MacOS – Location of the resource files for the spinning wait cursor

findermacos

For a presentation I am making, I want to find my Mac's system's default "Spinning Wait Cursor" resources.

I was told that the cursors are in here:
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/HiServices.framework/Versions/A/Resources/cursors

and here:
/System/Library/Frameworks/WebKit.framework/Versions/Current/Frameworks/WebCore.framework/Resources/

Indeed, one can find some large and vectorized versions of most cursors in the first folder, and some other, smaller ones in the second.

But, there seems to be no beach ball in there.

I know one can find the graphics in high resolution online easily, but for my project I would need to get the original system files.

A screenshot or animated screenshot also wouldn't be what I'm looking for. I couldn't find the info anywhere.

Note 1:
From the GUI, a user can see the spinning wait cursor in various different sizes depending on the settings in System Preferences > Accessibility > Display > Cursor size, and then proceeding to crash their computer.

Note2:
I am not trying to change my OS' appearance.

Can anyone help me find where the resource is?
Is it hardcoded like the startup chime?

Best Answer

Cursors are rendered using CoreGraphics

The Wait Cursor or what is sometimes affectionately know as the "spinning beachball of death" is rendered in CoreGraphics (Apple's 2D rendering engine). Meaning, they are generated on the fly depending on what your preferences are set to (i.e. cursor size).

The CoreGraphics file is located at /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/CoreGraphics.framework/Versions/A/CoreGraphics

From my research I was able to find the parameters for the Wait Cursor: $23766C - $23D66C"

As far as working with images stored in CoreGraphics, I can point you to this tutorial: Core Graphics on OS X Tutorial

Static Images of Wait Cursor

There is a directory that has static images of the cursors:

/System/Library/Frameworks/GLUT.framework/Versions/A/Resources

Within that directory you will find a number of TIFF files. The specific file is waitCursor.tiff

Opening the file with preview (open waitCursor.tiff) yields the following graphic (it's quite small):

How I located the file....

The El Capitan cusors link you provided had broken img src links, so I used the one for Yosemite for reference as they are pretty much the same. The icon you wanted is called the "Wait cursor."

So, using the find command in Terminal, I executed the following:

find /System -iname waitcursor*

The command basically says starting from the /System directory, look for all files with the name "waitCursor" in it regardless of case.

I guessed the format of the name from the file naming conventions in the directory you initially provided. For example, the "Resize Down" cursor was called "resizedown".

Related Solutions

Unzipped files thestery location

Maybe in your Home folder? It's the default folder the terminal points to. Try to open it through the Go menu in the finder.

MacOS – Troublesome kext or driver causing system to hang

Here is a method to hunt the kext which may cause you a hang system.

Boot in safe mode & make a capture of the minimal safe set of extenions loaded with:
```
mkdir ~/tmp
kextstat >~/tmp/safe.kextstat
```
Boot in normal mode & make a capture of the full set of extensions loaded with:
```
kextstat >~/tmp/full.kextstat
```

Compare them:

cd ~/tmp
diff full.kextstat safe.kextstat

and from this difference, which is including the faulty kext, extract the culprit by checking its installation date:

ls -dlT /System/Library/Extensions/<extension_folder_name…>

The faulty extension will be the one installed at the time of the start of your kernel hang.

Beware: the extension_folder_name… is not the extension name as displayed by kexstat.

Here is an example:

on_my_mac$ kextstat | egrep 'Addr|ThunderboltDPA'
Index Refs Address            Size       Wired      Name (Version) <Linked Against>
   70    4 0xffffff7f8125e000 0x8000     0x8000     com.apple.driver.AppleThunderboltDPAdapterFamily (1.8.2) <45 9 8 5 4 3>
on_my_mac$

is coming from:

on_my_mac$ cd /System/Library/Extensions
on_my_mac$ ls -dlT AppleThunderboltDPAdapters.kext
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  102 Aug 31 05:39:06 2011 AppleThunderboltDPAdapters.kext
on_my_mac$

Make a backup copy of the suspected extension:

mkdir ~/Extensions_backup
cd /System/Library/Extensions
/usr/bin/sudo mv faulty_extension_folder_name ~/Extensions_backup

and test this system with one missing kernel extension:

reboot

If it is OK. You got the right culprit.

If not. Just reverse step 4, reboot and repeat from step 4 to test the next potential extension.