Installed Kicad 5.1.9-0-10_14 on Mac with ‘Catalina’ OS 10.15.7.
Using the DMG installer I managed to drag and install the two folders; one for the application and the other to the ‘Application Support’. About 6GB of files were installed and this seems to suggest the libraries are installed.
Kicad does start it soon become apparent that the program is not finding the installed library files. The first prompt box shows asks the user to CONFIGURE YOUR GLOBAL SYMBOL LIBRARY TABLE. This has been mentioned before in these forums but I did not find a solution there.
If choosing copy a custom… then I do not know what the file is called that should be copied from. I have chosen create empty S.L.T. but then when placing a symbol the library is empty.
Can this be fixed?
I believe the library files were copied to the /library/Application Support via the DMG install process; about 6GB of files were copied. Within the ‘Application support’ folder there is now a folder named kicad. What am I authenticating and how do I do it please?
Not sure if this applies to Catalina (I’m running the nightly releases on Big Sur), but app translocation seems to cause all manner of problems. If this is what is happening, then I don’t know the “correct” fix, but the following terminal command will likely solve it until you install a new version:
Note that you may have to delete your preferences files to make things work if translocation already messed them up.
Again, try at your own risk, is not guaranteed to work, etc. etc.; I’m not running on Catalina and don’t know if translocation is even a thing in that release of MacOS. It usually shows up for me around python scripts and whatnot, though; I don’t recall if I ever saw issues with the symbol libs.
You then also have to add the libraries within KiCad.
KiCad will allow you to store assets wherever you like - you would be well advised to keep ‘system’ libraries, supplied by KiCad, separate from your own libraries. Don’t try and modify the KiCad libraries as your changes will be overwritten the next update
If you go to ‘Preferences’ within the project manager, you can add the libraries to the empty library table. You need to do this both for symbols and footprints.
