[Bug]: UI interaction conflicts: Hot Corner triggers, inconsistent click behaviors, and rendering issues during Screen Capture mode

[Cyiming]

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Description

I am experiencing multiple interaction and UI rendering issues when using Thaw to manage menu bar icons. The core issues involve unintended system triggers (Hot Corners) during drag operations, inconsistent click-to-open logic for hidden items, and severe UI glitches when the macOS Screen Capture indicator is active.

Steps to Reproduce

Issue 1: Unintended Top-Left Hot Corner Trigger

Set the macOS Top-Left Hot Corner to open "Launchpad" (or any other action).

Attempt to drag and reorder menu bar icons, or simply click on an icon located in the hidden section.

Result: The action frequently and unintentionally triggers the Top-Left Hot Corner, opening Launchpad every time and interrupting the workflow.

Issue 2: Inconsistent Click Behavior for Hidden Icons

Expand the hidden icons section.

Click on a hidden icon.

Result: The behavior is entirely random. Sometimes, 1 click directly opens the app's dropdown menu. Other times, the first click only moves the icon into the main visible menu bar, and it requires a 2nd click to actually open the menu.

Issue 3: "Flashing" Glitch under Screen Capture Mode

When the macOS purple "Screen Capture" indicator is active (due to Thaw's permissions or other triggers).

Expand the hidden section (which sometimes appears as a second row visually).

Click on a hidden icon.

Result: The icon flashes briefly and immediately disappears. It fails to move to the main visible status bar, and its menu cannot be invoked at all.

Issue 4: Failure to Auto-Hide

Successfully click and use a hidden icon.

Click away to dismiss the app's menu.

Result: The icon persists in the visible menu bar instead of returning to the hidden state immediately. It remains there indefinitely and only hides randomly after an unpredictable amount of time.

App Version

2.0.0-beta.12 (43)

macOS Version

26.5

Monitor Setup

Single Monitor

Additional Information

Dragging or clicking icons should be restricted to the menu bar's hitbox and strictly isolated from macOS Hot Corner triggers.

Clicking a hidden icon should have a unified, predictable behavior (preferably 1 click to invoke the menu directly).

Icons should render correctly and be clickable regardless of the macOS Screen Capture indicator state.

Hidden items should instantly auto-hide back to the hidden section once the user clicks away or the app loses focus.

[github-actions]

👋 Hi @Cyiming! Thanks for opening this issue. To help us investigate these UI interaction conflicts, could you please provide:

• Thaw version (visible in the Thaw menu bar or About screen)
• macOS version (e.g., macOS 15.x Sequoia)
• Steps to reproduce each of the issues (Hot Corner triggers, inconsistent click behaviors, rendering issues during Screen Capture mode)
• Expected vs. actual behavior for each symptom
• Whether these issues occur consistently or intermittently

Once we have this information, we can take a closer look. Thanks!

Note

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[diazdesandi]

Hm, it sounds like it might be some kind of issue with the installation. Could you please:

1. Quit Thaw completely
2. Nuke the core preferences and cached states by running these commands in the terminal:

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.stonerl.Thaw.plist
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.stonerl.Thaw

3. Reset system accessibility tracking for the app

tccutil reset Accessibility com.stonerl.Thaw

After running these, restart the app and grant the necessary permissions

If that doesn't work, enable the debug logs, recreate the events that trigger the issues, and share those logs with us so we can take a look at them.

[Cyiming]

Hm, it sounds like it might be some kind of issue with the installation. Could you please:

1. Quit Thaw completely
2. Nuke the core preferences and cached states by running these commands in the terminal:

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.stonerl.Thaw.plist
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.stonerl.Thaw

3. Reset system accessibility tracking for the app
   tccutil reset Accessibility com.stonerl.Thaw

After running these, restart the app and grant the necessary permissions

If that doesn't work, enable the debug logs, recreate the events that trigger the issues, and share those logs with us so we can take a look at them.

Hi,

I completely nuked the preferences and reset the accessibility permissions as instructed. While the previous errors are gone, I have identified several critical new bugs.

I realized debug logging wasn't enabled by default, so I don't have the logs attached right now. However, these issues are highly reproducible on my end. Here is what's happening:

1. Reproducible Spotlight Crash via Spacing Adjustment
   Whenever I adjust the icon spacing and click "Apply," every associated app abruptly relaunches. Worse, I can 100% reproduce that right after this mass relaunch, the macOS Spotlight (Search) icon completely disappears from the menu bar, and its shortcut (Ctrl + Space) stops working. The forced mass relaunch seems to overwhelm the macOS menu bar process.

2. Phantom Mouse Movements Triggering "Hot Corners" & Freezing
   When I drag an icon, Thaw now frequently triggers my macOS "Hot Corner" located in the top-left of the screen. It appears the app's internal mechanism for moving icons is sending phantom pointer coordinates to the edge of the screen. The app itself also occasionally freezes entirely during these dragging actions.

3. "Took too long to respond" & Ghost Icons
   During dragging, I sometimes get a system prompt: "[App Name]" took too long to respond. Once this timeout occurs, the icon I was moving permanently vanishes into a "ghost" state. The only way to retrieve it is to force-quit and restart that specific app.

