Hook and macOS 10.15

[LucB]

According to our analysis and testing, Hook 1.2.2 is ready for macOS 10.15 (Catalina). If you happen to be using Catalina and would like to report on your experience here please do.
Thank you.

Meanwhile we continue to work on upcoming versions of Hook.

[LucB]

@quorm

Putting the file created in step #3 resolves the issue. I would expect Hook to (a) either find the moved file (ideal solution); or (b) realize the file’s not found and just move on without hanging.

Thanks much @quorm, we will look into this and Fantastical.

[LucB]

so far we haven’t been able to reproduce it. We will try in different environments.

@quorm

I don’t see where or if Catalina’s Console has hang reports, so I cannot send that to CogSci.

that info can be got by running Activity Monitor app: cf Taking a sample in macOS - Support - The Omni Group

Console has a crash reports tab.

most relevant would be same as prior:

/Utilities/Console.app . Action menu : Include … (check both). (There seems to be a bug in macOS 10.15 Console that the checkmarks don’t stay).
search bar (top right): please type Hook. You might want to clear the console before running the test.

thank you for your help with this.

[omawnakw]

I have a problem with latest Hook App 1.4 (3143) on latest Catalina (10.15.3) with SIP disabled. Never tried it before on other systems. Just installed it, prompted accessibility access, went to settings and granted it. The problem is that hook popup throws “No linkable item found” for any app, even Finder. Accessibility access is granted and I tried to reboot which does not help neither toggling accessibility access or restarting the app itself. What looks strange to me is that it never requested me to grant access to any app, just no such prompt appeared. Is this known issue on latest Catalina Update or my personal setup issue?

UPD: Also the whole hook window looks completely broken to me: I’ve clicked context menu in it and selected “Hide status bar” and it disappeared, the window rendered completely unusable - I can’t even get the context menu again to re-enable the status bar. Double tapping (right-clicking) in the any part of the Hook windows does nothing. Single clicking or middle clicking neither. There are no settings regarding the window in general Hook App settings so I cant find any setting screen that could get the status bar back.

UPD2: Found in docs that the status bar could be toggled with a hotkey, but it looks ugly to leave it that way, there should be a checkbox in general settings to make it reappear with a hotkey listed so that any newbie don’t frustrate on. Also it’s unclear how to open the context menu that available only with clicking on the gear icon in status bar when the status bar is hidden.

UPD3: Oh, it’s all hardly relies on hotkeys. The option+cmd+K must be carved just in the hook window bar to be in sight.

UPD4: Dragging to the hook window also does nothing. The only thing works is dragging files from finder to the menu bar window, it says that link is created but then it disappears and I can’t do anything with that.

Other bug: system notifications about created links never disappears - you required to click “close” on them. Clicking on notification itself does nothing, it should at list open the hook window or copy the link to clipboard. Also this notifications is not listed in the system notifications bar - they jist disappears when closed, very strange behavior.
The app is not listed in the security settings Automation tab, only in Accessibility.

I’ve tried to completely delete it by
rm -rf /Applications/Hook.app/
rm -rf “~/Library/Application Support/com.cogsciapps.hook”
rm -rf “~/Library/Application Support/com.cogsciapps.hook”
rm -rf “~/Library/WebKit/com.cogsciapps.hook”
rm -rf “~/Library/Caches/com.cogsciapps.hook”
rm -f “~/Library/Preferences/com.cogsciapps.hook.plist”
rm -rf “~/Library/Caches/com.plausiblelabs.crashreporter.data/com.cogsciapps.hook”
rm -rf “~/Library//Caches/com.plausiblelabs.crashreporter.data/com.cogsciapps.hook”
and also their equivalents found in /private/var/folders/ folder
rm -rf ~/Documents/Hook/

Reset all security settings:
tccutil reset All com.cogsciapps.hook

And… reinstalled app and nothing has been changed.

Everything in this app looks buggish and unusable

[LucB]

welcome to the Hook Productivity Forum, @omawnakw. And I’m sorry that your introduction to Hook has been such a rough ride.

@omawnakw

I have a problem with latest Hook App 1.4 (3143) on latest Catalina (10.15.3) with SIP disabled.

