Install on macOS

v1.0 is out. This page gets it running; if it does not, tell us what breaks.

There is no installer and no runtime to install first. It is an app you copy. This page gets it running; Getting started takes it from there.

Install it

1. Download the macOS build from Releases and drag vPinOps.app to your Applications folder.

2. Open it.

   Nothing appears full-screen. You get a status icon in the menu bar, top right. That icon is how you talk to vPinOps from now on, and it is the only way to quit it.

   It creates ~/.vpinops/ on this first run: your config, your run log, and a generated OpsLink password.

   macOS will refuse to open it the first time

   The build is not signed with an Apple developer certificate yet, so macOS blocks it on first launch with “vPinOps” Not Opened. Right-clicking and choosing Open no longer gets past this; that dialog only offers Move to Trash and Done.

   Do not press Enter on these dialogs. The highlighted button is Move to Trash.

   1. Click Done.
   2. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security and scroll down to Security. There is a line saying vPinOps was blocked. Click Open Anyway.
   3. macOS asks once more. Click Open Anyway again and enter your Mac’s administrator password.

   You only do this once. From then on it opens normally.

   No icon in the menu bar?

   macOS silently drops status icons when the menu bar runs out of room, and it does not tell you. Quit something else that lives up there and start vPinOps again.

3. Set the two macOS display settings a cabinet needs.

   In System Settings → Desktop & Dock:

   setting	value
   Automatically hide and show the menu bar	Always
   Automatically hide and show the Dock	on

   These are required on a Mac, not recommended

   vPinOps covers the menu bar. Visual Pinball does not. Leave it showing and the wheel looks right, then the menu bar sits across the top of every table you launch, hiding the top strip of it. The Dock does the same at the bottom. Nothing is misplaced by either: the table is drawn to the full screen underneath. They are simply on top of it.

   “Always” is the only value that works. The other options, including macOS’s own default, “In Full Screen Only”, never fire, because neither vPinOps nor Visual Pinball uses native macOS full screen.

4. Now set it up. Everything from here is the same on every platform, so it lives in one place: Getting started, from step 2.

What ended up on your disk

/Applications/vPinOps.app           the program. Ours. Replaced wholesale when you update.
~/vPinOpsData/                      your content. Never touched by an update.
    tables/                             one folder per table
    pinmame/                            the shared ROM fallback
    .inbox/                             tables sent from another device land here
    visualpinball/                      Visual Pinball's own settings
    visualpinball/app/                  Visual Pinball itself
~/.vpinops/                         your config, your run log, your OpsLink password

~/vPinOpsData/ appears when you set your folders in Getting started; the rest is there from the first run.

Keep them separate, as above. An update replaces the program folder and never touches your content. Where things are has the full map.

The dot in .inbox is load-bearing

vPinOps searches your content several levels deep and skips any folder whose name begins with a dot. Rename .inbox and a half-finished upload shows up on the wheel as a table you cannot play.

Where things are

The program	/Applications/vPinOps.app
Your content	~/vPinOpsData/
Config	~/.vpinops/config.json
Run log — read this first when anything is wrong	~/.vpinops/last-run.log
OpsLink password	~/.vpinops/remote-password
Uploads waiting to be imported	~/vPinOpsData/.inbox
Visual Pinball’s own settings	wherever VPX settings points in Settings — by default ~/vPinOpsData/visualpinball/VPinballX.ini

Updating and uninstalling

Quit vPinOps from the menu bar icon, replace the app with the new one, start it again. Your content and your config are in the other two places and are not involved.

macOS asks you to approve it again after every update. A new version is a new download, so it is blocked the first time you open it, exactly like the first install. Do the same steps as above: Done, then System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway, and your administrator password. And again, do not press Enter on the warning.

To uninstall, quit it and delete the app. Your tables are still yours.