Hi,

Please document what you are doing. I get the beachball part. Where are you clicking on Open? What is the Search window? Please describe what controls you are using or the exact menu items.

Are you running in a VM? Evidently VMs are broken on 10.15.6 of the OS. There are no reports of issues on opening files.

Also there are lots of issues with file Open and Save panels on Catalina. On Catalina Apple runs them in a separate process. These issues have been around since Catalina first shipped. Typically the effect is that the panels do not open. What you are describing could be Yate waiting for the OS to open the panel. Rebooting can fix the issue.

Oh, and I did reboot but rebooting did nothing. at the same time, I can open a finder window separately and easily go to the folder that I can't get to in Yate. this never happened before with any apps.

Sorry. The replies came in to my email in the wrong order. I just saw your explanation now. I've tried this on two versions of 10.15.6 running Yate v6.0.0.2. It works as expected. I'm assuming that this is not a generic issue as I'd certainly have heard and I have not had any other reports on this.

While I can crash Catalina at any time by opening the File Save panel in a particular way I've yet to see any issues with the File Open panels ... other than very rarely they simply do not open. I've seen this in a number of application. Yate handles this case by simply returning and doing nothing.

Just to make sure here are the steps:

- you do a File>Open
- the open panel is displayed
- Yate should not be responsive when the panel is displayed. Clicking anywhere in Yate should cause a beep. However, there should definitely not be a beachball as Yate is being blocked by the Open Panel.
- after a few minutes, the 'finder' panel closes on it own. Yate never does this. As I said the Open Panel is being run by Apple in a different process and Yate is completely blocked.

Something here is corrupted as it seems as if the OS is not properly handling Yate's request to process the file open panel.

Just for fun do a Yate>Import Preferences. This also displays an open panel in exactly the same manner. Different code but exactly the same approach.

Something is going on external to Yate if you upgraded last week and the issue just started yesterday. There is no reason that the code should stop working after a few days. The code is static and does not change.

It's entirely possible that something has been corrupted on your system. The first thing I suggest doing is downloading Yate again from the web site and installing it over your existing version. That will fix Yate if the binary has somehow been corrupted and you will not lose any of your settings. Regardless as to whether that works or not I suggest checking the drive as there might be corruption there. You can do this is Disk Utility. Let see what happens with one or both of these steps (and the File>Import test). In the worst case you might have to try reinstalling the OS (not a clean install) in order to restore whatever is messed up.

I feel for you. However, I repeat....when the open file panel is displayed, Yate is blocked and is not running. The OS is running the process to select the files ... Not Yate.

Further, installing a new copy of the same binary image should have no effect on how far that external process can get. I fundamentally believe that something is wrong on your Mac. It can be the drive access or the OS image. It can also be the XPC interface that Apple is using to get the two processes to communicate. Basically all Yate does is it tells the OS to display the panel. It only wakes up when the panel is closed

Did you try doing a Yate>Import Preferences to see if it hangs? It is yet another file open dialog.

If you wish you can avoid the open panel completely and load files and or folders simply by dragging them in from the Finder. Alternately you can display the File Browser panel and load or drag files from there.

I have two Macs running the same OS version as you and as it is current I would assume that the majority of users are on the same version.

I'm glad you can work with it. However, something is fundamentally wrong with your Mac. That entire panel belongs to the OS. If you click on files or in the sidebar you're running an Apple process. Yate knows nothing about what goes on in that panel. I have a test application which I sent to Apple to illustrate a similar issue with save panels. That issue has been around before Catalina shipped, is worse in Big Sur and has not yet been fixed. Luckily I have a workaround. If I have time I'll generate a variant to test open panels. My guess is that when it beachballs, the process is crashing.

I wish I could do more.