hoakley March 4, 2024 Macs, Technology

Skint and SkintM 1.05 are almost feature-complete

My two sibling apps to keep a watchful eye on your Mac’s security and updates are now almost complete, thanks to the comments and requests of several of you.

Skint and SkintM, its menu bar variant, version 1.05 address the following suggestions:

They both feature Check Now menu commands so you can see whether the updates you’ve just installed have taken properly without having to quit the app. This is an extra check, and doesn’t affect the scheduling of their next routine daily check. Thanks to Ric Ford of Macintouch for this idea.
The colour well in Skint now has a central icon to help those who have problems distinguishing its colours. Thanks to Chuck for this suggestion.
The menu bar icon for SkintM now changes to reflect the overall result of checks. Despite my best efforts to set this in colour, macOS seems determined to keep this icon black and white. Thanks to Jorge and palm0x for asking for this.
SkintM now brings its windows to the front properly when you open them. Thanks to Jim for pointing this bug out.

In addition to those, they bring the following new and improved features:

Both work around a bug in macOS that fails to recognise changed version numbers following updates to XProtect and XProtect Remediator. This is a bug I’m only too familiar with from SilentKnight, but it caught me out here as well.
Skint now changes its Dock icon to reflect the results of checks, something I’ve been promising since its first version. While this only takes three lines of code to accomplish, getting those to work has been a long and tedious quest.
A few other minor blemishes have been fixed, including centring of the emoji in Skint’s window.

You should be able to install SkintM as a Login Item now, and leave it running, or if you prefer you can leave Skint running with its window minimised. When you then install an update, use Command-1 or the Run Checks command to refresh their results. That will confirm that everything’s in order, and you can then leave them running to perform their next check on schedule.

Skint and SkintM versions 1.05 are now available from here: skint105
from Downloads above, from their Product Page, and via their auto-update mechanism.

Two items remain to complete them both: checking for RSRs, which is dependent on the next RSR release for testing, and a widget, which awaits the fixing of problems in Xcode.

27Comments

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1

SarahB on March 4, 2024 at 1:09 pm
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Thank you for working on this, I will have to check it out. I’ve been noticing version numbers acting a bit odd in SK. Not due to your fault but that bug you mentioned. I wish apple had something built into the OS to help us know or update these things.

Sorry to go off on a tangent here but decided to go back to Sonoma yesterday from Ventura. Using Ventura was so nice though with none of the lingering bugs still in Sonoma that keep driving me mad. I just had someone use my credit card recently and YouTube history showed someone trying to get into my account. So wanted to be on the current OS.

Just sad I can’t even buy or use security keys since you need to be using iOS16 and my phone is older and stuck on iOS15. Or how I can’t even turn on ADP on my Mac due to that. I wish apple let us be secure and not need to have the newest devices or have the most cash to do that. I’m at a disadvantage with security now due to my devices being older. Even though my Mac is supported they say every other device has to be on current OS so that doesn’t help me.

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- 2
  
  hoakley on March 4, 2024 at 5:07 pm
  Reply
  
  Thank you.
  “I’ve been noticing version numbers acting a bit odd in SK” That’s even odder, as I fixed that bug in SK version 1.8, released on 1 July 2020. Since then, I haven’t seen anything odd about version numbers there. What are you seeing, please?
  Howard.
  
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  - 3
    
    SarahB on March 4, 2024 at 6:56 pm
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    Sorry maybe I was wrong since I meant EFI Versions not MRT or XProtect. Just shows my EFI Version as:
    
    EFI version found 2022.100.22.0.0 (iBridge: 21.16.4212.5.3,0) expected 2020.80.5.0.1 (iBridge 21.16.3049.0.0,0)
    
    Kind of confused since at the top of SK under my Mac model number it shows the first EFI version there with a green check next to it. So shows it’s correct but says it expects something different. I guess nothing to worry about. Does say EFI is up to date below that expected part. So I will just ignore what it expects.
    
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    - 4
      
      hoakley on March 4, 2024 at 7:13 pm
      
      That’s because you’ve installed a beta-release of 14.4, which brings with it a firmware update. As that’s not yet a general release, the version that SK expects is correct for the current general release, but it tolerates the more recent firmware.
      If you can think of a better way of handling this situation, please let me know.
      Howard.
      
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5

jmaher5b5c6912e5 on March 4, 2024 at 4:44 pm
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Howard,

Haven’t seen this mentioned , but there seems to be an issue I’m having when downloading Skint105 app.

For the past few releases, when I click on the link for skint in the email you send, a “Save” dialog window is presented. When I click “Save” to the “Downloads” folder, (really doesn’t matter where it is saved), the file saves but the “Save” window instantly reopens and cannot be dismissed by clicking “Cancel”. The only way to get out of this repetitive loop is to force quit Safari.

