CrystalIDEA

Revert Unread "Badge" to Number in Parentheses in Thunderbird

Thu, 07 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The fix works all Thunderbird versions starting from 115 (Supernova).

The recent Thundebird upgrade brought unpleasant (for some) change of unread messages counter. The simple fix provided below reverts this to what it was before.

Before and after the fix

1. Enable userChrome.css support in Thunderbird

By default userChrome.css usage is disabled in Thunderbird. To enable it you need to set toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to true on in the Config Editor.

2. Put this CSS code to chrome/userChrome.css in your profile folder


/* This code reverts Mozilla Thunderbird unread badges to numbers in parentheses like it was before SuperNova 115 */

.name {
  flex: inherit !important;
  margin-right: 4px !important;
}

.folder-count-badge.unread-count {
  color: inherit !important;
  font-size: inherit !important;
  padding: 0 !important;
  min-width: 0 !important;
}

.folder-count-badge.unread-count:before {
    content: '(';
}

.folder-count-badge.unread-count:after {
    content: ')';
}

.unread > .container > .unread-count
{
  background-color: inherit !important;
}

/* total */

.folder-count-badge.total-count {
  flex: 1;
  text-align: right !important;
  background-color: inherit !important;
  padding: 0 !important;
  margin-inline-end: 0 !important;
}

3. Restart Thunderbird

Install ZeroTier on Synology NAS (also ARM64) without Docker

Thu, 09 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The official ZeroTier tutorial for Synology currently has the following limitations:

No ARM64 - Docker (Container Manager) package cannot be installed on older ARM64/aarch64 Synology models (RS819, DS119j, DS418, DS418j, DS218, DS218play and DS118 particularly). Even if you manage to install Docker yourself (might be tricky), the official zerotier-synology image is amd64 only at the moment (there’s a pull request for arm support, hopefully it will be merged some day).
Older ZeroTier client: at the time of writing zerotier-synology uses ZeroTier 1.10.6 while the latest version is 1.12.2

If you want to use the latest ZeroTier and/or if you have ARM64-based Synology and/or simply prefer to avoid Docker, this tutorial is for you.

1. Create a persistent TUN

SSH to your synology as root and proceed with commands.

ssh user@synology-ip
sudo -i
echo -e '#!/bin/sh -e \ninsmod /lib/modules/tun.ko' > /usr/local/etc/rc.d/tun.sh
chmod a+x /usr/local/etc/rc.d/tun.sh
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/tun.sh

Check for the TUN

ls /dev/net/tun

The command output should be /dev/net/tun.

2. Install ZeroTier

Create ZeroTier folder:

mkdir /volume1/Work/.zerotier
cd /volume1/Work/.zerotier

then download and run zerotier-download.sh script:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/crystalidea/zerotier-linux-binaries/main/zerotier-download.sh
./zerotier-download.sh

The script downloads zerotier-one executable (with zero dependencies) for the target cpu architecture along with zerotier-cli symlink. If interested, learn how we compiled ZeroTier without dependencies here.

Finally, download zerotier-start.sh script that will be run by Synology as root (see next step).

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/crystalidea/zerotier-linux-binaries/main/zerotier-start.sh

Do not close the SSH window yet.

3. Create DSM scheduled task

Open DSM and go to Control Panel -> Task Scheduler and create zerotier triggered task that will be automatically executed by Synology every boot:

The task must be Boot-up and executed under root, the task name can be arbitrary. Task settings should include full path to zerotier-start.sh

It’s highly recommended to record all tasks output to some folder:

To avoid reboot now run the scheduled task manually:

Go back to SSH and check if the ZeroTier service is running:

sudo ./zerotier-cli status

Which should output something like this

200 info 339748e2d0 1.12.2 ONLINE

If not, you should check the log folder. Now you can join the networks you need and authorize them online.

