5 October 2006 7 pm eastern

Black box

Installed Mac OS X 10.4.8 on my Intel MacBook. Result: a big black box surrounds my cursor, rendering said Mac semi-useless. Screen shots: 1, 2, 3, 4. Uninstalling Keyspan and trashing com.apple.universalaccess.plist (remedies that worked for some Macintouch users) did not fix the problem. Thanks, Steve!

Anyone know a solution? Delete all preferences? Uninstall all Adobe software? Remove tonsils with pliers?

Update: The pleasant site red-sweater.com explains the problem and solution, as does an Apple technote. Many thanks to those who commented or wrote in soon after I posted my query. Eric Peacock’s comment also nicely summarizes what the black box is about.

Filed under: Design

44 Responses to “Black box”

  1. Jesper said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:06 pm:

    System Preferences -> Universal Access -> “Options…” next to Zoom -> uncheck “Show preview rectangle when zoomed out”.

  2. Erik said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:09 pm:

    here you go sir: http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/197/1048-persistent-cursor-rectangle

  3. nathan said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:11 pm:

    From the Apple Support Feed:
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304496

  4. Eric Peacock said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:12 pm:

    Jeffrey,

    The box is a new addition to the Universal Access part of the OS – it shows the area you would focus on if you zoomed in. In some cases apparently it defaults to being on after the update.

    You can simply turn it off (or back on) by doing the following:

    Go to System Preferences -> Universal Access -> Seeing tab

    In the “Zoom” area there is a button labeled “Options”, click that.

    Look for the first checkbox, “Show preview rectangle when zoomed out” and uncheck it.

    That should do it.

  5. Dan Carson said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:14 pm:

    Hey Jeffrey,
    I saw this problem documented in Jon Gruber’s blog the other day, and he linked to an article describing how to remedy it. This link here goes straight to said article. I haven’t had this problem myself, but hopefully this helps!Article Link

  6. Chris Hughes said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:15 pm:

    Not sure, but is this a case of the Persistent Cursor Rectangle issue mentioned elsewhere?

  7. Dan Carson said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:15 pm:

    PS - Requires no removal of tonsils.

  8. Dan Benjamin said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:16 pm:

    There’s an article about this, Persistent Cursor Rectangle. It seems that the solution may be to perform these steps (quoted from the article):

    1. Open System Preferences
    2. Go to Universal Access pane.
    3. Switch to the “Seeing” tab.
    4. Click the “Options” button for the Zoom section.
    5. Turn off the “Show preview rectangle” checkbox.

    Hopefully this helps.

  9. Chris said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:19 pm:

    Try opening the Universal Access Pref Pane and going into “Options” under zoom and changing the “Maximum Zoom Setting” and toggle the “Show Preview Rectangle when zoomed out” setting.

  10. Julian Stahnke said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:20 pm:

    Yes, could be the new zoom feature. Go to system preferences, universal access, seeing, zoom, options: uncheck ‘show preview rectangle when zoomed out’. That should fix it.

  11. eduardo said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:29 pm:

    Check Universal Access settings, this was discussed last week. Check daring fireball’s “New in 10.4.8…” for goodies

  12. Daniel Staal said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:30 pm:

    Time to start reading MacFixIt. From one of their recent stories: Try turning off (or on and off) “Show preview rectangle when zoomed out” in the Universal Access control panel. (Try the Zoom Options.)

    I think that is what they wanted to do by trashing that plist, but actually setting it to the correct values is safer than assuming you know what the defaults are supposed to be.

    Beyond that, I don’t know.

  13. eduardo said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:33 pm:

    OOps didn’t read the full post. What I heard is to either turn on an off the zoom option under “Keyboard and Mouse” or under Universal Access turn Zoom On/Off. There was another post that I am trying to find that specifically dealt with the problem.

  14. raul said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:35 pm:

    Disable any launch items and try starting in Safe Mode (hold down the shift key right after you hear the tone during startup).

    This insures you are starting with only system launch items and without any 3rd party extensions. If the box disappears then you know it’s a 3rd party extension issue… and then it’s a process of elimination….

    It’s definitely not an adobe issue… almost certainly is due to an os x customization…

  15. eduardo said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:35 pm:

    Here’s the link

    http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/197/1048-persistent-cursor-rectangle

  16. Ed Goham said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:35 pm:

    Just read the above then your problem.
    I didn’t read all the Manintouch solutions.
    HTH

  17. br said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:35 pm:

    Daniel Jalkut posted a solution on his blog:

    http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/197/1048-persistent-cursor-rectangle

  18. peter said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:36 pm:

    I had the same issue when I upgraded, it seems related to the new zoom feature…

    anyways the solution lies in sys prefs-universal access-”seeing”-Zoom
    go in under options and make sure “show preview rectancle when zoomed out” is not checked..

    alternatively just disable zoom altogether.

  19. Jon said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:40 pm:

    John Gruber published this link a few days back. Sounds like your problem. Hope it helps

  20. peter said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:47 pm:

    btw: you turn off zoom in mouse and keyboard.. under the mouse or trackpad tab..

  21. Jim Macak said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:48 pm:

    I’ve read reports of this, and Apple even has a tech article out about it:
    Mac OS X 10.4.8: Black rectangle may appear…

    To fix, open “Universal Access” in System Preferences, under the “Seeing” tab click “Options”,deselect “Show preview rectangle when zoomed out” and click the “Done” button.

    Cheers,

    Jim

  22. David Barrett said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:50 pm:

    This should help:
    http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/197/1048-persistent-cursor-rectangle

  23. Jeffrey Zeldman said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:54 pm:

    That did ‘er. Thanks! You are lovely.