This also happens in FireFox. However, while there is a pause in the Safari occurrence, the FireFox browser just continues downloading the file continuously/repetitively. Again, Force Quit is the only way out.

No problems with Chromium.

I suppose this may be a bug in my machine. But just a heads up.

Jack Maher

>

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- 6
  
  hoakley on March 4, 2024 at 5:13 pm
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  My sincere apologies for this. I don’t send those emails, they’re automated by WordPress. For some time now the links they embed have been broken with Safari, although as you remark, they work fine with Chrome/Chromium, which suggests to me that this is an issue primarily in Safari.
  All I can suggest is that you use links from the pages here, which do work find with current Safari.
  Howard.
  
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  - 7
    
    jmaher5b5c6912e5 on March 4, 2024 at 5:48 pm
    Reply
    
    Howard, Thanks for the reply and the clarification. That was my suspicion, that this is a browser issue. Please know that we throughly enjoy your posts and look forward to them daily.
    
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    - 8
      
      hoakley on March 4, 2024 at 7:10 pm
      
      Thank you.
      Howard.
      
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9

Sandy Schaffell on March 4, 2024 at 4:52 pm
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Hi.

I am having a similar issue to jmaher above. the indication i get is that skint needs an update but I have updated a couple of times and it appears that the system is on some kind of a loop. the other items in the systems check box are green and checked. Just the skint box is troublesome for me.

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- 10
  
  hoakley on March 4, 2024 at 5:17 pm
  Reply
  
  I’m sorry about these problems. When Skint posts the alert about the update, you should be able to click on the Download button there, and that link then opens in your default browser and downloads the Zip archive. I’ve just checked that, and it works fine in current Safari – as that link is a plain vanilla URL, if it’s not working, then there’s something seriously wrong with that browser. Similarly, the links I provide on pages here are regular URLs, and they should work fine too.
  I wish you success.
  Howard.
  
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  - 11
    
    Sandy Schaffell on March 4, 2024 at 5:22 pm
    Reply
    
    Thank you, Howard. I am using Firefox but will easily switch to Safari.
    
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    - 12
      
      hoakley on March 4, 2024 at 7:08 pm
      
      You shouldn’t have to: it works fine with Safari. It’s just a plain URL, nothing more.
      Howard.
      
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13

Sandy Schaffell on March 4, 2024 at 5:42 pm
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Hi. To clarify: on the top bar of the desktop screen, the round white icon with the black check mark shows that everything is correct; the eye-shaped icon shows everything is fine save for the skint triangle, which is yellow with !. on the large box on the desktop “skint system checks” four out of the five icons are green and checked but the skint box has a red dot with a white bar across the middle and the note that “skint needs update; no updates needed; xpr checks ok”; and date and time completed.

As I see it there are three notifications and it looks like the white icon and the eye-shaped one are in conflict and the large box on the desktop is in agreement with the eye icon. Maybe this is normal, if it is apologies for taking your time. I wonder if others have this issue. These items appear on both FF and Safari.

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- 14
  
  hoakley on March 4, 2024 at 7:10 pm
  Reply
  
  I’m not sure which version of Skint this is. Perhaps it would be simpler just to trash the existing version (presumably 1.04), download 1.05 from here, and install it again.
  Howard.
  
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15

topquarkone on March 4, 2024 at 9:01 pm
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Hi – I know you probably cover this elsewhere, but if I run SilentKnight (which I do and love), do I need to also run Skint? What is the fundamental differences between them? Thank you!

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- 16
  
  hoakley on March 4, 2024 at 9:14 pm
  Reply
  
  SilentKnight is primarily intended for checking, downloading and installing software updates, in particular at present those for XProtect and XProtect Remediator. While it does check a full range of other settings and versions such as firmware, it’s an app you run when you want to check for available updates.
  Skint doesn’t check for updates, and is intended to be left running in the background. Once every 24 hours it checks key security and related settings, and warns you if it finds anything wrong, or there’s a security data update that you haven’t installed yet. It keeps a watch for you.
  For those who run SilentKnight each day, then Skint doesn’t check anything more. For those who run SilentKnight less frequently, it could save you the trouble of doing that by keeping that watch for you. It’s also helpfully tolerant of those who aren’t yet running Sonoma, as it doesn’t keep detecting the Sonoma upgrade, but does inform you when a security update to Monterey or Ventura is available, without checking Apple’s servers.
  I hope that explains their differences.
  Howard.
  
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  - 17
    
    topquarkone on March 5, 2024 at 1:38 am
    Reply
    
    Thank you. That was very clear.
    
