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Better Software for Apple Mac osx

Upgrading woes?v4v3

For downgrading from version 4 (or later) to an earlier version, please refer to the relevant section of the installation page.

How to Uninstall?v4

Follow the instructions on the installation manual page.

How to Uninstall?v3

If you want to uninstall ABFA, run the installer and select the "Uninstall" option in the popup menu.

You may find that on Mac OS X the icon in the "System Preferences..." menu does no go away immediately. Don't worry all files have been removed but the System Preferences application has an internal cache.

The icon will go away by itself the next time the cache is updated, but if you want to give it a bit of a helping hand you can remove the cache file:

  • [home]/Library/Caches/com.apple.preferencepanes.cache

Problems during start up.v4

ABFA 4 stops working after a while or just after an upgrade. This indicates corrupted or incorrect startup files.

If you experience this problem, there is a simple solution to it:

1) got to Home:Library:Preferences (where Home is your personal home folder)

2) remove the "net.publicspace.abfr4.plist" file (if it exists)

3) remove the "A Better Finder Attributes Pref" file (if it exists)

5) restart ABFA; it should work now

Problems during start up.v3

ABFA stops working after a while or just after an upgrade. This indicates corrupted or incorrect startup files.

If you experience this problem, there is a simple solution to it:

1) got to Home:Library:Preferences (where Home is your personal home folder)

2) remove the "net.publicspace.abfa.plist" file (if it exists)

3) remove the "A Better Finder Attributes Pref" file (if it exists)

5) restart ABFA; it should work now

How can I get rid of the "ABF HotKey" application. I don't use the hot key anyway.v3

Simply go to "System Preferences...", select the "A Better Finder Preferences" pane and untick the "Activate hot key" checkbox.

The hot key application is unpopular with some people who closely monitor their installation and configuration. In order to prevent confusion, here are some technical details about how this works:

The "ABF HotKey" application provides hotkey access to all A Better Finder products and is an essential part of A Better Finder Launcher. It registers itself as a login item, so that the hot key is always available.

When the application is not used (i.e. Launcher is not installed and all "Activate hot key" checkboxes are unticked), it quits of its own accord to save memory. Every time you log into your account, the application will be launched, but will quit automatically if it is not required.

Something isn't working and I have FruitMenu, WindowShade X, Labels X or anything else using Unsanity's Application Enhancer installed.

With Application Enhancer installed, all bets are off. This is "wicked cool" software specifically designed to undermine OS X's built-in protection features.

Uninstall it and see whether the problem persists.

Blaming other people for your bugs is plain bad manners, so in our defense let us quote George Warner from Apple Developer Technical Support:

Our (Apple's) official policy is that we don't support APE'd systems. Period. The data miner that parses all the crash logs that are sent to us automatically ignores any report that has APE api's in the backtraces or dylb lists.

Likewise If DTS receives a crash incident with API in the backtrace or dylb list we will not investigate it. Our "standard answer" in this case is to inform the developer that we don't support APE and that we'll only be able to help them if they can reproduce the problem without APE installed.

I would suggest that you do the same for your "user X". ;-)

Any other bug at all. Especially right after a new version is released.

Email us immediately! It could be that many other people have the same problem. We can only fix the problems that we know about.

We do test each version carefully before a release, but with so many different factors (OS version, installed products, specific hardware, installers, builds, etc..) to consider, it is always possible that a bug does get into a release.

Unfortunately occasionally a bug affecting all users goes unreported for days and causes no end of frustration for everyone. Simply dropping us a line would allow us to fix the problem immediately.. don't be afraid of getting in touch!