I just enabled debug logging. If you cannot reproduce these issues on your end based on the descriptions above, let me know and I will try to capture the logs the next time they occur during my workflow.

Thanks.

[diazdesandi]

Thanks for the details.

As per #\1, how many menu bar items do you have?

For #\2, that's a bug. I believe something like that was previously reported, so we might have to look at it again.

#\3 is there a common pattern across the items? For example, does it tend to happen exclusively with heavy, highly interactive third-party menu apps (like Docker, creative suites, or status monitors), or does it also happen to simpler, lightweight apps as well?

[Cyiming]

Thanks for the details.

As per #\1, how many menu bar items do you have?

For #\2, that's a bug. I believe something like that was previously reported, so we might have to look at it again.

#\3 is there a common pattern across the items? For example, does it tend to happen exclusively with heavy, highly interactive third-party menu apps (like Docker, creative suites, or status monitors), or does it also happen to simpler, lightweight apps as well?

Hi,

Thanks for getting back to me.

Regarding #1 (Number of items):
I have approximately 21 menu bar items in total. About 10 of these are in the "Visible" section, and 11 are in the "Hidden" section. I have attached a screenshot of my Thaw layout for your exact reference.

Regarding #2 (Phantom mouse / Hot corners):
Glad to hear it's a known bug on your radar.

Regarding #3 (Timeout patterns - CRITICAL UPDATE):
I just recalled the exact pattern, and it has nothing to do with whether the apps are heavy or lightweight. It has only happened twice: once with the Xiaomi Interconnectivity Service, and once with TickTick (a lightweight task manager).

The exact trigger is the MacBook Notch. Both times, I noticed some visual empty space between the Notch and the existing menu bar items. I tried to drag and drop the app icon into that specific gap near the Notch. The moment I did that, the took too long to respond error popped up. It seems Thaw's coordinate mapping conflicts with the macOS Notch boundaries.

The Xiaomi icon eventually came back, but the TickTick icon is now completely gone/ghosted from the menu bar and I cannot find a way to recover it.

Hope this specific "Notch" trigger helps you isolate the bug much faster!

[nightah]

1. Whenever I adjust the icon spacing and click "Apply," every associated app abruptly relaunches. Worse, I can 100% reproduce that right after this mass relaunch, the macOS Spotlight (Search) icon completely disappears from the menu bar, and its shortcut (Ctrl + Space) stops working. The forced mass relaunch seems to overwhelm the macOS menu bar process.

This is expected behaviour because to apply spacing changes, each bundle needs to be restarted to take effect. We have changed the behaviour, which now provides a warning and additional confirmation prompt of the destructive behaviour (app restart wave). Having said that, I can't reproduce the Spotlight keyboard shortcut no longer working (I actually have the search icon hidden).

With the hot corners that may not be completely avoidable, items that are in the hidden/always-hidden section(s) actually are off-screen in the negative x region of the menubar. For us to move items to those locations, we need to move to the top left of the menu bar, but it should be imperceptible to the human eye.

The notch is actually quite tricky because items manually being dropped on the edge/on it can cause all sorts of behaviours which we can't really control. It's why sorting on a notched-based display uses the full sort mechanism to avoid the clipping issues, and we overflow icons that would fall in the notch region to the hidden section.

[Cyiming]

1. Whenever I adjust the icon spacing and click "Apply," every associated app abruptly relaunches. Worse, I can 100% reproduce that right after this mass relaunch, the macOS Spotlight (Search) icon completely disappears from the menu bar, and its shortcut (Ctrl + Space) stops working. The forced mass relaunch seems to overwhelm the macOS menu bar process.

This is expected behaviour because to apply spacing changes, each bundle needs to be restarted to take effect. We have changed the behaviour, which now provides a warning and additional confirmation prompt of the destructive behaviour (app restart wave). Having said that, I can't reproduce the Spotlight keyboard shortcut no longer working (I actually have the search icon hidden).

With the hot corners that may not be completely avoidable, items that are in the hidden/always-hidden section(s) actually are off-screen in the negative x region of the menubar. For us to move items to those locations, we need to move to the top left of the menu bar, but it should be imperceptible to the human eye.

The notch is actually quite tricky because items manually being dropped on the edge/on it can cause all sorts of behaviours which we can't really control. It's why sorting on a notched-based display uses the full sort mechanism to avoid the clipping issues, and we overflow icons that would fall in the notch region to the hidden section.

Thanks for the transparent technical explanation.

However, based on your explanation about the negative X region, there is a major UX conflict: every single time I click to interact with an item in the hidden section, it triggers my top-left Hot Corner. Effectively, this means users simply cannot use a top-left Hot Corner at all if they choose to use Thaw. If this mechanism is completely unavoidable with your current architecture, I strongly recommend adding a prominent warning in the app's settings or your official documentation. Otherwise, users will assume their Mac is glitching or your app is constantly misfiring.

I'll disable my top-left hot corner for now, but I hope this structural conflict can be resolved in future updates.