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18

RalphB on March 5, 2024 at 7:10 pm
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Just in case you wish to address this…

Today I received the automated update notice for “this app” to 1.05. Here is what the update notice looked like on my Mac, running Sonoma (screenshot image linked). No identification of the name of the app. The icon, of course, is a common green-white checkmark. I suspect that if you received a notice like this, you might choose to “ignore” it.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eIm6Cw5JbV3HKvnhcddN02Nya7h5nrpk/view?usp=sharing

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- 19
  
  hoakley on March 5, 2024 at 7:57 pm
  Reply
  
  Thank you – my apologies for not identifying the name of the app there. However, in my defence that isn’t “a common green-white checkmark” at all: look at it carefully and it’s a hand-crafted work of art, and is the app icon, and for Skint is the same as that displayed in the Dock, to inform you of the results of its checks. But yes, the text should be explicit too.
  Howard.
  
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20

RalphB on March 5, 2024 at 8:24 pm
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No “criticism” of your “work of art” intended! Since I’m running SkintM only (without Skint), the Skint app icon is not visible in the dock (unless I choose to run Skint itself). So the green checkmark for this SkintM alert doesn’t match anything else on my screen, and is definitely reminiscent of the green checkmark commonly used in emojis. In addition (as you point out yourself, above) the menu bar icon for SkintM is a black-and-white checkmark, without any of the “hand-crafted” details of the app icon. I know you’re working on that, so I’m not complaining. Merely pointing out the “anonymity” of the update alert screen as an effort to add constructively to your outstanding and helpful app.

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- 21
  
  hoakley on March 5, 2024 at 10:34 pm
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  Thank you – I was writing more than a little tongue-in-cheek. Yes, the next update will include the name Skint or SkintM in that dialog as clarification. When you’re testing software that throws that every single time you run it (as I always test the next, not the current, version), you quickly learn to ignore its contents. In some test versions I get so sick of it that I disable the dialog, but then have to remember to enable it for release.
  Howard.
  
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22

Stefan on March 12, 2024 at 4:35 pm
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So I really love your tool and I’m a heavy silnite user. One thing that might make the whole experience better would be something to make the warnings actionable. A button to run XPR checks if Skint tells me that it was not run for some time or a button to open Silnite to update to the latest XProtect Version.

I know that you offer these tools for free an I’m in no place to ask for anything, but before I would install SkintM on any clients Mac, I would need a better way to solve the problems that gets shown to the user.

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- 23
  
  hoakley on March 12, 2024 at 9:17 pm
  Reply
  
  Thank you. First, consider what might be actionable and how:
  – SIP is enabled – only actionable in Recovery mode, in the command line
  – SSV is enabled – only actionable in Recovery mode
  – Gatekeeper/XProtect checks are enabled – only actionable in the command line
  – XProtect is up to date – only actionable using softwareupdate
  – XProtect Remediator is up to date – only actionable using softwareupdate
  – Skint itself is up to date – already actionable via dialog
  – the installed macOS is up to date for its major version – only actionable using Software Update
  – XProtect Remediator scans are recorded in the log over the last 36 hours, and whether they reported anything abnormal – no simple actionable approach available.
  
  Skint deliberately avoids using softwareupdate because of its potential side-effects. If you want to run that, then SilentKnight is the best answer. And that’s one of the primary requirements, that Skint doesn’t call softwareupdate, as that could bring problems rather than solutions, for example if your Mac is still using Monterey or Ventura because it can’t be upgraded to Sonoma.
  
  So I don’t know of any better ways than those above.
  
  Howard.
  
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24

Rob on April 4, 2024 at 1:14 pm
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Hi Howard, a very minor enhancement suggestion for the dock presentation: an Option-click shortcut for Run Checks (currently this first requires opening the app.) Thanks!

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- 25
  
  hoakley on April 4, 2024 at 1:22 pm
  Reply
  
  Thank you. I’ll look at that, although I’m not sure why you’d want to run checks without the app being open in the first place? If the app isn’t open, then it can’t run its automatic checks, which is surely its purpose? Perhaps it would help if I could understand what you’re trying to do.
  Howard.
  
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  - 26
    
    Rob on April 4, 2024 at 1:26 pm
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    Sorry, I meant “making the already-running Skint the currently-selected app” – there’s likely some proper UI terminology for this but I’m mostly a library/CLI developer :^)
    
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    - 27
      
      hoakley on April 4, 2024 at 10:07 pm
      
      I’m more baffled, I’m afraid. To bring Skint to the front, or ‘in focus’, just click on its icon in the Dock. If you then want to run a fresh check, Command-1 does the trick.
      Howard.
      
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