There are no reports of this with SIP enabled. We had one report in July of someone having this with SIP disabled, but we didn’t receive answers to our questions about it.

If you are willing to enable SIP, would you please see if the “No linkable item found” goes away with SIP enabled? (However, it is logically possible that prior disabling of SIP leads to side effects. I’m not saying that based on prior experience of that; it’s just that disabling SIP opens doors that are normally closed to other users per my comments below.)

I’ve added a note to Hook’s system requirements that SIP needs to be enabled on systems that support SIP. This is provisional ; not necessarily a final decision. I am just being conservative about the issue. Also, this is not to say that Hook issues with systems that have SIP enabled will not be resolved. However:

• Disabling SIP not only opens the door to malware, but also to other programs modifying the system in a way that can lead to problems with various software. If customers want to disable SIP, of course that is their right.
• When SIP is disabled, issues with Hook may be due to issues related to the disabling of SIP (side-effects), which adds to the complexity and burden of knowledge for debugging. (i.e., their systems may be in a state that we cannot reproduce).
• For us to investigate customer issues with SIP disabled requires that each team member here who is involved in the process (customer support , development, QA and potentially documentation [not that they are currently all separate people]) disable SIP; that, of course, can be done in a controlled manner; but it is a hurdle.

Having said the above, we will investigate this.

@omawnakw

Also it’s unclear how to open the context menu that available only with clicking on the gear icon in status bar when the status bar is hidden.

Hook’s menu bar icon also provides a Gear menu.

⌘/ re-presents the status bar. This is the same keyboard shortcut you can use in Finder to do something similar with Finder.

I realize that some users find it annoying that the status bar can go away. However, there are also users who want Hook to take as little space as possible. So we give users a choice.

@omawnakw

Dragging to the hook window also does nothing.

Try clicking in empty space away from the context menu (e.g., right or left sides; or top) and dragging from there. This issue will be resolved in Hook 1.5, coming within the next week or two if things go according to plan.

[omawnakw]

@LucB

I’ve added a note to Hook’s system requirements that SIP needs to be enabled on systems that support SIP. This is provisional ; not necessarily a final decision. I am just being conservative about the issue. Also, this is not to say that Hook issues with systems that have SIP enabled will not be resolved. However:

I’ve checked it with SIP enabled and it works. Now it throws automation access request as it should. Then I tried to re-disable SIP - all the apps was approved for access are listed under Hook line in Security Settings → Automation and hook work fine with them. For any other app that was not granted access before disabling SIP does not request access and so does not integrate. So looks like the proper record in TCC.db granting access is required for Hook to go further and run automation. If there is some requests to SIP in code it would be cool if it can be just skipped for SIP-disabled systems.

UPD: Nope – it’s not granted access, it still checks against TCC and gets permission denied:
Terminal log when Hook started:

AccessRequestIndirect: Policy disallows prompt for com.cogsciapps.hook; access to kTCCServiceAppleEvents denied

Terminal log when launched over the TextEdit with a hotkey

Failed to get url error:"NSAppleScriptErrorMessage" = "Not authorized to send Apple events to TextEdit.";
"NSAppleScriptErrorRange" = NSRange: {91, 19};
"NSAppleScriptErrorBriefMessage" = "Not authorized to send Apple events to TextEdit.";
"NSAppleScriptErrorNumber" = -1743;
"NSAppleScriptErrorAppName" = "TextEdit";

Looks like with SIP completely disabled security request prompt funtion of the system is broken, although the checking against TCC access rules still works.

UPD2: so I partly enabled SIP by “csrutil enable --without debug --without fs” and now prompt works. Finally, I can enjoy my trial.

[LucB]

Thank you for that very detailed investigation and feedback, @mawnakw !

Hook should at a minimum try to detect the SIP status and direct users to a help page and this forum topic in case where SIP is disabled. Hopefully we can do better than that.

[LucB]

@omawnakw

Other bug: system notifications about created links never disappears - you required to click “close” on them. Clicking on notification itself does nothing, it should at list open the hook window or copy the link to clipboard. Also this notifications is not listed in the system notifications bar - they jist disappears when closed, very strange behavior.

You should be able to change this via System Preferences > Notifications

Banners: will disappear after some time
Alerts: will stay until closed

You can can even turn it on or off.

Had you tried that?