Final thoughts

The method successfully survives DSM updates
Updating ZeroTier is as easy as replacing one file and reboot
We failed to compile ZeroTier static on Raspberry Pi 2b 1GB for older armv7 32-bit Synology models

Compile ZeroTier client with no dependecies to use on any Linux

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Using the steps below you can successfully compile ZeroTier for x86_64, arm64 and arm32 (armv7) Linux systems. The resulting executable has zero dependencies thanks to static linking thus can be basically used on any Linux, including all Synology NAS models. We used a virtual machine for x86_64 build and Raspberry Pi 4 for arm64 build all running Ubuntu 22.04.

Install required build tools:

sudo apt install curl build-essential pkg-config libssl-dev
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
source "$HOME/.cargo/env"

Download & extract ZeroTier:

ZT_VERSION=1.14.0
wget https://github.com/zerotier/ZeroTierOne/archive/refs/tags/$ZT_VERSION.tar.gz
tar zxf $ZT_VERSION.tar.gz
cd ZeroTierOne-*

Build ZeroTier executable (takes time) and strip it to minimize size:

make -j`nproc` ZT_STATIC=1 
strip zerotier-one

Create a .tar.gz archive containing zerotier-one binary and **zerotier-cli **symlink:

tar -czvf zerotier_$(uname -p)_$ZT_VERSION.tar.gz zerotier-one zerotier-cli

Note: we failed to compile ZeroTier static on Raspberry Pi 2b 1GB for older armv7 32-bit Synology models.

Solving problems using Qt with Xcode 15

Wed, 04 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Once you upgrade to macOS Sonoma, you have to use Xcode 15 (Xcode 14 won’t work) and might face similar problems described below.

Problem #1: QMake does not work with Xcode 15

When trying to build a project on macOS you get the following error:

failed to parse default search paths from compiler output

Solution: this has been fixed in Qt 6.5.3 (will be also fixed in Qt 5.15.16 commercial), for earlier Qt version you should apply the following patch to mkspecs/features/toolchain.prf file before compiling. It can be easily backported to Qt 5.15.x - example.

Problem #2: your Qt app crashes when running on macOS < 14 (and iOS < 17)

Crash report will have something like this:

dyld[56529]: Symbol not found: __ZTVNSt3__13pmr15memory_resourceE
  Referenced from: <UUID> qt6/qtbase/build_arm64/libexec/moc
  Expected in:     <UUID> /usr/lib/libc++.1.dylib

Solution: this has been fixed in Qt 6.5.3 (will be also fixed in Qt 5.15.16 commercial), for earlier Qt version you should apply the following patch to some headers before compiling. It can be easily backported to Qt 5.15.x - example.

Problem #3: your Qt app crashes when running on macOS < 13 (and iOS < 15)

Crash reports might look different, our report on macOS 11:

Crashed Thread:        0  mainThread  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes:       KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000008cfe004
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Signal:    Segmentation fault: 11
Termination Reason:    Namespace SIGNAL, Code 0xb
Terminating Process:   exc handler [1068]

Thread 0 Crashed:: mainThread  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0   org.qt-project.QtCore           0x0000000109e5a4a9 operator==(QString const&, QString const&) + 9
1   org.qt-project.QtCore           0x0000000109faafd0 QObject::setObjectName(QString const&) + 112
2   com.crystalidea.anytoiso        0x0000000108d0c513 0x108cfe000 + 58643
3   com.crystalidea.anytoiso        0x0000000108d0c128 QAppMainWindow::QAppMainWindow(QWidget*, QFlags<Qt::WindowType>) + 88
4   com.crystalidea.anytoiso        0x0000000108d0ac79 main + 153
5   libdyld.dylib                   0x00007fff20480f3d start + 1

It’s caused by the new optimized Xcode 15 linker when linking static libraries.

Binaries using symbols with a weak definition crash at runtime on iOS 14/macOS 12 or older. This impacts primarily C++ projects due to their extensive use of weak symbols. (114813650) (FB13097713)

Xcode release notes with detailed explanation

Solution: add this to your .pro file

LIBS += -Wl,-ld_classic

MacBook Pro and Mac mini 2023 suport

Sat, 04 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0100

We’re happy to announce that the most recent version of Macs Fan Control fully supports new MacBook Pro and Mac mini 2023 with M2 Pro and M2 Max chips.

Both 14” and 16” MacBook Pro feature two fans (which are not spinning on idle), Mac mini has a single fan.

