Keyboard maestro is triggering the dedicated graphics card?

I’m not having as much luck. Unfortunately when I sign both packages it won’t allow me to enable the ‘accessibility’ access to the engine, which it needs to operate.

Eric -

Did you simply break the package apart and sign the engine alone and then run it separately?

I opened the package and edited only the engine plist. I then ran the terminal command pointing to the engine package. Restarted and had to give the engine accessibility rights again. After that everything just works.

I do however have problems with the resigning of the application itself, but as I stated before, it really doesn’t matter that much for me if the editor triggers the discrete graphics or not.

Hope that helps.

Hmmm… You can confirm that your engine runs in the toolbar without issue after doing that? Just want to make sure.

Thanks for your help!

Yes. It works just fine.

This is awesome.

I was fairly worried about recommending you try this route, but I’m thrilled to see it’s working. Like I said. Awesome.

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Roger that… I can’t seem to get it to operate properly. Following the exact steps you did, the engine just hits a consistent crash state for me. Shrug, oh well.

I've done quite a bit of researching on this over the past couple of days... and it turns out the code within the application is out of date. The flag NSSupportsAutomaticGraphicsSwitching actually tells the system the the application is capable of using either graphics card. Without having this set to the Boolean of True, it states the there is only one graphics card in the system. This causes the later MacBook pros to utilize the discrete card by default.

It really sounds like this could be updated officially without causing an issue. ... Is this something that is actively being looked at? Mac OS Sierra requires this option going forward or it will always force discrete graphics.

Just a heads up!

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My reading of the option is that you should enable it if the application understands graphics cards and can actively switch them as necessary, which is not Keyboard Maestro which has no understanding of graphics cards.

I have a support incident in with Apple to query the situation.

Is macOS Sierra any different? As far as I am aware, this has already been the case for Macs with multiple graphics cards.

Hey Peter -

It appears as if macOS Sierra is becoming more stringent on the overall variable state. I’ve loaded KB Maestro into my dev instance of OS Sierra and the application now triggers the discrete graphics with both application modules (main program and the engine itself).

It is still beta however so this could change, although we are now in B5 which generally is the last release before GM.

Is anyone else running macOS Sierra and able to confirm the same behavior?

Thanks!

Yes, I can confirm this.
Adding the flag mentioned above fixes the issue on my system. At least for the Engine.

/Eric

Out of curiosity I grepped through my Applications folder to see how many —and which— of the apps there are allowing the GPU switch:

The result of

grep -iFlrp --include 'Info.plist' 'NSSupportsAutomaticGraphicsSwitching' /Applications

is this:

result-grep.txt.zip (1.7 KB)

After removing multiple plist hits belonging to the same app I get a total of 89 applications that are using the key. The total number of applications is 440 (including apps in subfolders but excluding apps inside application bundles).

This is 20%. Doesn’t sound like much. However, the key is only applicable for applications with an “OpenGL context”, and I have no clue how to determine how many of the remaining 351 apps are OpenGL apps…

Apple DTS confirmed (claims?) that the option is safe as the sub-systems should ensure they are using whatever graphics card they require, so I have (provisionally) enabled this option for the next version, though it may be reverted if it results in more serious issues than battery usage.

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Thanks for keeping us updated Peter.
Looking forward to the next version so that I don’t have to patch it myself.

/Eric

Awesome news, thank you sir!

Hey Peter -

I saw that 7.3 was released… Did it include the fix for the discrete graphics?

Yes, it certainly does. :slight_smile:

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Awesome! Unfortunately the download for me continues to fail during the upgrade option within KB Maestro… Anyone happen to have a direct download link? :slight_smile:

Try Stairways Files

Sadly, it looks like this flag causes some mis-behaviour of the Application Launcher on some Macs - the sort of weird edge case problem I was afraid would be caused by this “harmless” flag.

At least it is hopefully just cosmetic.

I doubt I can use it as justification to get me a fancy new MacBook though.

Give us a link to click where we can donate money to your new purchase. I have no idea if it would make enough money, but it's a thought. :slight_smile: