loginwindow seems to be preventing text expansion

[bedge]

I'm on Catalina 10.15.7 (19H1419), not even sure if that's relevant.

I've seen the "loginwindow seems to be preventing text expansion" a LOT more often recently, at least once a day.

Also, the previously 100% reliable "lock then unlock" process often no longer works.

 

The "solution" documented here: This can be resolved by restarting your Mac, or logging out fully and logging back in.

is not practical for anyone doing non-trivial work, where a reboot, or even a complete logout, is a serious disruption.  The amount of context lost with multiple shells, tmux/screen sessions, many trees of browser tabs, multiple editors, and many other apps is a serious issue.  It's not viable to say "just reboot". It's a good 15 min of time to restore context and some can't be easily restored. 

IMO, letting that solution stand is a lack of respect for the user's time.

Either this needs to be fixed (ie: stops happening), or we need a command that can be run to address the "loginwindow seems to be preventing ... " state. 

[deanishe]

Yeah, it's super annoying when this happens, but understand that there is absolutely nothing that Alfred can do about this.

 

Some other application is turning on a core macOS security feature. The latter is specifically designed to make it impossible for anything but the former to turn back off.

 

Logging out/rebooting is the only “manual” way to disable Secure Text Entry by design.

 

14 hours ago, bedge said:

Either this needs to be fixed (ie: stops happening), or we need a command that can be run to address the "loginwindow seems to be preventing ... " state.

 

You need to take it up with the developers of the program that's leaving Secure Text Entry turned on. They are literally the only people who can do anything.

 

Asking the Alfred team to provide a workaround is literally asking them to circumvent a macOS security API. That's as reasonable as it is possible.

Edited December 21, 2021 by deanishe

[Andrew]

@bedge the situation has been perfectly summed up by @deanishe

 

One thing of note is that Alfred makes a best effort at reporting what is locking the secure input, and this can sometimes be obscured by descendent processes. The best thing you can do when this happens is identify which app or plugin is causing this issue in the first place, regardless of what is being shown in Alfred's preferences as preventing text expansion.

 

A good place to start is your web browsers. If you see this happening, quit e.g. Safari and wait 10 seconds to see if the issue is resolved. If it is, then something within Safari is likely the root cause. Look at extensions and plugins you've added or updated since you started seeing this issue, and see if there are updates for them.

[i2likelife]

Thanks, @bedge, for posting this and to the others for your replies.

 

I did as @Andrew suggested and shut down the 2 browsers I usually have running and then took a chance at shutting down a utility app and the "loginwindow seems to be preventing text expansion" msg went away in Alfred. (The utility app had a red dot on its icon in the menu bar that I didn't know the cause of, but it seemed suspicious.)

 

I don't know for sure which of the apps released the lock, but I think it was the utility app. I won't mention names until I have this happen again. This will most likely be tomorrow as this has been happening nearly every day since I updated to MacOS Monterey about a week ago.

 

Restarting an app will be a much better solution than a re-login or reboot. Especially a utility app.

 

Oddly enough, when this problem happens to prevent Alfred's snippet expansion it also prevents Command-Tab Plus from working.

[Stephen_C]

9 hours ago, i2likelife said:

Oddly enough, when this problem happens to prevent Alfred's snippet expansion it also prevents Command-Tab Plus from working.

I think you'll find it also stops long-press alternative characters from working (e.g., long press e to get é).

 

Stephen

[i2likelife]

The "loginwindow" message is back and I tried what I did yesterday and re-started the utility app which is BetterTouchTool (BTT). This did not correct the problem. BTT also reports an issue with "loginwindow" and that shortcut functionality will be limited.

 

I am trying to quit other apps. The problem seems to show up after I use the lock on the MacBook Pro lock icon on the TouchBar an I am away from my computer for a while.

[deanishe]

3 hours ago, i2likelife said:

the utility app which is BetterTouchTool (BTT)

 

The app that isn't turning off secure text entry is (almost) guaranteed to be something with a password field (otherwise it'd have no reason to turn it on in the first place). Start looking at applications where you have to log in (browsers, password managers, etc.).

Edited January 22, 2022 by deanishe

[Stephen_C]

14 hours ago, i2likelife said:

The problem seems to show up after I use the lock on the MacBook Pro lock icon on the TouchBar an I am away from my computer for a while.

I have reported elsewhere on the forum that sometimes when my MacBook Pro unlocks using my Apple Watch I have problems with secure input being enabled for some reason. In such cases I lock the computer and log in again using TouchID—and everything works again. You might try something similar to see if that helps.

 

Stephen

[i2likelife]

On 1/22/2022 at 5:09 AM, Stephen_C said:

In such cases I lock the computer and log in again using TouchID—and everything works again. You might try something similar to see if that helps.

Thanks for this idea. The "loginwindow" problem just happened a few minutes ago and this time instead of using TouchId to log back in after locking the screen I chose the option to type the password & I typed the password and that cleared the problem. Hopefully that will be a consistent solution. It is a much faster solution than what I have been doing (rebooting).

[BTderek]

In my case, the problem is created by my password manager (I use pcloud pass). Whenever it falls into locked status, alfred displays the loginwindow-message. Unlocking my pcloud pass app solves the problem.