Macs Fan Control displays individually CPU efficiency/performance cores as well as GPU clusters temperatures. For convenience there’s CPU Core Average virtual sensor that is calculated as average of all cores.

Macs Fan Control running on 16inch Apple M2 Max MacBook Pro [Mac14,6]

Macs Fan Control running on Apple M2 Pro Mac mini [Mac14,12]

Getting Qt 5.15 LTS source

Sun, 30 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Last update: 19 May 2025

As you might know, Qt Group doesn’t publish source code neither changelog for Qt 5.15 LTS updates. Instead getting those now requires buying a commercial license starting with Qt 5.15.3. This decision was controversial and pretty unfortunate for many Qt users but luckily Qt Group decided to release source code for each LTS update exactly after 1 year. Qt Group never announced this information officially but according to the upload date on their server, 1 year is what you need to wait before getting the source code.

Qt	Commercial release	Open source download	Release notes
5.15.3	March 04, 2021	March 03, 2022	Link
5.15.4	May 12, 2021	May 12, 2022	Link
5.15.5	June 18, 2021	June 17, 2022	Link
5.15.6	September 08, 2021	September 07, 2022	Link
5.15.7	October 29, 2021	October 28, 2022	Link
5.15.8	January 04, 2022	January 4, 2023	Link
5.15.9	April 06, 2022	April 06, 2023	Link
5.15.10	June 07, 2022	June 06, 2023	Link
5.15.11	October 05, 2022	October 04, 2023	Link
5.15.12	December 28, 2022	December 20, 2023	Link
5.15.13	March 9, 2023	March 8, 2024	Link
5.15.14	May 25, 2023	May 24, 2024	Link
5.15.15	31 August, 2023	30 August, 2024	Link
5.15.16	17 November, 2023	15 November, 2024	Link
5.15.17	22 May, 2024	21 November, 2025	Link
5.15.18	31 Oct, 2024
5.15.19	19 May, 2025

Mac Studio fan control and fan noise

Mon, 04 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0200

We’re happy to announce that the most recent version of Macs Fan Control fully supports new Apple Mac Studio 2022 mini desktop computer.

Mac Studio has 2 exhaust fans that are treated as a single fan, which means their speed (RPM) must be always synchronized (like in iMac Pro). Macs Fan Control displays individually CPU efficiency/performance cores as well as GPU clusters temperatures. For convenience there’s CPU Core Average virtual sensor that is calculated as average of all cores. Similarly there’s GPU Cluster Average sensor for all GPU clusters.

Fan speed and noise

We’ve got two interesting observations:

On both M1 Max & Ultra Mac Studio idle fan speed is locked at around 1315 RPM which is considerably higher than specified minimum of 1100 RPM
No matter how hard and how long you push both CPU and GPU at the same time, fan speed never gets higher! Confirming video by Max Tech

Lots of users complain on relatively high idle fan noise when Mac Studio is close to a user (see related hot topics on MacRumors: Mac studio fan noise - it’s going to be one of the loudest Macs at idle and Mac Studio Max - it’s not that quiet). We recommend setting fan speed at 1100 RPM which is considerably less audible and according to our observations does not affect the cooling performance.

Macs Fan Control running on M1 Ultra powered Mac Studio

One more thing: MacBook Pro 14/16” is also running the same M1 Max chip and has zero-RPM fan mode with no fan spinning while Mac Studio features much serious heatsink (even copper for M1 Ultra) and doesn’t have zero-RPM fan mode. We think it’s quite strange and we’re planning to do some tweaks in the app in the next update (v1.6).

M1 Pro/Max MacBook Pro temperatures and fan control

Sat, 20 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0100

We’re happy to announce that the most recent version of Macs Fan Control fully supports latest Apple Silicon chips M1 Pro & M1 Max on new MacBook Pro 2021. As you can see the app displays both CPU efficiency/performance cores as well as GPU clusters temperatures.

The new Macbook Pro features two fans with zero-rpm mode on low temperatures (well seen on the screenshot)

Switching to Plausible Analytics and ditch Google Analytics

Tue, 24 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0200

We’re happy to announce that we recently switched from Google Analytics to Plausible Analytics, lightweight, privacy-friendly and open-source website analytics tool.

The script size is less than 1KB which is almost 50 times less than Google Analytics
No cookies which means no cross-site or cross-device tracking, fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA and PECR
No personal data is collected and all stats are in aggregate only. No connection to the AdTech and surveillance capitalism
Fully open source web analytics software that is self-hosted by us at webstatistics.io

Big brother is no longer watching you.

Debug your Qt apps on macOS in Qt Creator (lldb workaround)

Wed, 30 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0200

Many developers started complaining that lldb debugger shipped with latest XCode update (12.4) no longer works when trying to debug your app. It can be difficult to diagnose the issue because you only see “Debugger started” and “Debugger finished” message in Qt Creator. By using View->Views->Debugger Log you can actually locate the problem and see the “Not allowed to attach to process” error message. Basically lldb now requires your app to be signed with the get-task-allow entitlement which allows other processes (like the debugger) to attach to your app.

To debug your app after it’s built you need to sign it specifying required entitlements using command line (we run codesign command via QMAKE_POST_LINK):

codesign --entitlements codesign_entitlements_debug.plist ...

codesign_entitlements_debug.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>com.apple.security.get-task-allow</key>
    <true/>
    <key>com.apple.security.cs.disable-library-validation</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

We also use com.apple.security.cs.disable-library-validation to allow loading of unsigned Qt frameworks when Qt is compiled manually. In release build frameworks are signed together with the main binary.

Signing with the com.apple.security.get-task-allow entitlement must be done only for the debug binary, otherwise your app will be rejected for notarization.

Drop Windows XP/Vista support

Tue, 04 May 2021 00:00:00 +0200

Windows XP and Windows Vista will no longer be supported in future versions of CrystalIDEA apps. Server versions of these legacy systems will be discontinued as well (Windows Server 2003/2008).

Below is the list of last versions of our apps (plus download links) that are still compatible with Windows XP and Vista:

Uninstall Tool v3.5.10 - Download (portable)
AnyToISO v3.9.6 - Download (portable)
Macs Fan Control v1.5.9 - Download
SpeedyFox v2.0.30 - Download

Licensing concerns

Already issued licenses will continue to work normally on legacy systems. If you decide to upgrade your OS (e.g. Windows XP -> Windows 10) there’s no need to purchase a new license, simply uninstall the app from the old PC/OS and activate your license in the new OS.

If you purchase a new license and do really want to use it on a legacy OS, just just use one of download links above.

Some numbers

Windows XP was released in 2001 and Microsoft officially discontinued its support in 2014.
Windows Vista was released in 2006 and Microsoft officially discontinued its support in 2017.
In 2021 both Windows XP + Vista users are 0.58% of the website audience (1 Jan - 4 May).

Solve KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED when trying to update to Windows 10 version 2004

Sat, 08 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0200

Some computers with different hardware may encounter BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) with KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED error code when trying to upgrade to Windows 10 version 2004 from previous versions (1909).

We faced this problem ourselves but also found more people on the Internet with same symptoms:

Upgrade using Windows Update (1909 -> 2004) fails with a BSOD (KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED). Windows treats this reasonably as unsuccessful upgrade and performs automatic rollback to the previous version (1909). No crash dumps are created despite of all necessary settings enabled. Not being able to have a crash dump makes it basically impossible to discover the actual reason for the problem is still unknown.
Clean install fails as well when booting from a USB flash with Windows 10 (2004) leads to the same BSOD.

We even tried converting the working Windows 10 (1909) to a VMWare virtual machine and tried an upgrade there but it also ended up with a rollback.

The solution we came up with is not obvious and straightforward unfortunately. It also requires a fresh install so please make sure to create a backup.

Boot into your working Windows 10 version 1909
(optional but recommended) Backup your system drive using the free Macrium Reflect app to some external storage
Install Windows 10 version 2004 on some external USB drive (we used Samsung T5 SSD) using the WinToUSB app. The free version works only with Windows 10 Home edition but you can either later upgrade Windows to Pro/Enterprise/etc or support developers and buy the app. We believe there maybe other (free) tools around, it’s simply the one we used.
Boot into this USB drive and finish your Windows version 2004 installation
Use the free Macrium Reflect app to clone the USB drive to your initial target drive (internal).
Boot into the target drive, change your Windows install from “Windows to Go” back to normal buy deleting the ‘PortableOperatingSystem’ value located at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control in your Windows registry. More info
Reboot an enjoy your brand new Windows 10 version 2004.

For the reference, our hardware that faced the problem:

ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard
Intel Core i7-8700K 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor
Samsung 970 Pro 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 8 GB Video Card

All latest drivers and BIOS version, of cause.

Stop Dropbox client using GPU on Windows

Mon, 13 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0200

We’ve recently noticed that dropbox.exe process appears in the list of apps that consume GPU resources:

Actually, quite many modern apps (e.g. Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox) may also use GPU, but this behaviour can be turned off though not in the case of Dropbox Client, no command line switch exist either. While for most people this shouldn’t be an issue, some advanced guys would want to have full control over their working environment and resources.

The fix is extremely easy and straightforward:

Quit the Dropbox client app.
Rename or delete the file
C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\%VERSION%\libGLESv2.dll
Start the client app again.

You can use the following “DropBoxNoGPU.bat” batch file that should work for all client versions:

C:
cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client"

for /F "delims=" %%a in ('dir /ad /b') do (
   move %%a\libGLESv2.dll %%a\_libGLESv2.dll
)

Malware abusing AnyToISO and CrystalBit Solutions

Fri, 15 May 2020 00:00:00 +0200

We’ve received two reports from people running Windows who were infected by a Trojan (or some another kind of malware) by executing a file signed by our company (CrystalBit Solutions). More specifically this executable had the AnyToISO icon. How can this be possible?

Unfortunately, it is possible by using a common technique used by cybercriminals called - DLL Search Order Hijacking. In short:

malware makers use a legitimate executable file signed by a valid digital signature - they simply don’t have their own digital certificate to sign files. In our case they used AnyToISO uninstaller program unins000.exe and renamed it to some random name
every executable has a list of required Windows system DLL files that must be loaded when this executable starts. In our case msimg32.dll is among them, this Windows library is responsible for Windows graphics device interface (GDI) manipulation
malware makers put an infected DLL file into the same archive/folder along with legitimate executable. This DLL has the same name (msimg32.dll) as the one from the the required list
once you run the signed executable Windows looks for required DLL files and gives priority to the local-infected DLL instead of the system one
infected DLL is loaded into the legitimate process and does its bad things

Bad news is that basically every legitimate and popular app can be abused like that in the Windows world. There’s a known case with TeamViewer, for example.

What did we learn?

There have never been any infected files in our apps and on the website
Don’t visit doubtful websites
Use AntiVirus/Antispyware protection at all times and update it regularly. Windows 10 built-in Windows Defender does its job great

Some technical details:

VirusTotal links for some variants of our signed unins000.exe that were misused by cybercriminals - #1 #2.
VirusTotal links for some variants of infected msimg32.dll - #1 #2.

Demo:

Improving NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition

Sat, 09 May 2020 00:00:00 +0200

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition is a great looking card of premium build quality that performs on the same level as RTX 2070 (also with 8GB of GDDR6) with a competitive 400$ price tag. Dual axial fans provide outstanding thermal results and very quiet acoustics when gaming. But does it have some flaws? From our perspective:

Idle fan noise
No way of controlling LED RGB logo (GEFORCE RTX)

Idle fan noise. The GPU has a striking idle temperature of 31C° but at a cost of idle fan speed fixed at 42% (1500 RPM). Browsing Internet hearing this noise can be quite annoying (specially when your PC is sitting next to you on the table). Even with MSI Afterburned there’s absolutely no way to lower that speed, which we find accessive particularly if you care about acoustics as much as we do.

LED RGB logo. Some users dislike the default color, some want animation effects and some simply want to turn it off.

There’s a single solution to both issues: flashing the default BIOS to the one from EVGA RTX 2060 Super SC Ultra. It’s also a dual-fan GPU that uses the same frequencies as with Founders Edition. What is more important: it features zero RPM mode under no load and has adjustable LED with EVGA Precision X1 software.

