Main kicad 5.0 window missing (OS X)

Software
1

short form

Main KiCad window doesn’t show up, but menus work.

environment

Running kicad 5.0.0-rc2-dev-310-g1cd6477
on macOS Version 10.13.3

details

When I double-click on /Applications/Kicad/kicad, the kicad icon shows up in the dock, the menu shows as “KiCad”, but I don’t get the KiCad project window (or any window). If I select KiCad => Hide Others, there is no visible window. If I right click on the KiCad icon in the dock and select “Show All Windows”, I get a small translucent window on my desktop that says “No Available Windows”.

more details

This is probably my error, caused by attempting to switch from 4.x to 5.0. But I uninstalled everything, deleted all kicad files in

  • /Application/Kicad
  • /Library/kicad
  • /Library/Application Support/kicad
  • ~/Library/Preferences/kicad
  • ~/Library/Caches/kicad

… then did a clean re-install of 5.0 Still no main windows.

Is there some information cached somewhere that’s messing things up?

2

update: enter / exit full screen causes the window to appear

Perhaps its because I have a two-screen setup and the window coordinates were confused, but I clicked on View => Enter Full Screen and the project window appeared. Clicking on View => Exit Full Screen caused the window to shrink (as intended), but now it stayed on screen.

So that’s a good enough workaround for me.

3

I am no KiCad developer, but I do have a multi monitor setup (KiCad 4.0.7 here under Debian Buster).
I am curious if this is repeatable. Does it happen every time you start KiCAd?
What happens if only one monitor is on when you start KiCad?

4

This totally worked for me. I thought the change was just how 5.0 was supposed to be – nice to have the window back.

5

This appears to be a one-time thing: once you’ve done the workaround (enter full screen / exit full screen), the main window appears reliably, even after switching from a two-monitor to a one-monitor setup.

To test this claim, I did the following:

  • Ran kicad and moved all of its windows to the “second” monitor.
  • Quit kicad
  • Unplugged second monitor
  • Launched kicad

The main project window appeared on my laptop screen, as expected. So the workaround seems robust.

6

I had the same issue (MBP with no dual screen setup) after moving to RC2 but hadn’t had time to run it down. I noticed Mission Control would show the title of the window, but not the actual window, so I figured it must be off screen somewhere. Toggling in and out of full screen once fixed it.

Thanks!

7

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