Search for third party system preference panes

[foss-]

Feel free to close if out of scope, but being able to search for system preferences components would be a useful addition.

[ospfranco]

They are already there, are they not?

[foss-]

Correct, the remaining aspect would be third party system preference panes as exist for ChronoAgent, macFUSE or GPG Suite to name a few. (adjusting title accordingly)

[ospfranco]

I don't quite understand what you mean... do you want to open a third party app settings window? is that even possible?

Or do you mean searching for menu bar items? I think Raycast does this, it is cool but no idea and no time to implement it.

[foss-]

It is possible for apps to install a preference pane for some settings. ChronoAgent is one example:

[ospfranco]

ah ok. I don't know if it is possible to programmatically get system prefs panels, current implementation has hardcoded paths. Will leave this ticket open for now, but someone else will have to implement it.

[OlshaMB]

Just use some fs glob function on PreferencePanes paths. There are 3 paths:

1. /System/Library/PreferencePanes/ - System
2. /Library/PreferencePanes - Global
3. /Users/{user}/Library/PreferencePanes - User

ah ok. I don't know if it is possible to programmatically get system prefs panels, current implementation has hardcoded paths. Will leave this ticket open for now, but someone else will have to implement it.

[ospfranco]

PRs are welcome

[ospfranco]

Are this third party panels still supported on Ventura? the new app seems a lot less native than previous implementations, I had to hardcode the new paths and there seems to be no new documentation.

[foss-]

Yes, they may look a bit weird since their old UI doesn't fit the new style but they still exist and load as expected. You could test with e.g. https://osxfuse.github.io/

[ospfranco]

A new version is out 1.1.104 that should list third party preference panes, only on Ventura though, let me know if it works for you

[foss-]

Great news.

macOS 13.0.1: verified this works for ChronoAgent.

It did not work for macFUSE or GPGPreferences (comes with GPG Suite).

[ospfranco]

I used the method suggested by @OlshaMB. No idea how macFuse is adding preference panes.

[ospfranco]

On the GPGPreferences github readme they say you need to manually copy the .prefPane file to ~/Librare/PreferencePanes, if you do that, it should work. As for macFuse, no idea.

[ospfranco]

macFUSE is there, it only has a funny parsing due to the way I generate the names :)

[foss-]

Wow at macFUSE for using the most unexpected parsing. Confirming it works as intended. Thanks for adding this.