Finder Context Menu Wonkiness

Bugs or Unexpected Behavior
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1

Describe the bug
I was attempting to set up and configure the Finder Context Menu feature of BTT. Ultimately, I was unable to do so and encountered a few bugs.

First problem, clicking the context menu icon in Finder displayed the "No context menu configured yet" message but clicking it did not do anything (i.e. did not open to a help page.)

I then went into BTT to set up the Custom Finder Context Menu trigger. I saw the "!!Activate BTT Finder Extension!!" button and clicked it. Nothing happened and nothing changed. Assuming it maybe needed to be clicked after I set up the first action I continued.

I created one menu item called "asdf" with an action that invokes a terminal command with the suggested test as follows:

touch "{BTTFinderContextMenuTargetPath/newfile.txt}"

(Note: During my attempts to get this to work I tried both an async and synchronous terminal command action.)

I clicked "Finish Action Configuration" and once taken back to the previous screen clicked the "!!Activate BTT Finder Extension!!" again. Again, there was no change and nothing happened.

I then went to Finder and clicked the context menu. I still saw the previous warning that no menu was configured so I closed Finder, and then relaunched Finder from the Force Quit menu. Going back to finder I noted that the menu was still not appearing that I had just made in BTT.

Accordingly, I went to Apple > Settings > General > Extensions > Finder to view the extensions to see if I had to toggle BTT on. What I saw was just a few of the built-in extensions listed all jiggling around up and down like they had too much coffee. I thought this was odd so I closed settings, reopened it, and this time saw all the Finder extensions listed as it had in the past and nothing was jumping around. But there was no BTT extension listed.

With that Settings window open I then went back to BTT and again clicked the "!!Activate BTT Finder Extension!!" button and noticed in the Settings window (which as slightly behind BTT) that the icons all started jumping again. Interestingly, however, when I went to Finder the context menu item "asdf" did appear, but clicking it did not create a new text file at the location.

I tried several things including restarting BTT, ensuring I was on the latest Alpha, and configured the context menu again just to be sure. And I restarted Finder again. I also looked at the "BTTLastTerminalCommandResult" value refreshing the values after each attempt and it remained blank every time.

Despite all those things I was never able to get this to work. And I want it to work.

I have attached a video showing several of these issues to help you identify what might be going on. It is probably important to note that I am on a beta macOS version, but I'm unsure whether that would account for any aspect of your integration with Finder (assuming that Apple didn't completely change the way Finder works since you released this feature in BTT).

Thank you for any help you can provide.

Device information:
Type of Mac: 2023 MacBook Pro M2 Max 96GB
macOS version: 15.3.1 (24D70) beta release
BetterTouchTool version: 5.221m

Additional information (e.g. crash logs, related issues, etc.):

2

Would be very interesting to know whether it works with the non beta version for you (because it works fine here with 15.3.1 (24D70) )

Apple has indeed modified various things since this features was added. First they completely removed Finder extensions from System Settings with macOS Sequoia, then after many developers complained they readded them with a 15.2. However since then things have sometimes been quite weird.

Two things to note:
If you can see the extension in "System Settings => Login Items & Extensions => File Providers" OR if you can already see the message or some items in your Finder context menu, you don't need to press the !!Activate BTT Finder Extension!! again. In that case it is already enabled.

Changes to the menu should show up as soon as you press the "Finish Action Configuration" button - however since macOS Sequoia sometimes restarting Finder has been necessary.

For testing it might be a good idea to assign some simple action like "Show HUD" or "App Expose" to such a menu item.

3

Thanks. Still no luck though. :cry:

Here's an updated video showing the suggestions you made for testing. I'm about to update to 15.4 beta and will test after that. If it still doesn't work then. I'll start killing some apps to see if anything else is getting in the way. Sit tight.

4

ahh I think you might be hitting a limitation of Finder extensions. They are not supported within "other extensions" or file providers like iCloud, Dropbox etc ;-(

5

Just an FYI from my last comment, I finished updating to 15.4 Beta (24E5206s) and unfortunately still not working.

So are you saying the menu won't work in a folder that's within the iCloud hierarchy? I just created a folder called "Misc" outside of iCloud (located at /Users/geigel/Misc) and attempted the three menu items from my video again (asdf, Foo, and Bar) to no avail.

I really want to get this working! Is there some debug output I could provide that might help?

6

Any new ideas on what to try? I would love to get this working. Thanks.

7

Hello Andreas (@Andreas_Hegenberg)

Unfortunately I am Alonso unable to get this feature to work. I’m not going to describe it as everything is the same as @Geigel has already said besides OS and Mac model.

OS: Monterey 12.7.6
Mac: iMac 27“ 2020 (20.1)
BTT: Latest Stable Release

I also tried the latest Alpha but no luck.

Greetings from a German :de:

Tobias