Disclaimer

WARNING! Flash the BIOS at your own risk. Flashing a video card BIOS to a different model and/or series WILL void your warranty. This process can also cause other permanent issues like video artifacts and premature hardware failure! We cannot and will not be held responsible for the misuse of the information provided in this guide. Please, if you have any questions, jump onto the forums and ask away! We do not suggest you attempt this EVER! The BIOS linked in this tutorial may not work for your video card!

Flashing the BIOS

Download NVIDIA NVFlash with Board Id Mismatch Disabled
Download EVGA RTX 2060 Super ROM, we used version 90.06.44.80.41.
Disable your GPU from the device manager

Open Windows Command Prompt as Administrator
Make a backup of your current ROM:

nvflash64_patched_5.590.0.exe -b backup.rom

Flash

nvflash64_patched_5.590.0.exe -6 EVGA.RTX2060Super.8192.190724.rom

It will ask you to confirm a few times, follow the prompts and wait for it to finish flashing.

Reboot

After that GPU-Z will show EVGA SC Ultra now and you can enjoy silence. If you face some difficulties much more detailed guide of flashing RTX BIOS can be found here.

RGB and other tuning can be performed in the EVGA Precision X1 app.

Result:

Optimizing thermals on Mac Pro 2013

Wed, 06 May 2020 00:00:00 +0200

Mac Pro 2013 is still a beast of a machine. We still own one with the most balanced (from our perspective) custom CPU installed: 8 Core / 16 Threads 3.3 Ghz Base (4.0 Ghz Turbo) E5-2667 v2. It features same 130W TDP thermal design as with other CPUs that are officialy installed (12 core, for example).

The computer has a single whisper quiet fan but Apple traditionally prefers acoustics levels over actual thermals. In this post we demonstrate this behaviour and explain how to improve it.

To stress test the CPU we’re going to perform testing in Windows because of a little nice app called powerMax. It’s able to torture CPU unprecedentedly with AVX CPU instructions (they heat up CPU badly, be very careful with it). Speccy app is used to display CPU core average temperature (between all 8 cores) along with GPUs and SSD temperatures. Room ambient temperature - 22C°.

Idle values (before the test):

The fan is spinning at its minimum 790 RPM

After 10 minutes of AVX torture test:

The fan is spinning at around 1200 RPM

CPU Core Average reaches 83C° after 4 minutes and remains there with fan spinning at around 1200 RPM. D500 GPU temperatures are at 66-67C° without any load and SSD temperature reaches 40C°. This is the price you pay for a computer in a compact stylish form-factor where basically all internals suffer from heat. What is more important, the default fan curve is VERY conservative to our mind: the fan starts to spin up after temperature already reached 80C! That’s why a custom fan control for long CPU intensive tasks is preferred on this machine.

After the stress test is finished, the fan returns immediately to the minimum speed and all components (CPU/GPU/SSD) are slowly returning to the idle values. Even after 10 minutes of idle after the test, CPU temp sits at around 45C°, GPU at 51C° and SSD at 37C°.

On the other hand, if you manually set the fan spin at 1500 RPM, after about 3 minutes temperatures are back to idle values.

Same 10 minutes AVX torture and custom fan control:

If you manually set the fan at 1500 RPM and do the test one more time, the situation drastically changes:

The fan is spinning at 1500 RPM, thermals are much better now

CPU and GPU temperatures dropped by around 9C° and SSD comfortly sits at 35C°. In a real world scenario with additional GPU and disk load added, custom fan control for Mac Pro trash can be basically essential.

Macs Fan Control now works in Windows 10 on modern Apple computers equipped with the T2 chip

Mon, 13 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0100

Update: MacPro7,1 and iMacPro1,1 are supported in version 1.5.6.

