Tag: mac

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macOS Finder and USB Flashing Format (UF2)

Sad Mac

Sad Mac

It took me a while to figure this one out. I’m running macOS Sequoia on two different Macs and I would occasionally get Finder lockups. I feel like in with previous versions of macOS I could quit the Finder and restart it in the terminal and things would (mostly) go back to normal. This was not working, and quitting the Finder meant it would never relaunch and I’d be forced to reboot. My Mac Studio at work reboots in under a minute and I can relaunch all my applications fairly easily, but my home (2019) iMac takes a long time to boot back up, so it’s super annoying.

There’s one common thing between these two Macs, and it’s the USB Flashing Format (UF2).

At work I program micro:bit boards. When you plug one into your Mac it shows up in the Finder so you can copy a .UF2 file to it to load new code. At home I program Raspberry Pi Pico boards, which also mount in the Finder on first use, or when holding down the BOOTSEL button when plugging it in.

Matt Godden suggested resetting the Mac’s USB Bus but the solution that seems to be working is to unplug the microcontroller. Yes, unplug it.

It happened again today so I figured I should write this post to remind me, and maybe inform others. Today it happened right as I tried to copy a .UF2 file to a Pico board. I got the “pinwheel of death” so I walked away and when I came back minutes later it was still spinning until I unplugged the board. I am pretty sure I’ve seen it happen with a micro:bit even when I was not trying to copy new code to the board.

So this may happen when copying a file to the board or just even when the board is connected via USB.

So if you are using a Mac to copy a UF2 file to a microcontroller and the Finder locks up try to just unplug the board to see if it fixes is.

Update 2025-05-07

After a few more days of testing I’ve realized that it’s not just an issue with the Finder locking up. There is also an issue with the Finder slowing down. I left a micro:bit plugged in via USB and went about my work and the Finder still worked but suddenly had issues opening folders and displaying files. I took a screenshot and it never showed up on the desktop… until I unplugged the micro:bit! So we’re dealing with an issue that may lock up the Finder but may also slow down the Finder. Sigh…

Update 2025-07-08

To replicate this issue you need to use your Mac. If you just leave a board connected and walk away it seems fine when you return, but the process of actively using your computer, switching applications, creating files, using the Finder, seem to help reveal the slowdown and lockup. I’ll try to get a better sense of things the more it happens.

Update 025-07-30

Still having this issue on macOS 15.4. If I leave a micro:bit connected via USB and try to save files they will not show up in the Finder until the micro:bit is disconnected. This magically fixes things and files suddenly appear. It’s maddening.

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Current Age Shortcut

Josh Holtz (@joshdholtz@mastodon.social) had posted about his iOS widget called “What’s My Age Again” which does one thing… Tells you your current age! I’m much older than Josh but I guess we both suffer from not knowing our age. I think it’s mainly the issue that my birthday is in middle of the year and I am a different age for the two halves of the year. Anyway… You can read Josh’s post about his widget.

When I started messing around with Shortcuts for iOS and macOS I got inspired by Josh and ended up making my own “Current Age” shortcut which is slightly similar to what Josh created, at least in the output.

My Shortcut doesn’t display my age all the time though, you need to touch the Shortcut to run it, which is fine. I like the fact I was able to easily add this functionality to my phone.

The other neat thing is that you can create Shortcuts on macOS, and some of them will work on the desktop or mobile… and some will work on the Apple Watch I guess. (I don’t have one, and probably will not have one in the future.)

I guess you can also share / publish these Shortcuts so others can use them, you know, so others can know when my birthday is!

I was a user of AppleScript many (many, many) years ago, and while Automator has been around awhile, I never really liked it. And even though it was fun playing with Shortcuts for a bit, on the desktop I was using Quicksilver for a few things, but recently stepped up to Keyboard Maestro, which is simply amazing for automation on macOS, but I should probably save that for another post.

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2022 2018 Mac Update

Up until February I was using a 2010 Mac Pro as my main desktop machine at home. (MacPro5,1 Quad-Core Intel Xeon 2.4 GHz with 36GB of RAM) I had all the drive bays filled and upgraded the video card to a SAPPHIRE Radeon 580 a few years ago. It actually worked pretty well, but was definitely showing its age, and with me doing more video work the slowness was starting to get noticeable.

