
(...)
2020-07-26 19:27:51.294 : Checking for new version...
2020-07-26 20:59:09.494 : Checking for new version...
2020-07-26 22:12:11.526 : Checking for new version...
2020-07-27 00:10:43.411 : Checking for new version...
2020-07-27 02:07:39.116 : Checking for new version...
2020-07-27 04:04:27.830 : Checking for new version...
2020-07-27 12:40:32.479 : Checking for new version...
2020-07-27 13:40:32.570 : Checking for new version...
2020-07-27 14:40:32.501 : Checking for new version...

So it starts off ok. Precisely one hour after installing alpha4, it checked again, then you can see it drifting as I was infrequently in front of the computer, waking up the system now and then. After 4am said mac went to sleep for the night and was awaken around 12 and is running since then, with update check happenning with 1hour interval as expected.

So it seems:

• to correctly check every hour when your computer is awake
• not to wake up your computer at night to make it check
• resume gracefully the timer when getting awoken

So, so far so good. I may end up changing the way the background check is scheduled but I think this is fine for now, we'll see if someone has an issue I guess.

1. After installing the latest updated it automatically updated as expected to Alpha 4!

🎉

2. Aerial seems to now be called both Aerial and Aerial2... We should keep that consistent:

I was pondering whether calling it Aerial2 or not... But I guess Aerial is pretty canonical by now.

2. I think I mentioned this earlier, but it would be great if the command could be copied here:

It's on my list, will get to it.

2. Fun glitch: If you do the following, you no longer have a log file... 🤦‍♂️

• Open Aerial
• Go to Settings > Advanced > Show Log in Finder
• Delete the Log
• Quit System Prefs
• Relaunch > Note that Show Log now goes to Finder but there's no log
• Note that the workaround is to enable Debug mode and then relaunch Aerial in System Prefs. Ideally this shouldn't be required. There should always be at least a blank AerialLog.txt so that if someone goes looking they can find something.

Well, if you don't enable debug mode, there's no log generated at all, so in your scenario it was off right ?

Because if you have debug mode enabled, quit sysprefs, delete the log, relaunch sysprefs, you'll get a log created before you even click Screen saver options.

The tiny preview generates the log, that section starts with :

2020-07-27 15:09:19.766 : avInit .saver (0.0, 0.0, 296.0, 184.0) p: true o: true

And when you click Screen saver options, there's this very terse section added, as I didn't add much logging to the new ui yet 🙈

2020-07-27 15:11:35.553 : PWC2 init
2020-07-27 15:11:35.553 : PWC2 wdl
2020-07-27 15:11:35.555 : /PWC2 wdl

So just to confirm, you had debug mode off right ? I guess if debug mode is off, I could disable/hide the button, although it's a convenient way to access your cache folder especially with the big sur shenanigans around paths ;) I actually detect if the file is there to select the file, and if not I just open the folder in finder (I think).

[ZV00]

So just to confirm, you had debug mode off right ? I guess if debug mode is off, I could disable/hide the button, although it's a convenient way to access your cache folder especially with the big sur shenanigans around paths ;) I actually detect if the file is there to select the file, and if not I just open the folder in finder (I think).

It was off, but I still had a file. I assume this is due to logging I did in the past. I guess in my mind, it just feels weird for a button to lead to an incorrect file. So I almost feel like when you click that button it should check whether or not a debug file exists, and if not, create a blank one just so the path exists... But maybe that's not how this stuff works normally 😂

[ZV00]

New Glitch found:

I went back to Big Sur from Catalina. In order to do that, I had to create enough space on my Mac mini to install Big Sur. This required me deleting all the videos in the Cache folder (about 22GB).

Upon doing that the following happened on first launch of Aerial in Big Sur Beta 3:

• All favorites are lost
• On rotation list is lost
• Video settings are modified from 1080 HEVC to 1080 H264
• Video Fade settings are reset to 1 second from none
• Time settings are reset to default

All of these settings should have persisted despite removing the cached videos?

[glouel]

So that's the Big Sur Beta 3 bug with the container paths, from the previous post :

Move from: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.JohnCoates.Aerial.{UUID}.plist

to:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver.x86_64/Data/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.JohnCoates.Aerial.{UUID}.plist

And to clarify, the path name for the second path is the one you get from terminal. If you try to find that path in finder, it's actually called legacyScreenSaver-x86_64 instead of com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver.x86_64, because that would be too simple ;)

[rhythms06]

Is there currently any way to apply several filters at once to indicate the videos I'd like to have on rotation? (e.g. 4K tvOS 13, or non-4K Sea, etc.) I think that feature would be awesome.

Also, I think there should be a button in Aerial Updater to open up Aerial's preferences, if possible.

[glouel]

Is there currently any way to apply several filters at once to indicate the videos I'd like to have on rotation? (e.g. 4K tvOS 13, or non-4K Sea, etc.) I think that feature would be awesome.

So right now, the best way to apply multiple filters would be to play with favorites and hide.

Let's say you want everything tvOS 13 without the Sea videos, you can hide all the sea videos. Right now you have to press the hide button on each individual video you want to hide, then pick tvOS 13 for rotation.

If you want Space + Sea, your best bet would be favoriting all Space and all Sea videos, then set favorites to rotation.

I'll add some enhancement in the form of the ability to right click a category on the sidebar to easily put it in rotation, or hide, or favorite a whole category, that would make things simpler.

Adding a custom filter (making your own category, based on whatever criteria you want) is a nice idea, I'll think about it for a future version.

Also, I think there should be a button in Aerial Updater to open up Aerial's preferences, if possible.

That's a great idea ! I have no idea if that's possible though... I need to think about that one.

[glouel]

So, after pushing it back as far as I could, the rolling cache/new download in the background is finally here, here's how it works:

• When a video starts playing, ff you didn't have at least half a gig of space, Aerial looks if you have some hidden videos that are in cache, and if so, delete those
• If there's still not enough space, Aerial takes a list of your videos that have been cached for more than what you allow in rotation, that aren't your favorites, and aren't in rotation. It then deletes the oldest from that list. Repeats until you have some amount of free space
• Aerial will then look if every videos that are currently in rotation are cached or not. If some are missing, it will background download one. There's a new indicator of this happening (which I may allow to hide later) :

This whole process is repeated each time a video starts playing, Aerial will only download one video at a time this way. So far it works pretty well. If you switch category from the On rotation, you'll be able to fill up your cache to whatever new you picked this way.

Please note that it's possible that the very first video you see may not be from your rotation, if you have no video that satisfy the current criterias, while Aerial starts downloading one, it will display whatever is cached, then move on to the newly downloaded ones.

This version also brings icons to all macOS versions, and not just on Big Sur.

I'm releasing this one as the first beta : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/download/v2.0.0beta1/Aerial.saver.zip

[r8ders2k]

@glouel Not sure if this is the right place for AerialUpdater feedback, but it's not working for me. Both with 0.3 and 0.4. Both recognized that 2.0.0beta1 was available. But when I selected download, I got the spinning progress indicator and nothing seemed to happen. Odd thing with 0.4 was its menu bar icon was dimmed.

Here's a screen shot of 0.3

and here's a screen shot of 0.4

Okay, my bad, mea culpa... I didn't select Beta as the Desired Version. 0.4 installed 2.0.0beta1 as expected. But maybe need a check in there to prevent/avoid someone not selecting the appropriate download.

All setting were remembered.

Forgot to mention, 0.4's icon is now appearing normally.

[glouel]

@r8ders2k I'll have to check, if you had say 2.0.0alpha3 installed and had release picked, it's possible that the updater got confused... I'll double check thanks for the report!

[r8ders2k]

@glouel When I missed up, I saw that 2.0.0beta1 was available when I first clicked AerialUpdater's icon, I subsequently clicked download. I did not change anything in Desired Version. When I realized me oops, I then selected Beta in Desired Version and then clicked download. I saw the status updates as it updated.

[ZV00]

I actually did have this same issue:

@glouel Not sure if this is the right place for AerialUpdater feedback, but it's not working for me. Both with 0.3 and 0.4. Both recognized that 2.0.0beta1 was available. But when I selected download, I got the spinning progress indicator and nothing seemed to happen. Odd thing with 0.4 was its menu bar icon was dimmed.

However, similarly, when I switched from the Alpha 1 to Beta 1 it fixed the issue and downloaded.

If I then switch back too the Alpha choice it doesn't try to change versions.

[glouel]

So you were on alpha3 and had alpha selected as the desired type ? It should have installed the beta still...

I’ll check tomorrow and let you know !

