Fast user switching ( accessible from Login Options in the Accounts System Preference pane ) make believe it easy to keep two or more user logged in to a Mac at the same time . alternatively of enter and out when you need to flip accounts , you may flip between them with a quick icon fall into place in the menu stripe . This is Brobdingnagian timesaver for people who want to use more than one account — family member , mass giving presentations , user seek to debug their main account , and even author who take screenshots for articles and blogs . But since the release of Mac OS X 10.4 , firm user switching has also suffer from a small , but annoying , bug .
This hemipteron only manifest itself if you use a custom colour profile . That may sound like some really fancy feature that only in high spirits - end interior decorator would apply , but if you ’ve used the Color tab of the Displays System Preferences control board to fine-tune your monitor lizard at all , then you ’re using a custom color profile . I hope you ’ve done this if you do much body of work with your own picture ( see how here ) . There ’s also a good chance you ’ve done this if you simply ascertain the default OS X color profile too shining or moisten out see .
Here ’s what happens : Say you throw from your independent account to your mental testing account . So far , so serious — you wo n’t see any modification in your showing . But when you switch back to your normal report , you of a sudden incur yourself star at your Mac ’s nonremittal semblance scheme . The change is something that ’s concentrated to demonstrate well , but here ’s an image that hear :
To my eye , the left side of the image ( which show the generic color visibility ) looks quite wash out compared to the right ( my custom profile)—the gullible background is much lighter , and the shadow around the window is notably light . Even the brushed metal in the window ’s title orbit looks too light . That ’s why I tweaked the nonremittal color set - up in the first place . ( If you ’d wish to see a full - size , eminent - character JPEG , just cluck the above range of a function . ) When you attempt to reactivate the customized color visibility by taking a quick trip to the Color tab in Displays , OS X just blare at you . Clicking Calibrate does n’t work either ; you just see an alert message . So much for the simple solutions . I ( along with many others ) had just put up with a wash - out screen when I used fast user switching , as that was serious than what was required to get everything looking proper again — rebooting the Mac .
If you ’re feeling puzzled at this point because youhaven’texperienced this bug , note that it does n’t seem to impact everyone . firm drug user switching study without a hitch on my PowerBook , but I run into the bug on my desktop Mac . Others have reported no issues at all . If you ’re not move , consider yourself favorable ; if you are , keep read for the solution . favourable for us , an intrepidmacosxhints.comreader dive into ( or , bet on where you live , you may prefer to think the reader plunge into … ) the depths of OS X to compute out what was going on . After much geographic expedition , he came out with the answer . The guilty party is a tiny little covering named DMProxy , buried very deeply in the system . To find DMProxy , by far the easy affair you could do is simulate and paste the follow control into Terminal ( in Applications / Utilities ) . Launch Terminal , then glue the following text :
After pasting , just mechanical press Return . When you do , the Finder will open a young window showing the folder you peg down in that tenacious , complex course . Inside that Resources folder , you ’ll see the DMProxy software icon :
Now hold down Command and Option , then drag the DMProxy icon to a convenient location , such as the Applications folder or your Documents folder . This creates an false name to the original file cabinet , so you wo n’t have to practice Terminal to find it in the future .
Now , whenever you interchange back from another account statement and experience the bug , just launch the DMProxy app . Apple ’s Developer site does n’t have any info on what DMProxy does , but it ’s somehow demand in the graphics level of OS X , given its position .
As shortly as you do , your Mac will revert to your calibrated profile . Do this as necessary on any account that lose its colour schema . ( It might make the most sense to keep the false name in Applications booklet , so all users can get to it . ) In my testing , I only had to run this app once when the problem happen , and I could then fast substance abuser switch without the job recurring — at least until the next meter restarted my Mac .
