Weird Quick Look dialogue box in High Sierra

[celliott]

I have some video files on my Mac as I'm sure we all do. Not sure why, but they seem to take forever to generate a Quick Look file when I have windows set up in column format. I click on a file and get the spinning beachball. Also, hitting the space bar which is supposed to open the file in Quick Look takes forever in High Sierra. Not sure why.

My bigger problem just started happening a couple of days ago. Again in column format, when I single click on a video icon I get the following dialogue box:

'Use of the requested Audio Unit(s) require lowering the security settings for “QuickLookUIService”. Are you sure you want to proceed?'

I get the optional buttons: "Lower Security Settings" or "Cancel"

They are regular M4V video files. I use them all the time. Why am I getting the dialogue box?I would add the it happens every time. What does it mean? And as a bonus, anyone know why Quick Look takes so long to work?

[Bernie]

The cloud likes to listen too.

[Article Accelerator]

celliott wrote: …they seem to take forever to generate a Quick Look file when I have windows set up in column format. I click on a file and get the spinning beachball. Also, hitting the space bar which is supposed to open the file in Quick Look takes forever in High Sierra. Not sure why.…I get the following dialogue box:

'Use of the requested Audio Unit(s) require lowering the security settings for “QuickLookUIService”. Are you sure you want to proceed?'

Well, that's why! The question is why does your system have apparent permission/security settings problems with Audio Units.

Start your hunt here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201532

anyone know why Quick Look takes so long to work?

See above.

[Sarcany]

celliott wrote:
...'Use of the requested Audio Unit(s) require lowering the security settings for “QuickLookUIService”. Are you sure you want to proceed?'

I get the optional buttons: "Lower Security Settings" or "Cancel"

Got that under Sierra, too.

Apple both included AU plugins with their own apps like GarageBand and allowed 3rd party AUs to be installed for various purposes throughout the OS. (Purposes that include previewing multimedia files.)

In 10.12, Apple decided to disable these plugins by default in Quick Look out of paranoia that they represent some sort of security risk even though there's no evidence that they have ever been exploited for malware. (And yet, Quick Look will still load any web content, including any malware, when you preview a html file.)

Since there's no indication which AU plugin is being called, there's no way to simply opt not to use an AU plugin. You could remove all AU plugins and QuickTime components (Perian) which register as audio plugins for some purposes, but that seems like overkill. You could search through your OS and pull every audio component one at a time, rebooting and testing Quick Look after each modification, but that's a PITA.

I've never heard of any problem from enabling AUs in Quick Look. When I've seen that message, I just followed that prompt and lowered the security settings.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Units
Audio Units (AU) are a system-level plug-in architecture provided by Core Audio in Apple's macOS and iOS operating systems. Audio Units are a set of application programming interface (API) services provided by the operating system to generate, process, receive, or otherwise manipulate streams of audio in near-real-time with minimal latency...