  24. George said on October 5th, 2006 at 7:59 pm:

    The black box is your new “project focus rectangle,” dividing your screen into five sectors: left of rectangle, right of rectangle, above/below rectangle, and “on track target focus”. Narrow your focus: use your new orientation responsibly.

    Seriously of course we s ympathize, we look forward to hearing of your next travail, not too soon, and we continue to read you. My own OSX update had no such problem; maybe it’s those things on the right and left borders of the screen that you have and I don’t.

  25. Eric Stewart said on October 5th, 2006 at 8:32 pm:

    Just wondering if you could tell me what you are running on your desktop, some sort of application launcher? Looks cool, where can i get it?

  26. Jeffrey Zeldman said on October 5th, 2006 at 9:22 pm:

    Just wondering if you could tell me what you are running on your desktop, some sort of application launcher? Looks cool, where can i get it?

    DragThing. It’s awesome.

  27. Luke said on October 5th, 2006 at 10:58 pm:

    Damn Jeff, sorry to hear about the black box.
    It seems to be a hit and miss with the .8 update. Some have had the issue, some haven’t. I have no idea what triggers it, for future reference.

    Glad to see you’ve sorted it out though. Mac on.

  28. Dan said on October 6th, 2006 at 12:55 am:

    Oh my! I’m kind of disappointed that there isn’t an icon for Opera in your dock. ;)

  29. Tim Kenington said on October 6th, 2006 at 3:03 am:

    Thanks for the intro to DragThing. I love it!

  30. » Černý rám místo kurzoru po udpatu na Mac OS X 10.4.8? | Mac. REFLEKTOR said on October 6th, 2006 at 11:08 am:

    [...] Několika uživatelům, včetně slavného Zeldmana, se po upgradu na OS X 10.4.8 objevil místo kurzoru myši černý obdélníkový rám. Pokud se vám přihodilo něco podobného, máme pro vás rychlé řešení. [...]

  31. hwright.net » Problem with MacOS 10.4.8, or is it a feature? said on October 6th, 2006 at 11:32 am:

    [...] Jeffrey Zeldman has blogged about having a problem after installing MacOS 10.4.8. However, upon looking at the comments he got in response to his blog it would seem he actually had a feature enabled that just behaves differently in this upgrade. It’s great to know it isn’t a bug, although Zeldman would have probably appreciated a tip from the OS that he was seeing a new feature. [...]

  32. Lauri said on October 6th, 2006 at 4:12 pm:

    Well, sorry you had problems but I’m glad that now I know about the zoom feature. Many times I’ve wanted to zoom in while designing websites and now I can. Goes to show there can be a silver lining to everything, although maybe not for the person having the problem, lol. Thanks for sharing!

  33. Chuck said on October 6th, 2006 at 9:30 pm:

    Sorry to display my ignorance on your blog, but why are your screenshots PDF instead of JPG, PNG, or such?

  34. Bytes & Pieces » Blog Archive » My mac can zoom… and so can yours! said on October 8th, 2006 at 8:54 pm:

    [...] This feature has probably been around on Macs for ages, I just did not happen to know about it until I bumped into this article today. [...]

  35. Tobie Langel said on October 8th, 2006 at 9:05 pm:

    Your misfortune actually enabled me to discover the zoom feature which I was totally unaware of.

    This feature is a godsend for webdesign, especially when dealing with CSS, so much so that I even posted about it on my blog.

    Thanks for sharing this top CSS trick!

  36. unremarkable said on October 9th, 2006 at 4:10 am:

    Has anyone found a solution for this yet?

  37. Jeffrey Zeldman said on October 9th, 2006 at 8:08 am:

    Yes, please refer to most of the preceding comments, which refer to red-sweater.com’s explanation of Apple’s error and the simple fix.

  38. Wayne Atherton said on December 7th, 2006 at 3:31 am:

    Jesper, thanks man, this helped a lot

  39. Bob Coyne said on December 7th, 2006 at 8:36 am:

    I had a similar problem and discovered this post thinking I’d fixed it. The option above zoom is voice recognition, if this is switched on it uses a black box to show what is being spoken. Now you may think this would be obvious if a black box appears, as a voice will also be speaking. Well not if your Mac is plugged into your stereo and the stereo is switched off. After 2 hours of messing about I switched on the stereo to play some music through iTunes and figured it out.

  40. Chris said on December 14th, 2007 at 10:32 pm:

    came across this post in my hunt through google quite the interesting find if a bit out dated. But i’ve definitly run into similar issues on my mac, i’ve even seen it once in 10.5

  41. bilgi yarışması said on February 7th, 2008 at 10:35 am:

    Oh my! I’m kind of disappointed that there isn’t an icon for Opera in your dock. ;)

  42. Jeremy said on February 12th, 2008 at 4:05 pm:

    I have a similar - BUT NOT same issue. Same black box - but it occurs at any focus point, selected icons, search fields, menu bars, window panes, etc. whatever I have selected. I assume that it is the same type Universal Access type issue, but can’t find an option for this…

    any ideas??

  43. Brian said on February 28th, 2008 at 9:37 am:

    Jeremy,

    Started noticing what you describe yesterday MBP w/ 10.5.2 and all available updates. Still looking for a solution.

  44. Brian said on February 28th, 2008 at 9:42 am:

    Jeremy,

    I think you have the Universal Access, Voice Over feature “on”. Probably by accident. I also had extra menu choices in my Apple menu for Shutdown, Restart, etc.

    Regards,
    Brian

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