Macs Fan Control wasn’t able to work under Windows on Apple computers equipped with the T2 security chip since its introduction in 2018. We honestly thought it wasn’t actually possible but now it is! We’re happy to announce that the program now flawlessly works in Windows 10 on modern Apple computers that have the T2 chip:

MacBook Pro introduced in 2018 or later
MacBook Air introduced in 2018 or later
Mac mini introduced in 2018
Mac Pro introduced in 2019
iMac Pro introduced in 2017

Basically, the app now works on any Intel-based Apple computer in both Windows & macOS. Complete list of supported models.

Under the hood

It’s finally possible thanks to a custom developed kernel mode driver (AppleSMC.sys). It’s digitally signed with a EV certificate which means you don’t have to change Secure Boot settings. The driver gets installed automatically and removed when you uninstall the app.

Changes in Pro version licensing

Starting from 01-13-2020 (13th of January 2020) when buying the Pro version you can choose whether to buy it only for macOS or both macOS+Windows. If you bought the Pro version before 01-13-2020, your license key is also valid on both systems.

Macs Fan Control 1.5, introducing Pro version

Mon, 23 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0200

Our extremely popular Macs Fan Control app now gets even better: Pro version with presets for advanced users, major UI improvements and more stability.

Presets and Pro version

The app remains free but advanced users can get extra features by upgrading to the Pro version. Pro version is able to create and save custom fan presets so you can quickly switch between them depending on your activity. Additionally you get priority customer support and confidence in future updates and improvements.

Free version has only 3 presets:

Automatic, all fans are set to Auto and controlled by the system
Full blast, all fans are spinning at maximum RPM
Custom*, when you override fan control your way. This preset is saved between app launches (if you quit the app while the preset is active) and it gets lost when you switch back to Auto or Full blast. Basically it’s the same behaviour you had with previous versions of the app.

NVMe drives support

For already a while all modern macs are equipped with NVMe blade drives instead of traditional SATA. In both Windows and macOS the app now displays those drives and their temperatures. New option in preferences lets you control whether you’d want to read drives temperatures (SMART and/or NVMe) or not. It can be quite useful for those who would like to optimize CPU usage and those who encounter issues with connected RAID and audio peripherals.

New helper tool

Macs Fan Control requires a helper tool to be installed for fan control. The old helper tool had many issues which are gone now, in the new version of the tool:

Less CPU usage, less energy impact
Better stability of the app (no random crashes, no high number of open mach ports)

If you don’t plan to override fan control, you’re able to skip installing the tool and use the app in read-only mode. If you decide someday to override the default fan control, you’ll be asked again to install the tool.

Improved User Interface

Finally the app gets support of the dark mode in macOS Mojave and Catalina:

The new preferences dialog now also looks better:

Compatibility

macOS:

The app is still compatible with macOS 10.7 and later but comes as two separate downloads: one for macOS 10.14 Mojave+ and the second for macOS 10.7 Lion - 10.13 High Sierra.

Windows:

Windows XP and later but only on mac models that are not equipped with the modern T2 chip.

Classic Mac Pro (5,1): Upgrade Wi-Fi to 802.11ac and Bluetooth to 4.0

Mon, 15 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0200

Classic Mac Pro 5,1 (also 4,1 upgraded to 5,1) features only Wi-Fi 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1. Here’re main reasons why you want to upgrade Wi-Fi to 802.11ac and Bluetooth to 4.0:

You get Continuity, Handoff and new AirDrop working natively
Wi-Fi 802.11ac is insanely fast, Bluetooth 4.0 is more reliable, secure and way quicker
macOS 10.15 Catalina no longer supports old BCM94322MC Wi-Fi card so Wi-Fi will not work there

Disclamer: this website is by no means associated with any of ebay sellers mentioned here. Links are provided for your convenience. We take zero responsibility if you damage your computer somehow (highly unlikely but you never know).

The upgrade kit described here is 100% native, doesn’t include any external cards, antennas and doesn’t require any additional software installation. The Broadcom card mentioned in the kit is used in many iMac models thus natively supported by macOS. Some smart guy sells similar kit for around 215 USD + shipping but normally you get it for less than a quarter of the price (and free shipping from China)

The kit:

Broadcom BCM94360CD + mPCIe adapter. Ebay
Bluetooth antenna extension cable. Ebay
JST GH 1.25MM 4Pin connectors (3). Ebay

UPDATE September 2019! There’s a version of the mPCIe adapter that doesn’t require soldering! Amazon, Ebay. In this case you can skip Step 1.

