Cannot close Kicad windows on a Mac

I’m on a mac (10.9.5), running 4.0.1-stable.

When I open “Footprint Editor” from Pcbnew, I cannot close the Footprint Editor window. The red “X” at the top left of the window is click-able but does nothing. Cmd-w doesn’t close the window.

The same is true for the footprint viewer (“Library Browser”). In fact, I can’t close Pcbnew or EEschema windows. The only way I seem to be able to close any Kicad windows is to head back to the Project Manager window and hit Cmd-q, which quits Kicad entirely.

Is this the expected behavior?

Unfortunately, it’s not that.

Here’s a minimal case that leads to a problem:

  1. Start Kicad (Project Manager window opens)
  2. Launch Pcbnew from Project Manager
  3. Cannot close Pcbnew

Also, as described in a related post, when the Pcbnew window is active, the Kicad toolbar (at the top of the mac screen) doesn’t update (i.e. is still the taskbar for the Project Manager).

So my installation is somehow messed up. Perhaps there’s a problem with my wxWidgets or the GUI/window manager? I installed Kicad from the pre-compiled binaries (4.0.1-stable: http://downloads.kicad.org/osx/stable/kicad-4.0.1.dmg).
I’m not sure where to go from here…

I’m not using the version that you are on. For a number of reasons that are in the bug tracker record, I’m unable to. However, I also use the pre-compiled binaries, but from the OSX nightly builds. For me, the nightly build of the 17th December does not have this problem. Other than the footprint editor also opening a blank, unselectable PCBNEW window, pressing the red X will close a window without any trouble. I suggest pulling a recent version from the nightly builds, and if the problem persists, file a report on the bug tracker. The developers are currently very helpful on OSX build problems & PCBNEW bugs.

/martin

Just installed 4.0.1 from osx/stable. Sorry, I’m still not able to replicate your problem.

/martin

I installed Kicad from the pre-compiled binaries (4.0.1-stable: http://downloads.kicad.org/osx/stable/kicad-4.0.1.dmg).

FYI. I downloaded and installed that package. I cannot replicate your behavior…

I AM able to replicate this issue (even though it is old).

A temporary fix is to use the mac hotkey: Command-Shift-Option-Esc to close the “top app”.

Not sure what is causing this but it’s happened with both Pcbnew and Footprint Editor. it seems that Kicad applications just stop responding to mouse clicks on the “close” button. Even some dialogs will suffer from this issue but I can usually close those by clicking the “cancel” button. This is pre-compiled binary v4.0.4 stable on a Mac OS X 10.10.5.

Hello,

I’m testing out KiCad once every 6 months or so to see if the issue persists and since my last 3 attempts I’ve had it every time. Today I’ve installed 4.0.6 stable precompiled build and have the top window not being able to be closed like in this image:

Today I’m testing with OSX 10.12.3 on a Late 2011 MBP but had the same problems with older OSX versions.
Since this kind of makes it unusable for me, but on the other hand people have been using KiCad on OSX, I’m thinking that maybe there’s some cached preference file (not in Applications and ~/Library/Applications Support) which should be removed? I would really, really, really like to have a chance to try KiCad out but if I have to restart the app every time I want to close a window it’s doesn’t make much sense.

Does anyone have an idea of a potential solution or something which could help?

Sorry for double posting but since I’m a new user I can only add one image to a post and wanted to share this one as well as it might give some more experienced KiCad users more insight on the issue.

On top of not closing windows I also have other UI issues with scaling windows like in this image:

Would you be able to run a virtual machine with something like Ubuntu and KiCAD on that?

can’t be of more help, only use Windows and dabble into Linux occasionally

@Joan_Sparky: I’ve ran KiCad 4.0.4 in Ubuntu Mate VM (via apt-get) and it all works correctly. I can open and close windows as needed, mouse panning also works ok (on OSX it jumps and zooms in bit randomly).

@Andy_P Thank you for the tip with tabs. It solves the issue partially until I open “Component properties -> Assign Footprint” which opens in new windows which repeats my original issue

Ok I think I’ve got this. In my case the following helped: https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1490762/comments/12

Particularly this command if the installation path is the same as in .dmg Readme instructions: sudo mv /Applications/Kicad/kicad.app/Contents/Frameworks/python/site-packages/wx-3.0-osx_cocoa /Applications/Kicad/kicad.app/Contents/Frameworks/python/site-packages/wx-3.0-osx_cocoa.old

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