what on earth is going on?

[disturbed13]

there is some new feature in the dock that has 3 apps down there, 2 of the 3 are slightly larger due to the curser being down there. what is this and how can i turn it off?



also in pic 2 why does it keep asking for EVERYTHING! it never remembers.
any thoughts?

 

[MacInWin]

Number 1 is called "Magnification" and is set for both on/off and size in the System Preferences/Dock area. Not new, been that way for a long time now. Number 2 is new in Mojave, I think. Are you getting the exact same message for "com.apple.fonts" or does the message change slightly each time?

 

[ferrarr]

Turn off Magnification in System Preferences > Dock.

 

[disturbed13]

Number 1 is called "Magnification" and is set for both on/off and size in the System Preferences/Dock area. Not new, been that way for a long time now. Number 2 is new in Mojave, I think. Are you getting the exact same message for "com.apple.fonts" or does the message change slightly each time?

the magnification doesnt bother me, the section where 2 are magnified and the other is not. that is new, i really dont care to have that on my dock - i like to run it light. all of those pictures on my desktop are driving me crazy, but im not ready to move them yet.
the area where the 2 are magnified and the 3rd is not has very thin white lines sectioning it off... can that be turned off?

and no, it is the exact same message for everything, and doesnt change.

 

[MacInWin]

Your mouse cursor is between the icons there. That's why they are magnified. The line only shows the part of the Dock where permanent and recent apps show. If you don't want recents, System Preferences>Dock, uncheck "Show recent applications in Dock."

And if the image is exactly the same, then some font application is working with Preview to want to change something in Preview. Mojave now has security to prevent applications from messing with one another unless you explicitly give them permission to do so. You find that in System Prefs>Privacy. For more on what's new in Mojave, here is Apple's article: https://help.apple.com/macOS/mojave/whats-new/#dark-mode and here is Bombich.com's assessment: https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/granting-full-disk-access-ccc-and-its-helper-tool

So, if you know the app that wants to muck with fonts in Preview, set it up to have access permanently.

 

[Slydude]

the magnification doesnt bother me, the section where 2 are magnified and the other is not. that is new, i really dont care to have that on my dock - i like to run it light. all of those pictures on my desktop are driving me crazy

That is a new feature in Mojave. Icons for the most recently used programs appear there for ease of access. Here's more info on this feature and how to turn it off. In short: System Preferences>Dock preference pane. Deselect the last option.

 

[dtravis7]

Sly is correct. They put that feature from IOS into Mac OS where the last 3 opened apps that are not already in the Dock are shown there. Thanks Sly for the info on disabling it as many I am sure will not want it. For some reason it does not bother me as it's only showing apps that are not already in the Dock.

 

[Slydude]

When I first noticed that behavior in the beta I was really confused and to be honest it annoyed me. After a bit I got used to it but I think I have it off now.

@Dennis A bit off topic but the following might give you a laugh. Remember the series of issues I had getting the Mojave betas installed? In fact I was stuck at beta 2 the entire time. On Monday I downloaded the public release and it installed flawlessly. In fact, I think the process went faster than some other OS installs. I never did figure out what caused the issues.

 

[dtravis7]

When I first noticed that behavior in the beta I was really confused and to be honest it annoyed me. After a bit I got used to it but I think I have it off now.

@Dennis A bit off topic but the following might give you a laugh. Remember the series of issues I had getting the Mojave betas installed? In fact I was stuck at beta 2 the entire time. On Monday I downloaded the public release and it installed flawlessly. In fact, I think the process went faster than some other OS installs. I never did figure out what caused the issues.

That is crazy for sure. Glad the release installed at least!!!

 

[Slydude]

I completely erased the boot drive, got rid of an NTFS partition from multiple failed attempts to Bootcamp Windows 10 and then did the installation. Everything went well. The only issue I had was the first time I ran Migration Assistant it didn't work. The second time it ran fine.

I still have an installation of Public Beta 2 on an external hard drive. When I have some time this weekend I'm going to try to install this release over the beta and see how that works out.

 

[toMACsh]

It took me awhile, but I finally figured out that the question has nothing to do with magnification of the icons.

 

[MacInWin]

Yeah, that dawned on me when he said he didn't care about the magnification. The first post wasn't clear to me. I took the "this" to be the magnification, not the recents.

 

[tooki]

also in pic 2 why does it keep asking for EVERYTHING! it never remembers.
any thoughts?

View attachment 28518

It's malware!!!

I'm in the middle of helping a friend with this issue, and I think I have arrived at a disturbing conclusion: I think it's a covert key logger. This would explain why it's trying to control every application!

If you look inside the com.apple.fonts.app bundle, the info.plist file contains this URL: http://www.widestep.com/fdbck/emailstore/submit.php?application=EliteKeyloggerMac

There's also a log file and a binary file. I don't know what's in the binary, but the log file indicates regular screen shots and web history parsing, all in 2014. I don't know whether it succeeded in uploading anything.

To remove it:
First, in Terminal, run:
sudo rm /Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.fonts.plist


Then, if the com.apple.fonts.plist process is still running, kill it in Activity Monitor or terminal.

Restart for good measure.

And of course, run an anti-malware tool, and assume you've been compromised and change passwords.

 

[chscag]

Welcome to our forums tooki:

Nice catch and thanks for pointing that out. You are correct, that indeed is malware and should be removed.

 

[disturbed13]

i found the file... but its not like yours... at all...


so im not 100% sure what to do with this but i think i should
sudo rm /users/Allen/com.apple.fonts

then kill it in the activity monitor... or something like that

 

[tooki]

i found the file... but its not like yours... at all...
View attachment 28644
View attachment 28645
so im not 100% sure what to do with this but i think i should
sudo rm /users/Allen/com.apple.fonts

then kill it in the activity monitor... or something like that

Your screenshots don't really show anything, you'd need to show the contents of the com.apple.fonts.app.

If you kill com.apple.fonts.app in activity monitor, does it relaunch automatically? If so, you must check all your LaunchAgents plists to see which one is launching it — remember that the filename of the plist may be a decoy!!

 

[disturbed13]

okay you were right... i was in the wrong folder (these Mac's are not that user friendly)
how ever.... have you ever wondered what would happen if you changed the value in the key to something else?
like change the contents inside the blue on line 5?

 

[harryb2448]

disturbed13 consider downloading Malwarebytes for Mac. Do not register it and after the 30 day free trial it will operate as the free version. Suggestions are your problem is this malware acts like a keylogger.

Also consider moving all those files off the desktop to documents, downloads, games etc.


https://www.malwarebytes.com/mac/

 

[disturbed13]

i already have malwarebytes, it didnt find anything before i ran the command line request.
the command line request has stopped the issue
thanks

 

[Rod]

Be aware that due to the changes in Mojave to System Security many third party apps will ask for access to the system folder and other services such as Photos, Microphone, Camera etc. Some may require you to drag an app specific icon to your "Full Disk Access" folder in Security & Privacy > Privacy > Full System Access. CCC and Spam Sieve are typical examples and this should only happen once. Native apps should not ask for system access as they are part of the system already.