[ZV00]

I think the issue may be that it's displaying Alpha 1 not Alpha 3

[glouel]

FYI the icon gets dimmed right now during the install process, so somehow you were both stuck on that. I'll get back to you guys tomorrow thanks for the report, and if you are on the alpha track, if there's a beta more recent than an alpha, it should let you install beta1, that's how I designed the thing, same thing the day I release 2.0.0 finale, if you are on the alpha track you still get the very latest version. But I guess it doesn't work as expected right now ;)

Edit : And you need to cmd+shift 4 instead of 5 for your menu bar screenshots, there's a bug in Big Sur with menu screenshots ;)

[ZV00]

Edit : And you need to cmd+shift 4 instead of 5 for your menu bar screenshots, there's a bug in Big Sur with menu screenshots 😉

Interestingly I did that with Command Shift 4 and got that result, so go figure 😂

Also, same issue occurred with the latest beta release of Aerial. Appears that I continue to not be able to install when it's set to Alpha channel, but it works fine set to the Beta channel.

[glouel]

Edit : And you need to cmd+shift 4 instead of 5 for your menu bar screenshots, there's a bug in Big Sur with menu screenshots 😉

Interestingly I did that with Command Shift 4 and got that result, so go figure 😂

Those menu bar menus are a bit of a mess right now ;)

Also, same issue occurred with the latest beta release of Aerial. Appears that I continue to not be able to install when it's set to Alpha channel, but it works fine set to the Beta channel.

Yeah, I think I mentionned it somewhere, there's a stupid bug in there that makes the updater look in the wrong repository and it gets stuck, so stick with beta track for the moment sorry about that one.

I've been working mostly on internal stuff and unfinished features but I'll put out a new beta of Aerial tomorrow, a lot of it is polishing small things and enabling some new pretty cool stuff ;)

[glouel]

Beta 3 with the new vibrance controls for non HDR videos. Long story short, if you run SDR videos and want to make them pop a bit, you can now use either the global slider in settings, or individual on each video (to override) to add some vibrance to videos. It looks like this :

Default vibrance

Increased vibrance

There are also a new right click menu on the sidebar, and many, many fixes : https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/download/v2.0.0beta3/Aerial.saver.zip

[r8ders2k]

@glouel FYI, AerialUpdater 0.4 is working like a charm. Last 2 betas updated just fine.

[glouel]

@glouel FYI, AerialUpdater 0.4 is working like a charm. Last 2 betas updated just fine.

Great to hear ! Just pushed beta4, it's a quick fix for the weather that wasn't working in the last couple of betas !

[PatTheMav]

@glouel I really, really, really appreciate all the work you do here. I especially appreciate your passion to make Aerial not only work on macOS, but feel like a true macOS app and adopting changes and new paradigms introduced by macOS 11. I usually have to lobby hard for people to use the tools/Frameworks that Apple gives us devs to build more elegant software.

Making all those settings and available options not only work, but also look appealing within the context of the setup dialogs is no small feat either. I'm really impressed.

Just a few small things:

• In the past there were issues with Aerial installed via Homebrew Cask and sandbox paths (meaning that the screensaver was installed in a location without write permissions), is that fixed?
• Did you think about a possibility to exclude the Aerial Cache directory from Time Machine? I do this manually, but given that aerial is thrown into the legacyScreensaver package it's quite the chore to navigate there manually from TimeMachine's file browsing dialog
• I opted-out of testing Big Sur this year, but are there any indications as to how Aerial can overcome being a "legacyScreensaver" in Apple's parlour?

PS: "Thank you" for throwing the JSON files in sub folders, got to change my download script now.. 😉

[glouel]

@glouel I really, really, really appreciate all the work you do here. I especially appreciate your passion to make Aerial not only work on macOS, but feel like a true macOS app and adopting changes and new paradigms introduced by macOS 11. I usually have to lobby hard for people to use the tools/Frameworks that Apple gives us devs to build more elegant software.

Thanks, I tried hard to make if fit on Big Sur, this was not particularly easy (and there are still some rough edges) but it's getting there

Making all those settings and available options not only work, but also look appealing within the context of the setup dialogs is no small feat either. I'm really impressed.

Thanks !

• In the past there were issues with Aerial installed via Homebrew Cask and sandbox paths (meaning that the screensaver was installed in a location without write permissions), is that fixed?

