System Preferences - icons - mystery? (10.15.1) [Fixed by Apple in Big Sur]

[luckman212]

• Catalina 10.15.1
• Alfred 4.0.6 b1124

 

Something weird is going on with Icons for a few of the built-in System Preference prefPanes. For example, "Bluetooth" or "Internet Accounts". When I search Spotlight for these, the proper icon is displayed. But, in Alfred, only a generic icon is shown:

vs

and

vs

I notice even in Finder, the generic icons are shown:

 

Only Spotlight and the System Preferences.app itself seem capable of showing the right icon. I opened the Contents folder of the prefPane bundle to investigate. It seems like Info.plist contained within specifies icons via keys such as "NSPrefPaneIconFile" and "CFBundleIconFile" but even in that case, the file referenced doesn't seem to exist on the filesystem anywhere that I can find.

 

E.g. for Bluetooth, NSPrefPaneIconFile = "BluetoothAqua.png" —but that file doesn't exist. Similarly, Internet Accounts specifies "InternetAccountsIcons.icns" and "InternetAccountsIcon40.png" as icons, but these are nowhere to be found:

 

What's going on here? I know this isn't really a bug in Alfred but it started with 10.15 and I wonder if anyone knows about these generic icons or where the resources are coming from...

 

Edited November 18, 2019 by luckman212

[vitor]

15 hours ago, luckman212 said:

I know this isn't really a bug in Alfred

 

And for that reason you should ask somewhere else with more eyeballs, like Ask Different.

 

15 hours ago, luckman212 said:

but it started with 10.15

 

Like dozens of other bugs and complaints. Catalina is buggy. It was a hasty release and is frankly an embarrassment. There’s a good chance someone has bumped into that issue before you, and you have a better chance of finding them in a bigger generic community. Alfred’s community is great but specialised, and your problem falls outside the scope.

[luckman212]

Thanks @vitor

Will do. I'll post to AskDifferent and link back here with any news. I agree that 10.15 is one of the worst (buggiest) releases ever. It truly is Apple's "Vista"...

[luckman212]

My AskDifferent post (updated 11/21/19):

Why are some System Preferences icons “Generic” in macOS 10.15 Catalina?

 

(also found this related discussion here on the forums):

https://www.alfredforum.com/topic/13785-missing-icon-for-apple-id-preference-pane/

 

Edited November 21, 2019 by luckman212

[luckman212]

I think I've found out what's going on here. Seems Apple's added yet another layer of obfuscation here with a compressed Assets.car file, which can only be read by specialized tools. Here are a few links I found about this:

Reverse engineering the .car file format (compiled Asset Catalogs)
steventroughtonsmith/cartool: Export images from OS X / iOS .car CoreUI archives
iphone - Analysing Assets.car file in iOS - Stack Overflow
insidegui/AssetCatalogTinkerer: An app that lets you open .car files and browse/extract their images.

 

I was able to use this beta version of Asset Catalog Tinkerer to extract PNG icons from inside those archives. So now I've got a workflow (I'm dubbing it "Preferences Plus"—will post it shortly) that shows all Prefs, with their proper icons, and uses JSON Script Filter to match on the keyword metadata as well (similar to searching in the System Preferences search box...)

Edited November 21, 2019 by luckman212

[alfredpleb]

@luckman212 hi there, I just came across this. do you plan on releasing preferences plus/have you already? Not having the icons is a small annoyance, but I notice it every day. Would love the workflow. thanks

[luckman212]

@alfredpleb Sorry for the delay on that. I haven't released PrefsPlus (yet) ... although I am continuing to use it and it's working well (for me). I'd like to share it. Would you mind testing it out to see if it works for you before I release it widely? I could send you a link via PM.

[alfredpleb]

1 hour ago, luckman212 said:

@alfredpleb Sorry for the delay on that. I haven't released PrefsPlus (yet) ... although I am continuing to use it and it's working well (for me). I'd like to share it. Would you mind testing it out to see if it works for you before I release it widely? I could send you a link via PM.

Hi again, and no problem on any delay. I'd love to test it out! Feel free to shoot me a link. Thanks!

Edited March 21, 2020 by alfredpleb

[blizzrdof77]

On 3/20/2020 at 11:16 PM, luckman212 said:

@alfredpleb Sorry for the delay on that. I haven't released PrefsPlus (yet) ... although I am continuing to use it and it's working well (for me). I'd like to share it. Would you mind testing it out to see if it works for you before I release it widely? I could send you a link via PM.

I would love a link if you would be so kind @luckman212 🙂 !

[Macchio]

On 3/20/2020 at 11:16 PM, luckman212 said:

@alfredpleb Sorry for the delay on that. I haven't released PrefsPlus (yet) ... although I am continuing to use it and it's working well (for me). I'd like to share it. Would you mind testing it out to see if it works for you before I release it widely? I could send you a link via PM.

 

@luckman212 Don't know if you're still looking for testers but I'm definitely interested in restoring the individual .prefpane icons in 10.15!

[luckman212]

@Macchio - @alfredpleb - @blizzrdof77 -- I found a bug that prevents certain keywords from appearing in the search results. Need to beef up the JSON parsing a bit but I should have it working in a day or 2. I'll definitely post an update soon!

[alfredpleb]

On 4/29/2020 at 4:43 PM, luckman212 said:

@Macchio - @alfredpleb - @blizzrdof77 -- I found a bug that prevents certain keywords from appearing in the search results. Need to beef up the JSON parsing a bit but I should have it working in a day or 2. I'll definitely post an update soon!

Hey! Any progress? My heart wants this so bad.

[Pennyworth]

Interested in this as well! @luckman212 let us know!

[Andrew]

It looks like Apple have mostly fixed this in Big Sur.

[Andrew]

Remarkably, this looks to be fully fixed in the GA Big Sur!