Help please :Mac Finder greys out the bar; force quit and relaunch not fixing it

[Chipper]

Can anybody help with this please? My Mac studio set up has been a long winded pain.... yesterday to add to the hassle, the Finder stopped working and greyed out the bar at the top. I tried force quit/relaunch. I tried switching it on and switching it off again.

Making my crazy this...

 

[Lost_Manc]

Which area is actually greyed out?

Is it the right hand side where the time/date etc is or the whole bar?

If the right hand side only you may have gone into a Do Not Disturb or Focus mode. Click on the icon that locks like two switches and you should see 'Focus' click that and check you are not set to something.

Failing that. Have you tried rebooting in 'Safe Mode'?

If not. Restart whilst holding the 'Shift' key. If you have a login setup enter details and then hold the Shift key again (you might only need to hold it after this initial entering of log in details I can't recall).
It should go back to the login screen but this time have 'Safe Mode' in red in the top right hand corner. Log in and once full booted up restart the Mac. See if that helps.

Beyond that I'm out of ideas!

Hope you get sorted.

 

[Chipper]

Thanks for this... it came back after I managed to get my new BenQ screen to switch back on - I had unwittingly switched ports when shifting it to its permanent position in the office. The only thing it is not now listing in Finder is the attached portable hard drives, which is odd. It was the top bar across the whole screen and would not actually open when clicked. I could get a window up if I went to the menu and selected new finder window.

I am not sure what Safe Mode is. I will go and take a look at a video. The first time I had to set up a Mac with LR/PS stuff a friend came and did it who worked in IT and the advice I had to start me off this time used up a week rendered worse by the Adobe chat people - hours of my life wasted and rude as well. ANyway, it seems to be set up now apart from this oddity.

I appreciate you taking the time.

 

[Lost_Manc]

I am not sure what Safe Mode is. I will go and take a look at a video.

Use safe mode on your Mac – Apple Support (UK)

Safe mode can help you determine whether an issue is being caused by software that loads when your Mac starts up.

support.apple.com

It basically starts the OS with the minimum it needs to run as well as performing some checks and can be useful to see whether it’s potentially an installed application that’s causing your issue.
The method I described wouldn’t have worked it’s seems anyway so apologies there. I’m still using an intel processor but the newer Apple chips M1 etc which I presume you Mac Studio has have a slightly different procedure for entering Safe Mode. It’s in the linked article.

 

[Chipper]

First thing: Do you have a TimeMachine in place? If not, then get one done then start playing with it.

Which version of MacOS Are you running?

Showing attached drives etc in Finder in the Sidebar is a setting: Finder > Preferences > and then under Locations you can select what you want to show on the Sidebar.

For the Desktop, it is Finder > Preferences > General.

Thanks. I will have a look.

 

[Chipper]

Well, whatever it was it went away - the grey out bit - when I did something else. The drives was something that the Mac man said - ah yes we are getting a lot of issues for people with that. Instead of having words like hide /show or something like that - there is an arrow which is only visible when your cursor hits the spot! Problem solved! Thanks all for your input.