1. Solder Bluetooth data cable to the mPCIe adapter

The original Bluetooth card will be removed because the BCM94360CD has both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on board. D+ and D- connectors on the mPCIe adapter must be connected to the motherboard instead of the old Bluetooth card.

You will need THREE JST cables where you remove yellow and green wires (only black and red are used).
Connect them to each other so you have enough length for Bluetooth data cable:

Solder (or ask someone who has a soldering machine) D+ and D- contacts on the adapter to black and red wires correspondily (not quite neatly on the photo).

2. Remove CPU/RAM tray

Open your Mac Pro and remove the CPU/RAM tray.

With the tray removed your computer should look as on the photo below. Wi-Fi card is highlighted on the left and the small Bluetooth card on the right. Later we will be passing wires behind the area highlighted in the center.

3. Remove old Wi-Fi & Bluetooth cards

Unscrew two small screws holding the old AirPort Wifi card and disconnect 2 or 3 antennas by lightly pulling them towards you (depending on the model, one antenna can be unused and hidden below the card), remove the card by sliding it to the left.

Unscrew 1 screw holding the old Bluetooth card, disconnect data cable and gold antenna connector, remove the card by pulling it towards you, it’s slightly glued with adhesive.

4. Installing new Wi-Fi & Bluetooth card

The new card with adapter goes in the PCIe slot where your old Wifi card was. Connect three existing Wi-Fi antennas and one Bluetooth antenna extension cable to the card exactly as shown below:

Slide the card with all 4 antennas attached into the mPCIe adapter then slide the adapter into the mPCIe slot. Tighten the adapter in place with one of two screws holding the old card.

The loose end of our Bluetooth antenna extension cable should be connected to the existing Bluetooth antenna cable (disconnected previously from the old Bluetooth card).

The loose end of our Bluetooth data cable must be connected to the motherboard:

When possible use small pieces of tape to fix wires to ensure they stay securely connected and don’t move much.

The guide is based on this MacRumors thread.

Boot Camp and Windows 10 1903 (May Update)

Mon, 10 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0200

Problem: the latest Windows 10 update 1903 runs into BSOD (Blue screen of death) with error message WDF_VIOLATION on some mac models (MacBook Pro 2010/2011, MacBook Air 2011, Mac Mini 2012, iMac 2010/2011 and some others). This fatal failure occurs when Windows is already loaded and system tries to start Apple Boot Camp Utility (BootCamp.exe). This tool is responsible for controlling screen brightness, volume, functional keys, backlit, etc with Apple keyboard. On some machines crash happens only if you try to start our Macs Fan Control app.

Cause: older versions of the MacHALDriver.sys driver supplied with the Boot Camp Utility are not compatible with Windows 10 1903.

Solution: Basically you need to update to Boot Camp 6 or later.

First you need to disable the old driver to allow Windows to boot normally. The driver file located at c:\windows\system32\MacHALDriver.sys must be renamed, e.g. to “MacHALDriver.sys.old”. There’re 2 options here:

(from Windows) Boot up in safe mode (holding the F8 key) and rename the file.
(from macOS) Install Tuxera NTFS or Paragon NTFS for Mac to allow write access to Windows drive/partition and rename the driver file. Both apps are commercial but have a trial period.

After that you can boot Windows 10, but Apple Boot Camp Utility won’t work. Macs Fan Control is able to work without the Boot Camp driver but slowly.

Install 7Zip and Brigadier. Run the latter to download and install the latest official Boot Camp from Apple for your machine. Sometimes it may still download a faulty old version (e.g. for mid-2010 iMac), in this case we recommend downloading Boot Camp for another model using the –model parameter:

 brigadier.exe --model iMacPro1,1

and run the Boot Camp installer manually (run your command prompt as administrator):

 msiexec /i BootCamp-041-55643\BootCamp\Drivers\Apple\BootCamp.msi

Tip: to avoid this problem, we highly recommend updating your Boot Camp using the Brigadier app before updating Windows to 1903.