I am so sick of #macOS and it's inability to consistently manage any sort of peripheral.
Normally I just bitch that it can't remember anything about my monitor setup. Now it will only communicate with USB or Thunderbolt peripherals if they're connected and powered on when the Mac starts up. Turn them on after that? Nope, Mac won't talk to it. Connect them after the Mac starts up (maybe connecting a flash drive or connecting to an iOS device? Nope, Mac won't talk to it.
#Apple. Honestly.
@geoffduncan I'm not on Sonoma but my Apple Silicon Mini only keeps my dual monitor setup right after creating Display Overrides and editing and locking my displays plist. If you don't know how to do that manually try something like the "Better Display" app.
As for the other problems, you can't roll back a point update, so it's either a full downgrade or wait and hope 14.5 fixes it. Or try this temporary workaround first if you haven't already done so: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/13/macos-sonoma-14-4-usb-hub-issues-reported/
@OffWorldGirl
I haven't tried anything new with Display Overrides on 14.4—I'll give that a whirl.
I locked the windowserver.dispay plist when I moved to Apple Silicon (I don't remember where I learned that), but I just found a much older (2014) plist preference.display that…is probably killable. There's also a com.apple.Displays-Settings.extension plist. Guess I'll look all these up.
Curiously, I don't have "Allow accessories to connect" in Settings > Privacy & Security.
@geoffduncan I thought my locked display plist would carry over but I had to redo it from scratch. Not for point updates, only major version upgrades. But it's possible they changed something in it between 14.3 and 14.4.
If you search for "Allow accessories to connect" you won't find it, you have to go to System Settings -> Privacy & Security directly. At least according to someone further down in the comments on that MacRumors thread.
@OffWorldGirl
My windowserver.display plist is still locked, but I'll twiddle it.
Curiously, I *can* search preferences for "Allow accessories to connect" and it claims to find a hit…but there's nothing there. Also nothing there if I navigate to Privacy & Security directly without a search. I wonder if it's specific to particular Macs.
Micro-frictions. Loving that term.
@OffWorldGirl
Ah: "Allow accessories to connect" is a laptop-only preference.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/allow-accessories-to-connect-mchlf779ae93/mac
Geoff Duncan
Stuck on Earth