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Common Issues

ScreenStop icon not appearing in menu bar / system tray

macOS:

  1. Check if the process is running: 
    pgrep -l ScreenStopMenu
  2. If not running, launch manually: 
    open /Applications/ScreenStop/ScreenStopMenu.app
  3. If it launches but disappears, check the log: 
    cat ~/Library/Application\ Support/ScreenStop/screenstop.log | tail -50

Windows:

  1. Check Task Manager for ScreenStopTray.exe
  2. Launch manually from C:\Program Files\ScreenStop\ScreenStopTray\ScreenStopTray.exe

Camera permission denied (macOS)

ScreenStop requires camera access to function.

  1. Go to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Camera
  2. Enable access for ScreenStopMain
  3. Restart ScreenStop from the menu bar icon

Station not appearing in dashboard

  1. Confirm the machine has network access to the dashboard URL
  2. Check the log for connection errors
  3. Verify SCREENSTOP_DASHBOARD_URL is set to the correct address

Screen locking too aggressively / false positives

Adjust detection thresholds in the Dashboard:

  • Increase phone_confidence to reduce false phone detections
  • Increase face_confidence to reduce false unauthorized person detections
  • Disable specific detection modes that are causing issues

Camera not found / black frames

  1. Confirm the webcam is physically connected
  2. On macOS, check for zombie processes holding the camera: 
    sudo lsof | grep -i "VDC\|camera\|avconference"
  3. Release the camera: 
    sudo killall VDCAssistant 2>/dev/null
  4. Restart ScreenStop

Dashboard timestamps showing wrong time

If events appear with incorrect timestamps (e.g., 2 hours behind), this is a timezone mismatch issue fixed in v1.0.3.

Upgrade to the latest version to resolve this.

Icons showing default app icon after build (macOS)

This is a macOS icon cache issue. It resolves on its own after a system restart, or you can clear the cache manually:

sudo find /private/var/folders -name "com.apple.dock.iconcache" -exec rm -f {} \; 2>/dev/null
sudo killall Dock

Fixed automatically at build time as of v1.0.3.

Log level not changing from dashboard

Changing LOG_LEVEL in the dashboard applies on the next detection cycle without a daemon restart. This was a bug fixed in v1.0.3 — upgrade if you're on an earlier version.