I can't remember having an issue opened about that. This might have been a temporary homebrew issue around a macOS release ? Basically, homebrew copies the file in ~/Library/Screen Savers/(and AerialUpdater does the same thing), that path is not sandboxed.

What is sandboxed is where Aerial lives when it runs, but that's completely independent of installation method so there are no known issue here that I'm aware of.

• Did you think about a possibility to exclude the Aerial Cache directory from Time Machine? I do this manually, but given that aerial is thrown into the legacyScreensaver package it's quite the chore to navigate there manually from TimeMachine's file browsing dialog

So right now the cache is in Application Support in the sandbox, and that's Time Machined. As far as I am aware, I can't programatically add a path to Time Machine exclusion list from Aerial, so that's a no. What I could do is put an option to have the cache in the Caches folder of the sandbox. This is something I'm going back and forth on a lot, I may add that switch in the end.

• I opted-out of testing Big Sur this year, but are there any indications as to how Aerial can overcome being a "legacyScreensaver" in Apple's parlour?

Sadly nope, all screensavers will remain behind the legacy thing for the time being.

PS: "Thank you" for throwing the JSON files in sub folders, got to change my download script now.. 😉

Are you downloading the JSONs by yourself or something ?

I did post beta5 tonight, but it's mostly tiny UI fixes (like the Vibrance label being black on light mode instead of white in the live preview), no major changes for this one.

[PatTheMav]

@glouel The bug I refer to was filed a while ago and I don't think there was a "resolution" for the issue: https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/issues/917

In short, the "ByHost" preferences folder was not created by the Cask-based installation and as such preferences weren't saved.

Are you downloading the JSONs by yourself or something ?

I'm downloading the actual video files, renaming them appropriately and such to use on other devices (e.g. Smart TV). It's an easy change to adapt, I just need to remind myself to do it sometime.

[glouel]

@glouel The bug I refer to was filed a while ago and I don't think there was a "resolution" for the issue: #917

In short, the "ByHost" preferences folder was not created by the Cask-based installation and as such preferences weren't saved.

I haven't had anyone complain again about that one so I think it was more of a temporary catalina thing. It's the OS job to create the ByHost folder so that shouldn't be an issue. So far on new Big Sur machines I've installed Aerial on, this has not been an issue.

I'm downloading the actual video files, renaming them appropriately and such to use on other devices (e.g. Smart TV). It's an easy change to adapt, I just need to remind myself to do it sometime.

All the files are now names entries.json so it's easier in a way ;)

[glouel]

So heads up again, after installing Big Sur Beta 4, you're going to "lose" your cache again, similar to what happen in beta3.

So your "old" path in terminal was : ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver.x86_64/Data/Library/Application Support/Aerial

The new one is :

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver.x86-64/Data/Library/Application Support/Aerial

yes, its gone from _64 to -64, I think someone is toying with me right now 🤣

If you browse from finder they have the exact same name (_)... so you need to move from the "oldest" to the "newest" :

I know it's a terrible experience, but this is really out of my hands, on top of being quite out of hands.

The "good" thing is, Apple Silicon users can rejoice, screen savers work in Big Sur beta4. So at least there's that !

[r8ders2k]

@glouel Any issues 2.0.0Beta 4/5 not remembering settings?

[glouel]

@r8ders2k see my post above, it's Big Sur beta 4. You need to move your files from one location to another.

[r8ders2k]

@glouel Copy that, thanks! But, what about Catalina 19G73? As the same thing happened.

[glouel]

Did you downgrade from Big Sur or was that another machine that was on Catalina all along ?

[r8ders2k]

It's a Late 2012 Mac mini, max'ed out with Catalina.

[glouel]

Can you go to settings, advanced, see if you still see your videos in the cached path ? And paste that path here if you can ? I don't have a catalina machine around so I'm not sure what happened here...

[r8ders2k]

@glouel I didn't see anything like that in Advanced, but here's a screen shot or two...

Here's the log

AerialLog.txt

[r8ders2k]

@glouel and as for moving, I just re-did the settings. If that's ok...?

[glouel]

Definitely fine redoing the settings.

And I meant you can click "Show log in finder" to go to where Aerial store your cache, sorry I should have explained !

I have no idea what happened to your settings, your cache still looks to be here, so your settings should have loaded... I'll try and replicate thanks for the report and sorry about that one.

[r8ders2k]

@glouel No worries.