About two years ago at work we upgraded a few machines and I ended up with a Mac mini (3.2 Ghz 6-Core Intel Core i7 with 32GB of RAM) I’ve actually still got a 2007 Mac mini at home in my shop that mainly runs as a music player, but it’s been years (obviously!) since it’s been a useful desktop machine.

Anyway, I was pleased with the Mac mini at work so I figured I’d get one for home. I’m still not quite ready to shell out for an M1 machine, so I grabbed a 2018 Mac mini. It’s only an i3 but I did stick 32GB of RAM into it, and while it’s got a small 256GB internal SSD I picked up an external 1TB SSD which the system boots from. (There’s also a 4TB external backup drive connected for Time Machine backups.)

The Mac mini isn’t screaming fast, but it’s way faster than an old 2010 Mac Pro, and was about $700 USD, which is not a bad price for a “new” Mac. I know the base model M1 Mac mini starts around $600 but I wasn’t quite ready to jump to the M1 architecture and the older Mac Minis have a few features I really like.

So I’ve been using the Mac mini for a few months now, and it’s been great. Exporting videos and rendering 3D models is faster than the old Mac Pro, and I was easily able to upgrade to Monterey macOS 12 without issue (which the Mac Pro could not do). All in all I consider it a solid upgrade. And since it was about $700 even if I only get a few years of use out of it, that’ll be fine with me.

Oh, worth mentioning! I got the Mac mini from Other World Computing. I’ve been a customer for… I don’t even know, maybe 20 years? They’ve always been great to deal with and have good products.

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Comparing Macs

I’ve been using Macs for about 30 years (and Apple hardware for nearly 40 years) and I’ve said this before, but I’m not a latest-and-greatest kind of user. I don’t buy the first version (anymore) or the fastest bestest (ever) and I try to make do with the hardware I have. I use the old Macs for various things around the house/shop. There’s a MacPro3,1 running the laser cutter, and a Macmini2,1 used strictly for playing music and the occasional web search.

I still have two “main” computers I use daily. One is a MacBookPro9,2 that has been my “everyday carry” (when I used to go places) and the other is MacPro5,1 I got for super-duper cheap from a video producer friend of mine. The Mac Pro was stuck on High Sierra due to the lack of a Metal GPU, so I grabbed one recently to keep the old box going. I figured it was time to compare the two computers to see what they could do.

I’ll also mention that I probably don’t do as much heavy computing that I used to do. Things that would be “heavy” for me would be some 3D modeling/rendering, a bit of video/audio editing, and processing/editing RAW photos. As I said, I don’t need the fastest most powerful computer, and that’s good, because I don’t have one.

Here’s a quick comparison of the computers:

MacPro5,1 (Mid 2010) MacBookPro9,2 (13″ Mid 2012)
2 x 2.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 2.8 GHz Intel Core i5
Intel Xeon E5620 2400 MHz (8 cores) Intel Core i5-3210M 2500 MHz (2 cores)
36GB RAM 1066 MHz DDR3 12GB 1600 Mhz DDR3
Radeon RX 580 8 GB Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB

I used Geekbench 5 to get the following numbers:

Score MacPro5,1 MacBookPro9,2
Single-Core 458 554
Multi-Core 3682 1131
OpenCL 46089 992
Metal 50937 183

Whew! Those are some differences in those numbers. My main concern with these two computers is that I can continue to upgrade the OS for a few years, if possible. I just got the Mac Pro up to Mojave (and will get Catalina on it soon using OpenCore.) I’ve tried a few Mojave installs on the MacBook Pro, but they keep failing. I’ve got a new SSD coming to get that taken care of, so we’ll see how it goes.

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Remap F14 & F15 on macOS

Here’s a fun one. On some Macs the screen brightness keys are actually recognized as the F14 and F15 function keys. Which means when you build your own keyboard with those keys they change the screen brightness. Yuk. I found a post that explained how to change that, which involved going into System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Display, except… it’s not there. (See the image above? Not there.)

But wait, it is there after you plug in a device you built that has F14 and F15 keys. (See below.) So once you plug in a device you built that has F14 and F15 keys, the Display option will appear and you can disable the brightness thing by deselecting things. And yes, you can still totally adjust the screen brightness by using the keys on your normal keyboard.

This post is about 95% for future me, and 5% for someone who needs to figure it out and finds this post. You’re Welcome!